Nothing really changes
My wife and I recently visited The Morgan Library and Museum and stumbled on an exhibit on the making of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
I’ve never read the book, but found the exhibit a fascinating reminder on how very little things change.
Piracy was still annoying
Ulysses was banned from publication in the U.S. until 1934. “Bookleggers” started printing edited excerpts of the book in the 20s.
Joyce couldn’t go after people illegally printing censored copies of Ulysses as it was technically banned, making it ineligible for copyright protection.
Joyce sent out a petition, signed by some big names like Albert Einstein, Hemingway, and Virginia Woolf, protesting bookleggers like Samuel Roth. In response, Samuel Roth pirated and sold the entire novel! (Dick!)
Virginia Woolf didn’t get the hype at first
Speaking of Virginia Woolf, her diary was on display, open to a very specific entry.
The plaque reads:
“Wolf's diary entry, which begins, "I should be reading Ulysses' and fabricating my case for and against," conveys a mix of emotions and opinions about the novel's first two hundred pages. Stimulated and amused by early episodes, Woolf is ultimately repulsed by its graphic passages. Shocked that "great Tom" (T. S. Eliot) rates it on a par with Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, Woolf calls Ulysses an "underbred" novel by an egoistic "self-taught working man."
Rich people were still pretty cheap
This was by far my favorite little tidbit of the exhibit.
J.P. Morgan’s Ulysses order receipt from the famous Shakespear & Co bookstore of Paris.
3 copies were available:
A signed copy with crafted with handmade dutch paper
An unsigned copy made with vergé d’arches (a heavy watercolor paper)
A regular basic copy
My wife pointed out how funny it was that the great book collector and billionaire J.P. Morgan ordered the cheapest option.
