bloomsday, ipad and modern suppressors of vice

Say "Bloomsday" now and people will likely think you're talking gardens, but for years June 16 was celebrated by English speakers worldwide to commemorate the life of Irish writer James Joyce, author of Ulysses, a novel in which all events take place on this day in 1904. (Poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes chose the date to be married.) In Dublin, where the novel is set, the day is still celebrated with Ulysses readings and dramatizations, pub crawls and general merriment. But here in the US, Bloomsday is being celebrated for a different reason: It's the day Apple reversed its decision to censor "Ulysses Seen", a graphic novel adaptation of the masterwork for the ipad, which included a nude illustration. "We made a mistake," an Apple spokesperson said, apparently unaware that the book had encountered similar resistence when first published without pictures. In 1921, due to a campaign by New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, the book was declared obscene and banned by U.S Postal Authorities. In December 1933, the Supreme Court ruled that the work was not pornographic and therefore could not be obscene. Perhaps Supreme Court judges should be involved in new media adaptation. Or maybe it's a job for unemployable MFA Fiction grads.

happy bloomsday

It's Bloomsday, observed all over the English-reading world to celebrate the life of James Augustine Aloysius Joyce and his novel Ulysses, written about an ordinary day in Dublin on June 16, 1904. (Name comes from protagonist: Leopold Bloom.)

Joyce picked the day to commemorate his first date with his girlfriend in which they, in keeping with wholesome courting practices of the era, walked to the Dublin village of Ringsend. (Send ring, indeed-- Nora soon became his wife.)

By chronicling a character going about his everyday business, Joyce wrote a book in which nothing or everything happens, depending on your point of view. It was originally serialized in a magazine out of Chicago, then published as a book (cover pictured) in Paris a few years later. When the published book was imported by boat to the US, the shipment was seized and declared obscene by New York Society for the Suppression of Vice because it contains a scene in which the main character masturbates. The ban was reversed years later by a forward-thinking Judge who declared it not pornographic, but emetic (adj: causing a person to vomit.)

I thought this was the perfect day to try out a new site Adverblog kindly pointed me to--Read At Work, which disguises books as every day office computer documents. But, alas, Joyce isn't yet  on their shelves. You're in luck, however, if you want to read Orwell or Tolstoy while appearing to pore over Powerpoint docs.