"'Ulysses' is not fit for public distribution. . . . When a little time has passed it will be possible to salvage by excerpt a briefer volume, which, if too strong for all but the most sophisticated tastes, will yet, in its brilliance and originality, be a credit to Irish literature."
Sophistication is so obviously no longer the exclusive prerogative of the male.
The little girl whose hand is held by Dr Bowdler in the statue which we propose to place where Dr Canby can see it every working day has been in our mind lately owing to her prominence in connexion with the action taken by the Society for the Suppression of Vice against Mr Thomas Seltzer, as publisher of A Young Girl's Diary, Women in Love, and Casanova's Homecoming. The precocious child who would begin to understand and, understanding, might continue to read the last-named two of these books we have not met. But that she exists we are assured. And it is quite certain that unless a hundred or a thousand judicial decisions are handed down to undermine our laws and precedents it will shortly become impossible to publish anything which could offend her taste or corrupt her morals. This is no new thing we are saying, but it does no harm to say it again. That child is dragged into every case of suppression and her triumphs (Mr Sumner saying nothing about her except that she is young) are many. Between hearings on bootlegging and wife-beating the great artists of our time are called upon to prove themselves not indecent, and to defend themselves from the priggish reproaches of this abominably susceptible little half-wit. A description in court of the austere work of Dr Schnitzler makes it sound like the Satyricon; there is no defence except in the common sense of the magistrate who hears.
By the time this is published the decision will have been rendered. We can only note that in the present position of the law it is virtually impossible to attack, through isolated hearings, the idea of the censorship itself. One defends this book or that from the charge of indecency; one cannot defend anything or anybody from the harsh arrogance of the attack upon the liberty of the press.
Yet we wonder whether a recent reverse suffered by the Society does not encourage the publishers of America to attack the covering law itself. It is preposterous to assume that a small body of fanatics
