James Joyce: The Trials of Ulysses

In 1918, Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson, intrepid publishers of The Little Review, a small Greenwich Village magazine devoted to the work of contemporary artists and writers, gingerly (and perhaps a bit unwittingly) lit the fuse of a literary pipe bomb. In that momentous year, they began serially publishing a work-in-progress entitled Ulysses, by a largely unknown Irish writer named James Joyce. In the next several years, Heap and Anderson would find themselves in the center of cultural and legal explosions that included confiscation of their magazine by the U.S. Postal Service on obscenity charges, and a series of court cases culminating in a landmark Supreme Court decision that paved the way for the 1938 publication of the full novel in America. James Joyce: The Trials of Ulysses provides a serviceable if somewhat lackluster history of these contretemps (Sylvia Beach makes her heroic appearance as the fearless continental publisher of the novel; and somewhere in the background old Uncle Ezra Pound can be seen giving his benedictions to the project), as well as an interesting overview of Joyce's peripatetic life and career. Interspersed among this literary history is a rather feckless attempt at explicating the novel: while there are some nifty insights provided regarding the relationship of Joyce's characters to real life acquaintances, and the central role played by the city of Dublin in the novel, the enormous complexity and richness of Ulysses defy the casual analysis provided here. Despite these failings, it's undeniably fun to see Joyce's Dublin caught on film and to hear scholars and enthusiasts riff and rhapsodize about Leopold Bloom's remarkable odyssey on the “the dailiest day ever written about.” Recommended, overall. Aud: C, P. (G. Handman)