The Fix

Graphic Literature

In August 2000, I was sitting in a room at The University of North Florida for my first faculty meeting. New to the school and to Florida, I looked like the newcomer I was. In weather better suited for Equatorial Guinea, I was still walking around sweating my brains out in jeans, oxford, and Doc Martens. On the other hand, Brad Simkulet, the teacher who sat next to me that first day, screamed Florida: sandals, shorts, t-shirt, sun-blonded hair. He was also funny, snide and subversive, and went out of his way to make me feel like I belonged there. Safe to say, I liked him immediately. I certainly remember Brad fondly for his generosity, even though he left for the West Coast and bigger and better things at the end of that year.  However, I recall Brad specifically here because he first introduced me to graphic literature.

I don’t remember the context for the conversation, but Brad suggested I read this book Maus, by Art Spiegelman. A comic? About the Holocaust? And Nazis are cats and Jews are mice?…Now, I had just completed ten years of higher education in literature. And in all that time, I had never seen a comic or graphic novel on a syllabus, never read a scholarly article that referenced them, and cannot even recall them coming up in any of those innumerable, interminable college conversations about books. Heck, even as a kid, I had read only the occasional comic book. So it’s safe to say that I bought Maus, not because of scholarly interest or because I thought such a book could possibly be successful (I mean, a beast-fable comic about the Holocaust?), but instead I bought it because Brad said I should. Raise a glass to peer pressure…

Motivation aside, by the time I finished Maus, I was hooked. It was an amazing, brave and captivating book, unlike any I’d read before. In the ensuing months, I went about following a ‘trail’ of such texts: from Maus to Moore’s Watchmen to Miller’s Dark Knight Returns to Satrapi’s Persepolis to Eisner’s Contract with God to Clowes’ Ghost World to Thompson’s Blankets, and so on and so on. It’s a trail that, as a reader, I’m still following today. But I distinctly remember thinking, before I’d even finished Maus, “This would be really cool to teach.” So, for the first literature course of my second year, I inserted Maus as the last text we’d read. I confess that I pitched it to students as a “treat”: a fun (easy?) carrot to dangle in front of students, if they worked hard on all those dense poems, Shakespearean dramas, and literary short stories we’d read during the semester.

Instead, what both the students and I discovered was that Maus enabled them to learn more about literature, what constitutes the literary, the art of reading, and the processes of critical thinking than any other text we’d read. It wasn’t that Maus was “fun” or “easier,” or that it was forbidden fruit. For students, as for me, this text tapped into something deeper.

Having taught courses on graphic literature for ten years now, I’m convinced that part of this ‘something deeper’ is our rich graphic lineage. Our earliest preserved stories, like the cave paintings at Lascaux, are graphic. Our Western alphabet—based on the Phoenician alphabet—is originally pictorial (and economic): A’s represented (and counted) oxen or cows; B’s women or households; C’s camels, and so on. The most popular language on Earth today (and one of the oldest) is Chinese, a pictographic language.  Philosophically, for centuries Platonic thinkers have postulated our world as a world of images and representations, just as Jung countered Freud by postulating archetypes as our foundational psychology. More recently, cognitive scientists have delved into graphic processes central to all our minds, what Steven Pinker calls our “shared understanding of the truth”: the way our “thoughts are anchored to things and situations in the world.”

But it’s that world in which we live today that provides another attractive exigency. Unless you live under rocks, you are bombarded with visuals 24/7/365. Symbols, logos, ads: graphics, both subtle and explicit. Whether savvy political commercials saturating the media to seek our votes, product commercials that seek our money, or news media that seek our trust and belief, a distinctly graphic discourse runs through our culture. We construct ourselves graphically in this new media too. Whether we did it through MySpace or Second Life, or do it now through Facebook or Match.com or Instagram or Pinterest, evolving social media encourage us to (re)present “who we are” in a significantly graphic way. So thinking critically about graphic texts, learning how to read them, and even working to produce them ourselves are (not to sell it too hard) perhaps survival skills for the 21^st century.

My students and I are not alone in our compulsion for reading, studying and enjoying graphic texts. Comics and graphic novels have never been more culturally popular. Despite drooping sales in the publishing industry as a whole, graphic novels and comics sales continue to rise each year. Specific publishing trends suggest that this is not a passing fad. Within graphic novels and comics publishing, for instance, the children’s graphic novel is the single fastest growing sales demographic. Additionally, digital comics sales/downloads have doubled just since 2010. This spring, webcomics server ComiXology announced that it has downloaded more than 50 million comics since launch, with 10% of that coming in December 2011 alone. And in the theatres, graphic novels and comics provide the substance for hit films and franchises. From Spider-man to The Dark Knight, Shrek to The Avengers, comics and graphic novels provided the source for about one out of six top grossing films of the 2000s.

Academic and scholarly circles are investing as well. In the U.S., there are no less than five museums dedicated to the preservation and study of comics and graphic novels. Research libraries at Yale and Columbia host significant special collections of such texts, as does the Library of Congress. Graphic novels and comics have been the focus of numerous Modern Language Association panels and publications during the last decade.  It’s hard to find a college that is not teaching a course on these texts in one or more of its departments. Several respected colleges, including Cal-Berkeley, Savannah College of Art and Design and Emerson College, now even offer entire degree programs in studying and/or producing these texts.  And again, other specific trends suggest that this development will continue. Since 2000, at least 55,000 dissertations and theses on graphic literature have been written and accepted in American colleges and universities. This certainly indicates a future in which scholars increasingly embrace, study, teach and publish on graphic texts.

All of this is not to denigrate the written word, whose power and beauty has rightfully been a focus of work, enjoyment and study…not least of which, in the pages of Fiction Fix. However, the current Fiction Fix issue participates in this growing and important graphic discourse: one that recognizes that word and image are correlated; and one that recognizes that a genre that marries word and image on the page is a genre worthy of attention and appreciation. And in this issue, there are several and sundry examples from this genre that are particularly worthy.

“Postcards from the Hecatomb” offers an epistolary pastiche, while “The Clown Genocide” offers a series of woodcuts that channel Albrecht Durer via John Wayne Gacy (or vice versa). “In Need of a Hand” is a travelogue, murder mystery, romance, and a story of self-awareness; it is also, ultimately, none of these things. (Read it. You’ll see.) And “My Life in Gadgets” interrogates those ways in which we construct ourselves graphically and technologically, and then proceeds to participate in just such a construction.

Each of the texts in this issue possesses the power and talent to get a new graphic reader started down a trail that Maus started for me over a decade ago. I hope they do. And if you come to this issue an experienced and committed reader of graphic literature, then I hope the texts in this issue intrigue and impress you, giving you evidence that the future of this genre is bright and diverse. Thanks to all the contributors to this issue for sharing your work with me, just as I’d like to thank all the (new and old) readers of Fiction Fix for supporting the enterprise. Thanks to the editors of Fiction Fix for trusting me to work alongside them for this issue (a decision they must surely regret). They do an incredible job, and they do it passionately. And lastly, to Brad…wherever you are and whatever you are doing, man: thanks.

—Russell Turney

Read the full issue of Fiction Fix Issue 11 at http://fictionfix.net.

Bumps in the Night

Presently my soul grew stronger, hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, taping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you.” Here I opened wide the door, —
Darkness there, and nothing more. —Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

When I was about 30, I lived alone in a house with a dog and a cat.  The neighborhood wasn’t anyplace I would want to raise kids, but it was safe enough that I didn’t lose sleep over home invaders wielding shotguns or police checkpoints as an effort to eliminate the unsavory element of prostitution.  In short, I slept soundly.  Baby sleep.

One ordinary night after studying and reading, I laid down for slumber with sunrise only a few short hours away.  As I lay drifting with my head beneath the open window and the cool night air seeping in, I was rudely awakened by SCRAAAAAAAAAAPE! across the window sill outside.  I shot out of bed, alarming the dog, and glared out the window at the would-be intruder or ferocious rodent of unusual size.  The same gentle breeze that had been whisking me away into la-la land was moving the branches with serene elegance.  Despite the lack of moon or flood lighting, it was clear that the random motions of a tree or branch or twig against the glass created a sound that thrilled my half-conscious brain.  I checked with the dog to see if he was concerned, only to find him looking longingly at me to lay back down so he could return to sleep.  “Only the wind…” I told him, but perhaps said it more for myself.  Only the wind…

A week later it happened again, but this time no wind.  I dressed minimally, grabbed my flashlight and the noticeably unconcerned dog, and ran outback in order to catch the culprit red-handed.  I hadn’t considered what I was gong to do when I found the intruder, but I followed Poe’s advise and “let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore.”  Needless to say, there was no intruder or beast.  In fact, there was no twig or branch against the window, and apparently from the placement of the shrubbery, there never had been.  But something had been there.  Something woke me from sleepy twilight and scared the wits out of me.  Standing in my backyard in my unmentionables with a flashlight and an unamused dog, I told myself once again that it must have been the wind.  “It must be.”

Finally, the next week I had a witness when my girlfriend slept over.  As I relaxed… BANG! outside in the still of the night.  I looked over at Jane, resting but awake, and she didn’t budge.

“Didn’t you hear that?” I asked, slightly shaken.
“Hear what?”
“That bang at the window?  You didn’t hear that?”
“No?” she said with a tinge of irritation.  “You should get some sleep.”

But I couldn’t.  It was then that I realized the source of my midnight treks into the backyard and hours of puzzled pondering.  I looked out the window to confirm what I already knew.  There was nothing there.

The sounds, those scrapes and bangs and bumps in the night, were all in my head, and had been as real as fireworks on the Fourth of July.

For weeks I was afraid to sleep.  I was afraid of those moments of drift.  I knew enough about schizophrenia to know that it often appeared out of nowhere one day and that was that – delusions and hallucinations “forever more.”  I did research and study.  I had to find out that I was okay, and luckily that turned out to be the case, but I learned quite a bit about the way brains operate.  I learned that I was going to be okay, as long as I was prepared for the occasional unexplainable bump in the night.

Where did the sounds come from?  Why was this happening at all?  How common and universal was this experience?  The answers turned out to be quite shocking.  Over the course of time and experience, I started to consider what use these quirks and quivers of the human mind could be, particularly to the struggling writer.  Those answers, coupled with a few real world examples, are what we are going to delve into over the next few blogs.  We’re going to take a close look at schizophrenia, so close in fact that you may not see the way you think in quite the same way ever again.  Then we’re going to dive into the mind of the sociopath, a condition which stems from everything that’s swimming around in your head right now.  Finally, from the knowledge we explore together, we’ll find ways to put these anomolies to good use.  The hope is that we can search out the harshest of mental deviations, only to come out on the other side with some really interesting fodder for our fictional cannons.

In the meantime, rest up.  Enjoy those good nights of sleep.  Listen, though, for the bumps in the night.  There’s a good possibility that not all of them are really there.  Sometimes there really is “darkness there, and nothing more.”

Image: Nancy Drew silhouette used with permission by Jenn Fisher of Nancy Drew Sleuth.

—Alex Pucher

Orchard House

“An old maid, that’s what I’m to be. A literary spinster, with a pen for a spouse, a family of stories for children, and twenty years hence a morsel of fame, perhaps…” —Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

Orchard House, home of Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), is a 40 minute train ride from Boston’s North Station and – lace up your walking shoes – a 35 minute walk from the Concord (my conductor called it KHAN-kid) Station, through the town, and out Lexington Road. I felt so pleased about my hike that I later asked our tour guide if Louisa ever walked to town. Lord love a duck, she’d walk to Boston and back, a ten-hour round trip. Always athletic, Louisa once confided to her diary: “No boy could be my friend till I had beaten him in a race, and no girl if she refused to climb trees, leap fences, and be a tomboy.”

Little Women (1868), Louisa’s beloved classic, is set in Orchard House, so a visit is like paying a call on the March family. The Alcotts owned eighty percent of the furnishings on display. There’s the piano Marmee played in the parlor (pictured right), where guests sat as the girls performed Monday evening dramas, songs and dances in the adjacent dining room. Meg and John married in the parlor, where sunlight spills through the windows.

Tour Guide Christine Spinelli hastily differentiated reality from fiction. While Louisa based Little Women on her sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy were really Anna, Louisa, Lizzy, and May. That takes a bit of adjusting as our guide spoke of Anna (Meg) getting married in the parlor and May’s (Amy’s) drawing ability. Lizzy (Beth) never lived in Orchard House, having died three months before the move.

Bronson Alcott, unlike Mr. March, never served in the Civil War. He was a teacher and a leading transcendentalist who believed in the goodness of man, the power of intuition, and the spiritual strength of nature. His instruction of unorthodox ideas made the Alcotts itinerants; they moved twenty-two times in nearly thirty years. Bronson’s purchase of Orchard House in 1857, followed by a yearlong restoration, offered some stability. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, residents of Concord, embraced them and visited often.

Louisa keenly felt the burden of childhood poverty. At 15 she wrote: “I will do something by and by.  Don’t care what, teach, sew, act, write, anything to help the family; and I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t!” Writing became her vehicle for success from a young age.  Her poetry and short stories appeared in popular magazines, followed by book publications.

Bronson encouraged his daughters to keep daily journals and, if desired, share their thoughts around the dining room table. Family conversations tended to focus on abolitionism, social reform and women’s suffrage. Bronson wanted a household of vegetarians who ate fruit and vegetables from the property but Marmee insisted on meat occasionally.

For Louisa, a prolific writer, Bronson built a half-moon desk in her bedroom. May painted a panel of calla lilies on the wall facing the desk and a baby owl on the fireplace. Louisa wrote twelve to sixteen hours daily; she wrote so much that she trained herself to be ambidextrous.

(Above) Louisa’s Bedroom with Bronson’s half-moon desk on the left and May’s calla lilies running up the wall next to it. May’s painted baby owl perches above the fireplace.

She penned Little Women in 1868 at the request of her Boston publisher, Thomas Niles, who asked that she write “a book for girls.” She wasn’t enthusiastic about the assignment. Little Women appeared in two parts, but after the first part was printed, letters poured in, begging her to have Jo marry Laurie. Her publisher added to the pressure and Louisa, ever the women’s rights activist, bristled: “As if that was the only end and aim of a woman’s life.” She compromised by having Jo marry the stolid and scholarly Professor Bhaer. Laurie married Amy, the youngest March sister.

With the success of Little Women, Louisa bought a kitchen sink and furnace for the family home. Those who read my Cross Creek blog, may recall that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s first literary earnings went toward indoor plumbing. A pattern may be emerging that suggests the practicality of female authors.

Louisa wasn’t the only breadwinner in the household. Her earnings allowed May (Amy) to study art in Paris. May’s sketches of mythological characters, especially women with their children, and biblical characters are visible on the walls of Orchard House, now preserved under plexiglass. Bronson encouraged her to draw, and if paper were unavailable, there were always walls. May’s bedroom, where most of the drawings appear, is a bright and airy addition, provided by Bronson especially for his artistic daughter. It’s a long, high room that was perfect for May, who stood 5’11”. May’s enduring legacy lies in the fact that she gave Daniel Chester French his first art and sculpture lessons. French went on to design the solemn Abraham Lincoln statue that sits in the Lincoln Memorial. To commemorate May, French used some of the first plastering tools she ever gave him on this piece.

Anna (Meg) married John Pratt (not Brooke) in the sunlit parlor. Family members rushed to deliver invitations one hour before the ceremony while Louisa decorated the room. Anna refused to wear a white dress, deciding that a gray one would be more practical for future housework. Emerson asked for and received permission to kiss the bride. Louisa, thunderstruck – for she had a mad crush on him – pondered whether a kiss from her idol might make marriage worthwhile. Anna and John remained married until John’s death ten years later. Louisa knew her widowed sister, now the mother of two, would have a difficult time financially. She wrote Little Men (1871), directing the royalties to Anna.

The Alcotts are buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. I walked through the graveyard to Authors Ridge, the resting place among the pines for the Alcott Family, Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Previous visitors had left flowers and fountain pens at her grave. Behind it stands a white marble marker with her name on it, along with a circular sign indicating she was a veteran. Louisa served in Washington, D.C., as a Union nurse in the Civil War. Like many nurses, she came down with typhoid pneumonia. The treatment involved calomel (mercury chloride) and resulted in Louisa developing mercury poisoning. She returned home to recover and write her most famous work and more. Louisa died at the age of 55 on March 6, 1888, two days after her father’s death.

Our Tour Guide, Christine, noted that some women wait their whole lives to visit this simple structure. I understand that because I read Little Women the first time of many times the summer I turned nine, then I moved on to watch the sisters grow up in Little Men and Jo’s Boys. I’ve seen the different film versions of the Little Women (1933, 1949, 1994). Quite simply, the March sisters are among my oldest friends. My visit to Orchard House felt like a sacred pilgrimage and, in those rooms, I swear I heard echoes of the girls’ laughter.

Orchard House is celebrating its Centennial this year by offering events such as living history tours with the March Sisters, concerts, a play, and art competition. A blowout Centennial Celebration for families is scheduled for May 26-28, 2012. The Summer Conversational Series & Teacher Institute will hold “Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House Centennial: Legacy of a Powerful Voice” July 15-20, 2012.

For more information about Orchard House: http://www.louisamayalcott.org
Special Centennial Events: http://www.louisamayalcott.org/SpecialEvents2012.html

Use of interior photos authorized by Orchard House Executive Director Jan Turnquist

—Ann Marie Byrd

Chamblin Bookmine: An Interview

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.” – Mark Twain

Chamblin Bookmine is an inconspicuous one-story building nestled nearly below a bridge at 4551 Roosevelt Boulevard on the Westside of Jacksonville, Florida. The outside, bearing faded paint and letters, is ordinary and seemingly small, but as soon as you step into the store, you will find yourself in awe of its vast size. Misleading, like the magical wardrobe Lewis created, Chamblin’s will shock you with the worlds you find inside. But keep track of where that lamp post is because you will have difficulty finding your way out! The labyrinthine aisles will both confuse and delight you.

One customer said, “I think every book ever written can be found in Chamblin’s.” With a stock of over two million books (spanning both stores and a warehouse), this seems to be true – although, it may take some searching.

If you’re looking for a centralized location, Chamblin’s Uptown is a newer store situated in downtown Jacksonville, near the Main Library and Hemming Plaza (215 N. Laura Street). Featuring breezy seating in its outdoor patio where you can people watch and sip a coffee from the Café located just inside, Chamblin’s Uptown is a smaller two-story version of the Roosevelt location. Though, take heed: you can still get lost in this one, so you may want to follow the advice of Daedalus and bring a ball of yarn! Unless, of course, you want to vanish within the labyrinth of books… (Okay, okay. I admit it. I DO!).

I’ve always loved used books. I’m thrilled by the simple smell of them: the dusty, leathery, grassy, warm scent of an old, secondhand book – it’s absolutely delightful. When I walk through a place like Chamblin’s, I get a special feeling. Most of the books sold there are used, so each item has its own unique history and character, has been handled by countless readers and perusers. The pages have been turned and dog-eared an infinite amount of times, in an innumerable amount of places. Not only do you hold a written story when you pick up a used book, but you grasp an endless supply of unwritten stories as well. 

I had the pleasure of interviewing Ron Chamblin, owner and founder of Chamblin Bookmine and Chamblin’s Uptown, as well as his daughter, Jean Chamblin Koss, who manages the Bookmine location. Enjoy.

How was Chamblin Bookmine founded? How about Chamblin’s Uptown?

Ron: I opened the store in 1976 at a small location on Herschel Street, having bought books from Cy Crawford, who operated Crawford Bookmine out of various house locations for many years.  Chamblin’s Uptown was opened as a result of having too many books in stock at the original store and in a warehouse, therefore giving an additional outlet for selling.   

Why sell books? Why not something else?

Ron: One doesn’t have to sell anything I suppose.  But if one has to, I can think of few things to sell as pleasurable as books, as they are full of so much about life and history. 

Jean, how did you come to work for your dad? Did you grow up hanging out in the store? What is it like working with your family? [Ron’s daughter, Jennifer, and son-in-law, Scott also work at the stores]

Jean: I was in the fashion/cosmetic business for a long time and decided to get involved in the family business. And we did grow up hanging around the bookstore. Working with family has its pros and cons. A lot of people assume we get free books and that we can do whatever we want, when really it’s just the opposite. My father is pretty strict, but he has taught us a lot of valuable tools, and I am grateful for that.

What do you love most about your job?

Jean: The people.

Ron: I love being around books and ideas.  

Who has been your most interesting (or most famous) customer?

Ron: The poet and originator of City Lights Bookstore visited once, his name being Lawrence Ferlinghetti.  I returned a visit to his store in 1999 or so.

What kind of readers would you say the store attracts most?

Jean: It’s impossible to narrow it down. We have everyone from all walks of life and interests. I’ve even had customers get into debates and arguments at the counter with each other over politics and religion.

Ron: The most voluminous readers are those reading the mysteries and romances.

Do you have a current favorite book? What was one of the first books you fell in love with?

Jean: My current favorite book is an autobiography on Diana Vreeland, who is one of my fashion icons. She was one of the first fashion editors for Vogue. I think Disney’s Cinderella was one of the first books I read as a little girl.

Ron: I really have no favorite book, having read so many, and so many parts of many, which is the way I like to do.  I read very little fiction, loving non-fiction.  The first book I recall reading as a child, and probably the first book I read by myself, was Lassie Come Home. 

What would you say is special about used books?

Ron: The used book environment places one in a realm away from the hoopla of “best sellers” and other recent junk, and allows one to roam more easily throughout history for the great treasures of the past.

Has the e-book industry affected business at all? How? If not, do you expect it to eventually?

Ron: I am sure that e-books has delved into our sales, the degree to which I’m not sure, sensing that it has so far been very little. The future will find e-books encroaching more into our sales I am sure.  However, I believe that the essence and nature of real books will allow for their continued existence past our lifetimes, and probably as collectibles for as long as the earth exists.   

Most people liken Chamblin Bookmine to a maze, since there are countless aisles to easily get lost in. What is your favorite section or corner of the store? Are there any hidden passageways or portals to another realm?

Jean: My personal favorite, of course, is the fashion section! And yes, there are all kinds of secret rooms and passageways. It would make a great haunted house.                                                      

Ron: Being a non-fiction person, I like to get lost in the history sections, the philosophy and the science sections, as these provide great browsing pleasure for me.  There are two hidden rooms or closets in the store, both being behind shelves which open out into the aisle.  Both are now used for storing supplies, whereas one was previously used as a place to take a nap.

Your website says that you host monthly book club & writing group meetings at Uptown. Can you provide details on those events?

Ron: These events are various, coming and going, to accommodate the wishes of those desiring to hold them at Chamblin’s Uptown.  I am so busy with the process of buying and selling books these days, I have not given them as much time as they deserve.  The future should see more attention to these events.

Based on your experience selling books, do you have advice for aspiring authors who wish to publish their work? 

Jean: Write with passion!!!

Ron: One can self publish.  One can place one’s work for e-book distribution on platforms such as the cancerous entity called Amazon.  However, the most important ingredient of any work, is to make it of such quality that it will, by its own strength and profound nature, emerge into mainstream publishing.

Note: Chamblin’s accepts your unwanted books to trade in for store credit or cash, although if you take the cash, it’s 25% less than the store credit. But why would you want cash anyway? Store credit means more books!

Pictures: 1. An aisle at Chamblin’s. 2. “Real Books!” sign and lampost. 3. Ron Chamblin behind the counter. 4. Jean Chamblin. 5. The Horror room. 6. Ron Chamblin with his 1934 Ford Fordor Sedan Deluxe. Photographs by Jose Lopez and Joanna Ring.

For more information on Chamblin’s, visit: http://chamblinbookmine.com

—Joanna Ring

Censorship

“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”—Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., in Texas vs. Johnson

I’ve mentioned in a previous blog how my childhood home was always overrun with books, so it’s not hard to imagine that my parents strongly encouraged me and my siblings to read. And no book was off-limits. My mom even told me, once I was older, that she didn’t really care what we were reading, as long as we were reading. In my house, unlike many other places in America, there were no banned books.

The written word has been subject to censorship almost as long as the two have existed. Books are often banned because of perceived obscenity, ranging from sexuality to issues of race.

In 1872, a woman named Victoria Woodhull published an account of an affair between prominent preacher Henry Ward Beecher and one of his parishioners. Anthony Comstock, of New York, acquired a copy under a fake name and then proceeded to have Woodhull arrested on obscenity charges. Not longer after, he became the head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (what a name), and in 1873 they succeeded in getting a federal obscenity law passed. This law, called the Comstock Act, allowed warrantless searches of mail for obscene material.

Picking through people’s mail wasn’t the only form of censorship going on in America. In 1922, James Joyce’s novel Ulysses was banned from publication in the United States because of sexual content, including a masturbation scene. Over a decade later, in 1933, Joyce’s American publishers at Random House tried to import a few hundred copies of the French edition. The books were seized at Customs, and the United States brought forward a case against the book itself. During the subsequent trial, United States vs. One Book Called Ulysses, Judge John Woolsey said that the novel’s author was honest in his story telling, and to fail to sincerely get into the character’s heads would have been “artistically inexcusable.” Woolsey established artistic merit as a defense against obscenity. When Random House published 100 copies in 1934, it became the first legal printing of the novel in an English-speaking country. Joyce is now considered one of the most prominent authors of the 20th century.

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