From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2015 23:57:08 -0500

For anyone intrigued by Jim's reference to the checkered copyright history of Ulysses, you might want to read the chapters that Robert Sproo devotes to it in his wonderful "Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing, and the Public Domain" (Oxford, 2013), my review of which appears in the October 2015 issue of the Journal of Scholarly Publishing, where I say the following:

Three of the book's chapters examine the story of how Joyce's Ulysses came to be published in the United States, first in an unauthorized edition published by Roth and later in an authorized edition published by Random House under Bennett Cerf's supervision. The latter turns out to be another interesting example of how trade courtesy made publication possible despite the possibility of competing editions. As a case study of a famous book's complicated history, these chapters would work nicely as a class assignment for a course in book history.

Finnegan's Wake had an even more complicated history:

Even though Sproo engages our interest throughout, his Epilogue is a real tour de force. He deftly analyzes how efforts to achieve copyright harmonization internationally have had the perverse consequence of leaving copyright law as a patchwork of confusing and contradictory rules that serve no one well, and with a much-impoverished public domain. Sproo sees the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994, in particular, as contributing to the disharmony of the public domain worldwide. The journey of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake from copyright to the public domain back to copyright and then back into the public domain shows just how complicated the system is today. 'The result of all this is a dinning cacophony of laws, an inconsistent, semiprivate world commons' (270). Sproo laments that 'instead of a unified public domain, we now have an uncoordinated global commons. It is certainly one kind of dystopia, this world of checkerboard monopolies, patchwork freedoms, and after-rights, all presided over by the amorphous, often untested promise of fair use. Those who wish or need to make use of authors' works are confronted with a culture of checkmates and obstacles, ambiguous laws, stubborn estates, and orphan works' (276).

Sandy Thatcher


From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2015 17:05:33 -0400

This will be my last obsession on the challenge of finding Ulysses on Amazon.

On Saturday, Amazon made another try to find a good new paperback copy
of Ulysses for me.  What they came up with was a Wordsworth edition
from the UK for $1.45.  This has the merit of coming from a somewhat
serious publisher, producing inexpensive copies of out-of-copyright
classics.  Reader, I bought it -- don't actually need it, but for
$1.45 (and free shipping with Prime), I couldn't resist. I'll think a
little about just how it makes sense to sell a book at that price at
all and where the concept of profit has gone.  Which part of the $1.45
pays for the printing and binding, which for the distribution to
booksellers, and which part for the shipping to me?   (N.B.:  there's
controversy about just how "out of copyright" Ulysses is and the
family has been highly protective.  My experience suggests, however,
that their protectiveness has been colossally ineffective.)

So then I went to a bookstore.  Easy to spot:  big sign "Books"
outside and lots of greeting cards, wrapping paper, and writers'
supplies inside.  But behind them, the books.  It took me thirty
seconds in the store to find what I was looking for:  Vintage books
edition, near-exact reprint of the classic Modern Library edition with
the judge's opinion from the 1930s freeing the book for American
readers.  I photographed the ISBN and mailed it to myself.  No
question:  this suited my needs exactly.

Back to Amazon:  if I search for editions of Ulysses or even just
paperback editions of Ulysses, I do not find the Vintage edition at
all.  I do find its cover illustrated on one entry on page 13 of the

hits, but that points only to four used copies priced each at more
than $2,000 (two thousand dollars:  not a typo, but no explanation
what could justify the price).  *If* I input the ISBN, I get the
correct edition, for $12.45, Prime eligible.  It comes with other tabs
for hardcover and ebook editions, but those tabs lead to editions that
have nothing to do with the Vintage edition; if you then click the
"paperback" tab on one of those pages, the click does not take you
back to the Vintage edition but off into the great dismal swamp of
other editions.  Don't blink or it disappears.  (A liblicense reader
points me to an Oxford Worlds Classics edition:  it is similarly
invisible to the basic search but available if you know the ISBN
already.)

I give up.  Amazon certainly has.  Better I should use a library.

Jim O'Donnell
ASU