I hold a heavy thing in my hand, a hardbound copy of Ulysses by James Joyce, one of the most famously banned books in history. It’s just a book. A hard one, but nothing to be afraid of. It almost did not survive. On its second printing in 1922, a mere run of 2,000 copies, 500 were seized by New York’s postal authorities as “indecent material.” On its third printing of only 500 copies, 499 were seized by customs in Folkestone, England, for similar reasons. But other publishers came, believed in it its literary merit despite the hate, and gave it life. It is now deemed an English literary classic.
It’s a difficult book, and I wonder how many of the many people who have pushed to ban it over the years — some quite recently in the U.S. — actually read it. Only book nerds like me
