Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
London : Head of Zeus, 2014
User reviews
LibraryThing member DavidWineberg
Joyce University
The Most Dangerous Book is a life’s work about a life’s work. Kevin Birmingham has performed mountainous research, which he assimilates, assembles and displays in logical order, in easy to read sections, and in great depth and drama. It is a first rate thriller all the way.
There was something about the turn of the century that caused the western world to churn. It started in about 1895 with Art Nouveau, a radical departure from standard architecture, that spread to décor and household items. Classical music very suddenly went postmodern, atonal, and asymmetrical. It actually spurned the audience in favor of style. Picasso, about the only person who realized what was going on (sitting in his favorite bar listening to the new music in Art Nouveau-crazed Barcelona), consciously decided art needed a total breakout too. His response was cubism. Politically, anarchists were attempting to destroy the whole socio-political infrastructure. Joyce began to do the same to the novel. All of these sudden developments were discomfiting, strange, and difficult to digest. Like typical revolutions, they all reverted to the mean, leaving marks mostly historically. The Most Dangerous Book drags us through the ups and downs of a heroic struggle of epic proportions. Because in this case there were laws against it.
Joyce was a most unlikely candidate for this kind of reverence. He was “a blushing trembling man with weak eyes and a fear of dogs”, according to Sylvia Beach. He was afraid of the ocean, heights, horses, machinery, and thunderstorms. He was rude, crude, unhelpful, unkind, unco-operative and stubborn. But what he wrote changed people’s outlook on life as well as literature. As a result, he got generous personal donations, underground offers of publication, and people eager to risk all by smuggling his book into countries like the USA, which actively practiced book burning.
The parallels with NSA today are striking. The post office was the overseer of communications then, and it rifled through periodicals and packages, looking for anything even remotely unpatriotic, or obscene, however the postmaster chose to define it. Once you got on its suspects list, you remained a target. Conviction was all but a certainty. Customs routinely seized items deemed unworthy of presence in America, and sent a note that effect, to which you had to agree or be prosecuted. The Religious Right was out to tell everyone how to live their lives, mostly in ignorance, and they had laws passed they could enforce themselves, notably the Comstock Act. Women were not permitted to see many words in print, or even hear them in a courtroom. They needed to be protected from such corruption as would surely result if they saw them. Ironically, three quarters of the people who helped Joyce were precisely those upstanding women. Bookstore owners, editors, librarians, activists and benefactors all sought to spread the availability of Ulysses.
The climax comes in an American courtroom, where the book, not the author, is on trial for obscenity. Capital punishment awaits the usual verdict. After a year’s delaying tactics for judge-shopping, the payoff comes as a big relief – to readers, to publishers, to authors, and to freedom of expression, which was all but suppressed until this landmark case. Judge Woolsey decided ”…when such a great artist in words, as Joyce undoubtedly is, seeks to draw a true picture of the lower middle class in a European city, ought it to be impossible legally for the American public to see that picture?” And the walls came tumbling down.
When Joyce was born, obscenity was pretty much anything any authority deemed it. You couldn’t predict it in advance. Its mere presence nullified any other value in the book. By the time he died, obscenity was a flexible, more fleeting occurrence, whose presence might be noted, but was usually not fatal. In Kevin Birmingham’s words, “The most dangerous fiction is our innocence.”
David Wineberg
The Most Dangerous Book is a life’s work about a life’s work. Kevin Birmingham has performed mountainous research, which he assimilates, assembles and displays in logical order, in easy to read sections, and in great depth and drama. It is a first rate thriller all the way.
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Joyce, the faulty, complex, highly imperfect being he was, makes the adventure riveting.There was something about the turn of the century that caused the western world to churn. It started in about 1895 with Art Nouveau, a radical departure from standard architecture, that spread to décor and household items. Classical music very suddenly went postmodern, atonal, and asymmetrical. It actually spurned the audience in favor of style. Picasso, about the only person who realized what was going on (sitting in his favorite bar listening to the new music in Art Nouveau-crazed Barcelona), consciously decided art needed a total breakout too. His response was cubism. Politically, anarchists were attempting to destroy the whole socio-political infrastructure. Joyce began to do the same to the novel. All of these sudden developments were discomfiting, strange, and difficult to digest. Like typical revolutions, they all reverted to the mean, leaving marks mostly historically. The Most Dangerous Book drags us through the ups and downs of a heroic struggle of epic proportions. Because in this case there were laws against it.
Joyce was a most unlikely candidate for this kind of reverence. He was “a blushing trembling man with weak eyes and a fear of dogs”, according to Sylvia Beach. He was afraid of the ocean, heights, horses, machinery, and thunderstorms. He was rude, crude, unhelpful, unkind, unco-operative and stubborn. But what he wrote changed people’s outlook on life as well as literature. As a result, he got generous personal donations, underground offers of publication, and people eager to risk all by smuggling his book into countries like the USA, which actively practiced book burning.
The parallels with NSA today are striking. The post office was the overseer of communications then, and it rifled through periodicals and packages, looking for anything even remotely unpatriotic, or obscene, however the postmaster chose to define it. Once you got on its suspects list, you remained a target. Conviction was all but a certainty. Customs routinely seized items deemed unworthy of presence in America, and sent a note that effect, to which you had to agree or be prosecuted. The Religious Right was out to tell everyone how to live their lives, mostly in ignorance, and they had laws passed they could enforce themselves, notably the Comstock Act. Women were not permitted to see many words in print, or even hear them in a courtroom. They needed to be protected from such corruption as would surely result if they saw them. Ironically, three quarters of the people who helped Joyce were precisely those upstanding women. Bookstore owners, editors, librarians, activists and benefactors all sought to spread the availability of Ulysses.
The climax comes in an American courtroom, where the book, not the author, is on trial for obscenity. Capital punishment awaits the usual verdict. After a year’s delaying tactics for judge-shopping, the payoff comes as a big relief – to readers, to publishers, to authors, and to freedom of expression, which was all but suppressed until this landmark case. Judge Woolsey decided ”…when such a great artist in words, as Joyce undoubtedly is, seeks to draw a true picture of the lower middle class in a European city, ought it to be impossible legally for the American public to see that picture?” And the walls came tumbling down.
When Joyce was born, obscenity was pretty much anything any authority deemed it. You couldn’t predict it in advance. Its mere presence nullified any other value in the book. By the time he died, obscenity was a flexible, more fleeting occurrence, whose presence might be noted, but was usually not fatal. In Kevin Birmingham’s words, “The most dangerous fiction is our innocence.”
David Wineberg
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LibraryThing member dono421846
Birmingham weaves an engrossing tale of Joyce, his creative process, the writing and publication of Ulysses, and finally the battle against its censorship. Every personality is fleshed out in detail, but the text never becomes tedious or pedantic. There's something here for just about everyone.
It's too soon to say whether it will push me to actually attempt to read Ulysses, but it just might. The book, which looms large in the mind for its fabled impenetrability and bizarre style, now seems like bit tamed. Once you know something's backstory, it perhaps is less intimidating. That's all to the good. Until then, I'll start with the more accessible Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Finnigan's Wake, never.
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Whether you're a fan of Joyce, have an interest in censorship battle, the artist's creative process, or the rise of a new way of viewing the reality (modernism, in this case), this is the book for you. It's too soon to say whether it will push me to actually attempt to read Ulysses, but it just might. The book, which looms large in the mind for its fabled impenetrability and bizarre style, now seems like bit tamed. Once you know something's backstory, it perhaps is less intimidating. That's all to the good. Until then, I'll start with the more accessible Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Finnigan's Wake, never.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Stbalbach
I have never read Joyce. He is difficult, there are countless academic tombs, and I wanted a layman's understanding as to why he is so important, some historical context. More than that, it's a wonderful and engrossing narrative story. This book could be made into a movie.
LibraryThing member muddyboy
The long and twisted history of Ulysses by James Joyce. Over the years some have thought it a masterpiece, some nonsense and some pornography but everyone seems to have an opinion. This well researched book tells us the story of this controversial book and its author. It took years to get printed
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and read because it was deemed obscene by authorities in the US and England. Birmingham skillfully narrates the novel's winding path from the author's pen to mass publication all the while giving the reader an inside look at Joyce's strange relationship with his wife as well as his many health problems. A must read for literature lovers. Show Less
LibraryThing member CrowVoice
An adventure story of Modernism with Ulysses, the book, as hero.
LibraryThing member annbury
Very enjoyable read; I had no idea that Quinn was so important to the literary and cultural scene in the US in the early 20th century.
LibraryThing member Salmondaze
An extremely intriguing book, I have to say the characters really stood out for me, including bastards Anthony Comstock and John Sumner, and awesome people who weren't familiar to me before, John Quinn, Bennett Cerf, and Morris Ernst. This book proves how literature can change history. It's amazing
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to think people didn't think the First Amendment didn't apply to art before this book. Show Less
LibraryThing member bostonbibliophile
Really interesting book on the writing and publishing of Ulysses, and also functions as a biography of James Joyce. Mostly it's the story of censorship and the growth of the First Amendment into what we understand it to be today, and how changes in writing and literature precipitated the legal
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changes. I read it slowly over several months and really didn't want it to end. Show Less
LibraryThing member cmlloyd67
One of the best books that I've read in the past two years. On the surface it appears to be about the big 1930s censorship case against Ulysses, which had been banned for 20 years due to obscenity. The case basically changes US and later UK censorship laws and how Western culture viewed
But, Birmingham, also provides a rather in-depth historical perspective/accounting of:
1. feminism in the 1920s and 1930s
2. the women's suffrage movement
3. the publishing industry - including the beginnings/creation of The Modern Library, Random House, Simon and Schuster, and Great Books Foundation (which I found interesting since that was my father's first real job.)
4. censorship laws
5. the magazine industry
6. piracy
7. US copyright law
8. modernism
9. obscenity laws
10. First Amendment
11. Beginnings of the American Civil Liberties Union
We also get bits and pieces on Virgina Woolfe (who refused to publish Ulysses), Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield, Nabokov, and TS Eliot (one of Joyce's major supporters, and the one who finally got Ulysses published in the UK in 1939.)
A couple of quotes:
" To legalize what was once patently unspeakable, however, is to replace silence with both debate and debatability. It is to invite deep- even systemic-uncertainty. For to change moral standards is to upset what we assumed was natural (nothing serves systems of power more than the conviction that things cannot change), and few modes of expression seem more natural- more instinctive and indisputable , less amenable to logic or academic study - than what we find offensive or obscene. If obscenity can change, anything can." - Kevin Birmingham, The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle over James Joyce's Ulysses.
And..
Margaret Anderson, editor of the Little Review - is quoted as follows in the book:
"First, the artist has no responsibility to the public whatever." The public, in fact, was responsible to the artist. "Second, the position of the great artist is impregnable... You can no more limit his expression, patronizingly suggest that his genius present itself in channels personally pleasing to you, than you can eat the stars."
And ...from Ernst Morris, the co-founder of the ACLU:
Censorship was a tactic used by entrenched powers to quell democracy's inherent turbulence, and groups like the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, Ernst thought, were their moral instruments. Censorship was what happens when power brokers who benefit from the status quo team up with moralists who believe society is perpetually on the brink of collaspe.
To fight for the freedom of books was to fight for the priniciple of self-governance that had inspired the American Revolution. For Ernst, there was no strict separation between political and sexual ideas - burning books sent a chill across the entire culture.
"Censorship," he wrote, "had a pervading influence on the subconscious recesses of individual minds." It altered the way the country approached science, public health, psychology and history. Only a blinkered Victorian mentality, Ernst thought, could think that the Roman Empire fell because of its moral decadence.
The worst part about the censorship regime was that it was maddeningly arbitrary. Books that circulated for years might be banned without warning. Customs officials might declare a book legal only to have the Post Office issue it's own ban. A judge or jury could acquit a book one day and condemn it the next, and the wording of the statues themselves stoked confusion.
"
Finally...my favorite quote...
One of the paradoxes of the printed word is that whatever strength and durability it has is inseparable from its inherent weakness. Even a book like Ulysses, we consider essential to our cultural heritage book, might never have happened - might have ended in a New York police court or with the outbreak of a world war - if it were not for a handful of awestruck people. Joyce's novel, with its intricacies and schoolboy adventures, with each measured and careful page, gave them what it gives us: a way to sally forth into the greater world, to walk out into the garden, to see the heaventree of stars as if for the first time and affirm against the incalculable odds, our own diminutive existence. It is the fragility of our affirmations - no matter how indecorous they may be - that makes them so powerful.
This is a book that I'd recommend to anyone who has studied Joyce, loves literature, or is interested in censorship laws. But it also is a book about publishing, and the frustrations along the way. And ultimately how much our culture has changed.
Definitely one of the best books I've read. Highly recommend.
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obscenity.But, Birmingham, also provides a rather in-depth historical perspective/accounting of:
1. feminism in the 1920s and 1930s
2. the women's suffrage movement
3. the publishing industry - including the beginnings/creation of The Modern Library, Random House, Simon and Schuster, and Great Books Foundation (which I found interesting since that was my father's first real job.)
4. censorship laws
5. the magazine industry
6. piracy
7. US copyright law
8. modernism
9. obscenity laws
10. First Amendment
11. Beginnings of the American Civil Liberties Union
We also get bits and pieces on Virgina Woolfe (who refused to publish Ulysses), Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield, Nabokov, and TS Eliot (one of Joyce's major supporters, and the one who finally got Ulysses published in the UK in 1939.)
A couple of quotes:
" To legalize what was once patently unspeakable, however, is to replace silence with both debate and debatability. It is to invite deep- even systemic-uncertainty. For to change moral standards is to upset what we assumed was natural (nothing serves systems of power more than the conviction that things cannot change), and few modes of expression seem more natural- more instinctive and indisputable , less amenable to logic or academic study - than what we find offensive or obscene. If obscenity can change, anything can." - Kevin Birmingham, The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle over James Joyce's Ulysses.
And..
Margaret Anderson, editor of the Little Review - is quoted as follows in the book:
"First, the artist has no responsibility to the public whatever." The public, in fact, was responsible to the artist. "Second, the position of the great artist is impregnable... You can no more limit his expression, patronizingly suggest that his genius present itself in channels personally pleasing to you, than you can eat the stars."
And ...from Ernst Morris, the co-founder of the ACLU:
Censorship was a tactic used by entrenched powers to quell democracy's inherent turbulence, and groups like the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, Ernst thought, were their moral instruments. Censorship was what happens when power brokers who benefit from the status quo team up with moralists who believe society is perpetually on the brink of collaspe.
To fight for the freedom of books was to fight for the priniciple of self-governance that had inspired the American Revolution. For Ernst, there was no strict separation between political and sexual ideas - burning books sent a chill across the entire culture.
"Censorship," he wrote, "had a pervading influence on the subconscious recesses of individual minds." It altered the way the country approached science, public health, psychology and history. Only a blinkered Victorian mentality, Ernst thought, could think that the Roman Empire fell because of its moral decadence.
The worst part about the censorship regime was that it was maddeningly arbitrary. Books that circulated for years might be banned without warning. Customs officials might declare a book legal only to have the Post Office issue it's own ban. A judge or jury could acquit a book one day and condemn it the next, and the wording of the statues themselves stoked confusion.
"
Finally...my favorite quote...
One of the paradoxes of the printed word is that whatever strength and durability it has is inseparable from its inherent weakness. Even a book like Ulysses, we consider essential to our cultural heritage book, might never have happened - might have ended in a New York police court or with the outbreak of a world war - if it were not for a handful of awestruck people. Joyce's novel, with its intricacies and schoolboy adventures, with each measured and careful page, gave them what it gives us: a way to sally forth into the greater world, to walk out into the garden, to see the heaventree of stars as if for the first time and affirm against the incalculable odds, our own diminutive existence. It is the fragility of our affirmations - no matter how indecorous they may be - that makes them so powerful.
This is a book that I'd recommend to anyone who has studied Joyce, loves literature, or is interested in censorship laws. But it also is a book about publishing, and the frustrations along the way. And ultimately how much our culture has changed.
Definitely one of the best books I've read. Highly recommend.
Show Less
Awards
Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction (Longlist — Nonfiction — 2015)
PEN New England Award (Winner — Nonfiction — 2015)
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Nonfiction — 2014)
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year (Nonfiction — 2014)
Notable Books List (2015)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2014
Physical description
417 p.; 24 cm
ISBN
9781784080723