Almanac of Story Tellers: Ulysses

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of December 6th.

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    It is the 340th day of the year, leaving 25 days in 2021.

 

  The art of story telling and the legal system clashed -- not for the first or the last time -- on this date in 1933.

     A U.S. District Court judge in New York City ruled that the novel Ulysses by James Joyce was not obscence and could be published in the United States. 

    Judge John M. Woolsey also liked the novel, calling it "a sincere and honest book."

He takes persons of the lower middle class living in Dublin in 1904 and seeks not only to describe what they did on a certain day early in June of that year as they went about the city bent on their usual occupations, but also to tell what many of them thought about the while. Joyce  has attempted -- it seems to me, with astonishing success -- to show how the screen of consciousness with its ever shifting kaleidoscope impressions carries, as it were on a plastic palimpest, not only what is in the focus of each man's observations of the actual things about him, but also in a penumbral zone residua of past impressions, some recent and some drawn up by association from the domain of the subconscious.

     Joyce published Ulysses in 1922. It is his best known work -- a novel that critics have praised and scorned since its early days. Some scholars spent their lives studying the novel, while other have dismissed it as boring and unreadable. The book tells the tale of the life of Leopold Bloom on June 16, 1904, in Dublin, Ireland. It is descriptive to the extreme.

    Before publication in book form, the novel was serialized in The Little Review, a literary publication in New York. After a young girl complained about the inclusion of a scene of masterbation, prosecutors in New York charged the pubishers. They were convicted and fined, which stopped publication in the United States for a decade.

    In 1932, Random House brought a test case, United States v One Book Called Ulysses, so it could publish the book. 

    An appellate court upheld Woolsey's decsion, saying the obscenity of a piece of writing could not be judged by a single passage, but by the work as a whole. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually upheld that holding, incorporating it into its decision in Miller v. California..

    

Almanac of Story Tellers: Alexander Dumas

   Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of December 5th.

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    It is the 339th day of the year, leaving 26 days in 2021.

    On this date in 1870, the great French writer, Alexandre Dumas, died.

    Dumas was a swashbuckling novelist. Rather, he wrote novels with swashbuckling stories, including The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Three Musketeers. He was also a playwright and a travel writer.

    He started his writing career as a successful dramatist; his first two plays, Henry the III and His Courts, and Christine, opened to popular acclaim. 

    He was born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie in 1802 in Picardy, France. He wrote under the surname of his grandmother, Marie-Cessette Dumas, an enslaved woman of African and Caribbean descent. His father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, was born in what is now Haiti and was the son of a French nobleman,. Still a boy, his father moved with his father to France, and later became the first general in the French Army of African-Caribbean descent.

    Dumas' writings covered more than 100,000 pages. His books have been translated into multiple languages. His works have been adapted into movies, shows, and plays more than 200 times.

    He is buried near his hometown. One hundred years after his death, the Paris Metro named a station after him. His one-time country home outside Paris has been restored into a museum and is open to the public.

   

Almanac of Story Tellers: Great newspapers

   Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of December 4th.

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    It is the 338th day of the year, leaving 27 days in 2021.

    Today we celebrate the birth of two great newspapers, 90 years and some 5,500 miles apart. Both have exemplified the positive qualities of the medium: Great writing and story-telling, with an ear for detail and what people care about.

    On this date in 1791, The Observer published its first Sunday edition in London, England. It still publishes a weekly paper, making it the older Sunday newspaper in the country.

    Meanwhile, on this date in 1881, the Los Angeles Daily Times put out its first edition. Five years later, it dropped the word daily, and it still publishes today as the Los Angeles Times. 

    Both papers, however, had difficult starts.

    In its first year, the owners of the Times ran into financial difficulties.Soon, the printing company took over the paper, and hired Harrison Gray Otis as its editor. He quickly turned it around, buying the newspaper and the printing company in 1884, calling it the Times-Mirror Company.

    The city grew, as did the Times, and by 1940 was the leading paper in the city, and a strong voice throughout California. Today, it is the second largest metropolitan daily in the United States, behind only The New York Post.

    Meanwhile, in London, the Observer also struggled through its first years. and  its owner, W.S. Bourne, found himself deep in debt. He agreed to have the government subsidize him in return for control of its editorial content. Throughout the 19th Century, it continued to accept the government's money, but often rebeled against its editorial control.

    During the 20th Century, its circulation increased to more than 200,000 as it became a leading voice in British politics, noted for its foreign coverage. Today, it is part of the Guardian Media Group.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Neil Papworth

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of December 3rd.

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      It is the 337th day of the year, leaving 28 days in 2021.

    On this date in 1992, Neil Papworth sent the world's first text message, ushering in a world-changing method of communicating, and giving us the ability to tell short stories in tiny bites. Papworth sent his message on a computer, to the Vodafone cellphone of a friend and colleague, Richard Jarvis.

Nokia developed the first cellphones with a QWERTY keyboard

    By 1997, Nokia had developed and released the 9000 communicator, which contained a full keyboard. Two years later, texts could be exchanged over different networks. Today, people around the world exchange more than 23 billion text messages a day. 

    Oh, Papworth's original message? Merry Christmas. Jarvis was attending his company's Holiday party in Newbury, England.   

Almanac of Story Tellers: Sweden's Constitution

 Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of December 2nd.

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    It is the 336th day of the year, leaving 29 days in 2021.

Gazzetta di Mantova, first
 published in Italy in 1664, is
 the oldest extant newspaper.

    On this date in 1766, Sweden became the first country to write freedom of the press into its constitution, giving that nation's story-tellers the ability to speak and write freely. Although journals of thought and newspapers are as old as Ancient Rome, they flourished across Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, causing countries to either support or censor them. When the United States wrote its constitition in 1783, it included freedom of the press in its first amendment. 

    Yet, such freedom to speak and write is not an absolute right. 

    While stressing the need for openness, and the need to hold authorities accountable for their actions, Sweden says abusing freedom of speech "can be offensive, incite discrimination or violence," or have other negative consequences. The Office of the Chancellor of Justice deals with suspected violations against the free press and expression laws.

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    Today is the birthday of  writer and novelist Ann Patchett. Born in 1963, she started writing at Seventeen magazine, and later was an award-winning reporter at the Nashville Banner. She wrote for numerous other newspaper and magazines. 

    Her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, was published in 1992. She has gone on to write more than a dozen other books, including The Dutch House, Commonwealth, and State of Wonder. In 2002, she received the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for her novel, Bel Canto. She is a co-owner of Parnassus Books, a bookstore in Nashville, Tenn., where she lives.