A Welcome to Ulysses

"A chaffering, all including most farraginous chronicle" is James Joyce's definition of his Ulysses, a book which many a critic considers the most important novel of its generation. Whether Ulysses is also "immoral and obscene" and therefore unfit for U. S. readers was the question which Manhattan's Federal Judge John M. Woolsey last week was ready to answer in the extraordinary case of "The U. S. vs. One Book Entitled Ulysses."

The U. S. Customs started the case in May, 1932 when it seized an unexpurgated copy sent to Publisher Bennett A. Cerf from Paris. Last fortnight there was a hearing in the small elegantly informal courtroom of the Bar Association Building. Publisher Cerf's lawyer, Morris Ernst, who makes a specialty of fighting censorship cases, contended that he had yet to find a single instance which proved that reading any book had led to the commission of a crime. Assistant U. S. Attorney Samuel C. Coleman asked the court not to regard him as a "puritanical censor," said he found "ample grounds to consider Ulysses an obscene book." Fat, bald-headed Judge Woolsey who spent his vacation last summer on Ulysses, puffed a cigaret in a long holder, admitted that "reading parts of that book almost drove me frantic," ended up by saying "I must take a little more time to make up my mind." Last week, Judge Woolsey's mind was made up.

The opinion which he handed down was historic for its authority, its eloquence, its future influence on U. S. book publishing. Excerpts:

"I have read Ulysses once in its entirety and I have read those passages of which the Government particularly complains several times. . . . In Ulysses, in spite of its unusual frankness, I do not detect anywhere the leer of the sensualist. I hold therefore that it is not pornographic.

". . . In many places it seems to me to be disgusting but although it contains, as I have mentioned above, many words usually considered dirty, I have not found anything that I consider to be dirt for dirt's sake. If one does not wish to associate with such folk as Joyce describes, that is one's own choice. . . . But when such a real artist as Joyce undoubtedly is, seeks to draw a true picture of the lower middle class in a European city, ought it to be impossible for the American public legally to see that picture?

"The meaning of the word 'obscene' as legally defined by the courts is: 'Tending to stir the sex impulses or to lead to sexually impure and lustful thoughts.' . . . After I had made my decision in regard to the aspect of Ulysses now under consideration I checked my impressions with two friends. . . . I was interested to find that they both agreed with my opinion: that reading Ulysses in its entirety . . . did not tend to excite sexual impulses or lustful thoughts but that its net effect on them was only that of a somewhat tragic and very powerful commentary on the inner lives of men and women. . . .

"My considered opinion after long reflection is that while in many places the effect of Ulysses on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac.

"Ulysses may, therefore, be admitted into the United States."

Last week's opinion was not the first of its kind for Judge Woolsey. A shy, scholarly, ponderous, blunt devotee of literature, the law, and what he calls "the art of small delights," he has been concerned with the legal nature of obscenity since 1931. In that year he ruled in favor of Dr. Marie Stope's Married Love. Three months later he rendered a favorable decision on her Contraception. He was the judge in famed plagiarism suits over Strange Interlude and Of Thee I Sing, in both of which he rendered decisions for the defendants. He earned the vacation he devoted to Ulysses by presiding last spring at the longest criminal case in the history of U. S. jurisprudence, the 109-day fraud trial of the promoters of the National Diversified Corp. who bilked Roman Catholic clergymen and others out of $3,000,000 to make talkie pictures (TIME, July 17).

Born in Aiken, S. C., 56 years ago, John Munro Woolsey went to Phillips Andover, Yale, Columbia Law School. For hobbies he collects pipes, strangely blended tobaccoes, old clocks. He plays mediocre golf, wearing a peculiar oriental cap to keep the sun from shining into his spectacles.

The history of Ulysses is, in part, the history of literary censorship in the U. S. Irishman James Joyce started writing his colossal story of one Dublin day in France in 1914. In 1918 Ezra Pound sent part of it to Margaret Anderson who published it in her Little Review. The U. S. Post Office Department seized and burned all copies sent through the mails. Vice Suppressor John S. Sumner* had Margaret Anderson indicted for publishing indecent matter, caused her and her Co-Editor Jane Heap to be fined $50. Thirty thousand copies of Ulysses have been sold in France, mostly to U. S. tourists to snuggle home. Immediate results of last week's decision were two. Publisher Cerf's Random House announced a forthcoming unabridged edition of Ulysses ($3.50) for general sale. In Paris, where he was waiting for another operation on his right eye, Author Joyce said he was "pleased with the judgment," hoped to get some much needed cash out of the U. S. edition.

Post to Stern

Oldest of New York dailies, the Evening Post, founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801, has changed hands many times. The last time was in 1923 when white-thatched Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis, richest of U. S. publishing merchandisers, marched up from Philadelphia and bought it from a Wall Street syndicate which had acquired it only the year before from Morgan Partner Lamont. For years the Evening Post, for all its fine tradition, had been a money-loser. Briefly after 1923 it looked as if Publisher Curtis might succeed where Wall Street had failed. Through Son-in-law John Charles Martin, Mr. Curtis poured money lavishly into the Evening Post, gave it the finest new plant in the city. Socialite Julian Starkweather Mason was hired as editor to give the sheet circulation. But still the Post did not fatten and thrive. Lately it has been losing money at the rate of $25,000 per week. When the experiment of making it a tabloid last September failed Publisher Martin could think of only one more thing. By last fortnight, all New York knew that the Post would presently be sold or scrapped.

Last week another man marched up from Philadelphia to Manhattan to become the Post's new owner and publisher. Julius David Stern was a practical journalist in his shirtsleeves who had made a success of his blatant Philadelphia Record. To his 700 new employes Postman Stern told how he got the paper, where it would stand:

"It was the most dramatic thing in my career. When I called Mr. Martin he had sitting by his desk a lawyer representing the other evening newspapers in New York City. He had a certified check [for $250,000] from these newspapers on his desk and in his pocket he had a statement of discontinuance.* . . . I almost waited too long. . . .

''The newspaper will be independent politically like the rest of my papers. I support President Roosevelt because he is a great Liberal not because he is a Democrat. LaGuardia is another great Liberal. . . . I am behind General Johnson and the NRA . . . controlled credit inflation. I want to run a newspaperman's newspaper."

The antithesis of his immediate predecessors on the Post, Publisher Stern at least shares with its oldtime Editors Edwin Lawrence Godkin and Oswald Garrison Villard, a ready liberalism and an ink-stained knowledge of how to run a newspaper. A young Philadelphian out of the University of Pennsylvania, he bought the New Brunswick (N. J.) Times for $1,500 in 1911, when he was 25. With it, he promptly began a lively campaign to clean up the municipal government. When he sold the Times to political adversaries he got $25,000. He and his wife bought a car, drove to Springfield, Ill., bought two more papers which Publisher Stern sold four years later for a fat profit. In 1919 he took over the Camden, N. J. Evening Courier, and, later, the Camden Morning Post. He spent $500,000, ousted U. S. Senator David Baird's machine, installed a City Commission, ran up the Courier's circulation from 9,000 to 80,000, won his campaign for a bridge across the Delaware River. Across that bridge five years ago Publisher Stern marched into Philadelphia and bought the down-at-heel little Record. Since 1928 Publisher Stern and his able Editor Harry Saylor have built the Record's daily circulation from 100,000 to 150,000, doubled its Sunday circulation.

Publisher Stern likes best his papers' editorial page, which he usually writes himself. His lively political philippics helped to smash Philadelphia's Boss William Scott Vare last month. In Philadelphia where there is no Hearst and where the stodgy Bulletin has been a model for the city's other journals, the Record got attention by rowdy headlines, pictures of chorus girls, comic strips, proletarian social-advice columns, interlarded with intelligent liberalism.

Stocky, genial, accustomed to bustling about his city room in his shirt sleeves, Publisher Stern lives in a square colonial house at East Haddonfield, N. J. with his wife, whom he married when she was an undergraduate at Bryn Mawr, and their four children. He smokes long black cigars, drives his car recklessly, plans to commute to Manhattan by plane. His office at the Record has a kitchenette where his butler makes his lunch on busy days.

While Publisher Stern was bustling into New York last week, the Curtis retreat from Manhattan was having significant consequences in Philadelphia. There has always been a polite family feud between John Charles Martin and the other Curtis heirs who run the profitable Satevepost and the Ladies' Home Journal. Last week Publisher Martin resigned from the directorate of Curtis Publishing Co. to devote himself exclusively to the Curtis-Martin Morning and Evening Ledgers and the Inquirer, his three remaining papers.

Almost "Almost Reilly"

In November 1931, the Satevepost published a short story called "Almost Reilly," by Robert Winsmore. Plot : Scatterbrained young Mrs. Madge Wrenn repeats to her stockbroker husband a tip which her hairdresser has received from someone whose name is "Almost Reilly. . . . Not Kelly. More like Reilly." The tip turns out to have come from an astrologer. By the time William Wrenn finds this out, he and his friends have bought the stock and lost money. Madge Wrenn has bought before gossip sent the stock, up, sold for a profit on the bulge caused by the talk the tip started.

In June 1933, Collier's published a short story called '"On a Lady's Advice." by Edward Gardner Jr. Plot: Scatterbrained young Betty Woods repeats to her stock broker husband a tip which her dress maker has received from a woman whose name Betty Woods does not know. The tip turns out to have come from an astrologer. By the time Jerry Woods finds this out, he and his friends have bought the stock and made money. Betty Woods has bought before gossip sent the stock up, sold for a profit on the bulge caused by the talk the tip started, increased her winnings by selling short as the stock goes down. Similar in treatment, both stories start with hero and heroine dressing for dinner, continue at a dinner party, contain more conversation than description. "Almost Reilly" is laid in New York, told in first person. "On a Lady's Advice " is laid in California, told in the third person. Parallels:

Almost Reilly "This woman, she's marvelous. . . . She tell Miss Cora about the stock market, and Miss Cora makes thousands and thousands just by doing it."

On a Lady's Advice "This woman," Betty continues, "she's marevelous! I mean she tells Jo things about the stock market and Jo makes hundreds and hundreds just by doing it."

Author Robert Winsmore is middleaged, fat, a member of the Author's League of America, Inc. He has contributed stories to the Post for the last five years. Author Gardner is in his early thirties. He began to write in the summer of 1931, after a training in Wall Street. "On a Lady's Advice" was his first story for Collier's. Last week Author Winsmore brought a plagiarism suit against Author Gardner and Collier's for $100,000 on the grounds that "the infringing story has ruined his market for that type of story."

* Last week, Vice Suppressor Sumner was reduced to writing a letter to the New York Herald Tribune threatening to prosecute publishers & distributors of indecent Christmas cards.

* Smart David Stern was mistaken if he meant to imply that other Manhattan newspapers had offered $250,000 to kill the Post. What they did, after Publisher Martin decided to kill his own newspaper, was to pool $150,000 for the Post's name and Associated Press membership, provided that Publisher Martin give his 700 newsmen and pressmen two weeks salary to keep them in funds over the holidays.

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