ABSTRACT
It is, of course, absurd to suggest that Joyce had pornographic intentions. I have come into closer relations with Joyce than with any other man in Paris, and it is almost ludicrous to be obliged to protest that he is sincere. We must take his work for what it is. Those who read it for its unpleasant passages will quickly grow weary. It requires high culture to appreciate its comic and sublime contrasts, its exposure of the irrelevance and the irreverance of mankind before the great facts. Gross animality and subtle spirituality intermingle. Blasphemy and beauty, poetry and piggishness, jostle each other. But, as I said in my review, one becomes tired of beastliness always breaking in. I asserted that the vulgarity of life was exaggerated, and that Joyce had magnified the mysterious materiality of the universe…. [quotes from a review in the London Evening Standard, ‘A Monstrous Book’]
Ulysses is the talk of all the places where men congregate who are interested in writing, and this talk has been going on for a month or two. But not till Mr. Sisley Huddleston sent a column about it to London have the references been freely and openly made…After the Observer published his review people said: “Ah, not pornography but a work of art, which may mean something.” Word of Ulysses spread. Subsequently came Mr. Middleton Murry with a Ulysses page in the Nation and Athenaeum [see No. 98], Mr. Arnold Bennett following with a page and a half in the Outlook [see No. 106]….
