The Scandal of Ulysses: The Sensational Life of a Twentieth-Century Masterpiece

by Bruce Arnold

Long before its first publication, Ulysses, the greatest novel of the twentieth century, was the cause of scandal. James Joyce's prose was denounced as obscene, and the book was banned in the United States and Great Britain. Controversy surrounded the work throughout Joyce's lifetime, and he claimed that the book would keep scholars busy for centuries.
Joyce was right. The book has become a veritable minefield for scholars, and has led to one of the world's most lucrative literary industries. In The Scandal of Ulysses, Bruce Arnold compellingly traces the life of Ulysses from its inception, through the great publication scandals of the 1920s and 1930s, and concludes with a lengthy examination of the copyright wars that have engulfed the book in recent years.
In this, the most complete history of Ulysses written to date, Arnold draws a vivid portrait of Dublin, London, and Paris in the period between the two great wars, through which we gain a more complete understanding of both early conflicts and more recent ones.
Chief among these is The Corrected Text, which was hailed as the ideal version of the book when it appeared in 1986, and its German editor, Hans Walter Gable, as a brilliant scholar who had restored Joyce to the reading public in as near perfect a version as was possible. Two years later, he was publicly denounced by John Kidd, a young American Joyce scholar, and one of the most ferocious literary controversies of recent times erupted.
Joyceans worldwide were deeply divided over the merits and defects of the new edition. Arguments against the Gabler version grew in volume. The earlier 1961 Ulysses was restored to the market place. New publishers came forward to edit and produce new versions. And the legal copyright, which ran out at the end of 1991, has caused more chaos, particularly in light of a new version of Ulysses edited by John Kidd, being published by W. W. Norton.
In a lively work of literary detection, with an American introduction written for the new edition. Bruce Arnold sets out the background, examines the legal loopholes, analyzes the arguments on both sides, looks at some of the hidden agendas, including controversial letters, and comes up with surprising and provocative conclusions.

Genres: Ireland

273 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Bruce Arnold is an English journalist and author who has lived in Ireland since 1957. His main expertise is in the fields of literary criticism and art criticism.
In 1983 it emerged that his telephone had been bugged by Charles J. Haughey in the Irish phone tapping scandal. He and the other bugged journalists were considered to have "anti-national" views.

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Samuel R. Delany recommended this book to me on Facebook, as I was finishing Ulysses itself. This is the story of the text of Ulysses, after it was published, and through separate editions, and especially the unfortunately Gabler edition published in the late 80s. The story is told very well, and it is a scandal that a new edition was published with very little feedback from the literary world. A superb book, and if you are interested at all in the topic I highly recommend it.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, solid account of the controversy arising in the Joycean community over Hans Walter Gabler's 1986 edition of Ulysses: The Corrected Text. The book is a little dense in places (as Arnold humourously admits) and most readers will find the passions sparked by the controversy itself faintly ludicrous, but the former point is a minor irritation and the latter adds, in some ways, to the enjoyment.