The Story of the Story

Voila!

A beautiful new challenge. Literally, so very beautiful. This publication of James Joyce's Ulysses was designed by Ernst Reichl for Random House 1933. The story of the book and how it finally became available in the United States is a fascinating one. This first US edition opens with a forward from Morris L. Ernsst - the lawyer who successfully defended the novel, a copy of the legal brief that lifted the US ban, and finally a letter from Joyce to the editors. I can imagine how the American public felt in the early 1930s, overwhelmed with curiosity and frustration. With such vigor and excitement this particular edition must have been met with.

Martha Scotford recalls the drop of the ban: "How they got the ban dropped and delivered the book at just the right moment is a short tale of legal, design and production choreography."

James Joyce, age 22 in 1904 (Original photograph from the C. P. Curran Collection, UCD Library Special Collections. Digital images courtesy of the IVRLA, UCD
This reminds me of a story that I hear on NPR recently. John Steinbeck's son, John Steinbeck IV, gratefully recalled the cunning way his father was able to get him and his brother to read the heavy classics at a young age. Before heading to bed, John would tell his boys to stay clear of one of the bookshelves, saying there are many secrets enclosed in the pages of those books. After the warning, John would slowly and deliberately lock the case and place the key in an easy to reach place. After hours the boys would sneak downstairs, remove the key from on top of the case and feverishly read - hoping to uncover the secrets which their father spoke of. They would lock the case up before sunrise, place the key back in its place and scurry up to bed. John IV remembers that as a time of great exhaustion.

I love this story, the image of John placing the old key down while the boys looked on wide-eyed. Those things that are forbidden beckon our curiosity. In both the case of the Steinbeck boys and of the 1930s American public - their fruit was rich with gorgeous rewards and well worth the leg work.

Read more about the removable of the ban from Martha Scotford article.

Brrring

Remember the days when we shared a phone with our ENTIRE family? Can you even imagine that now? There was one line, located in the most public of all rooms in the house, the kitchen. Kinked necks from clutching the receiver between your ear and shoulder, marks on the wall from where you'd unhitch the base so to give you the extra cord length - a desperate attempt to find some privacy.


Alexander Graham Bell
I am trying to overcome my telephonophobia. Yes, I have a slight fear of phone calls, and I know I'm not alone. This all started slowly, when I began to use the text function on my Nokia in 2002. Then exponentially, in mirrored opposite lines, I began text messages as my primary means of correspondence while simultaneously, the number of calls I made dwindled down to a mere few.

From my Rome journal, inspired by African textile design