Joyce, Ulysses, Bloomsday

Ulysses is an exceedingly difficult novel, yet it's a key to understanding modern literature. (Read Eamonn Fitzgerald's introduction here online.) Tomorrow we celebrate Bloomsday to honor the book that has kept professors and censors busy since 1922: professors brooding over enigmas and complexities, censors fussing over sensual and graphic language initially branded "obscene". In 1933, a federal judge ruled that Ulysses was art, not pornography: In the world of art, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That finally made the book available to the public.

But how to make it more accessible to less literate readers? The creators of a Web comic version of the classic novel, called Ulysses "Seen", have adapted it for younger readers, specifically for the college students of today. They now want to turn it into an application for the iPad. But last week they announced that Apple had required them to remove any images containing nudity before the comic could be approved. Robert Berry, the illustrator, was disappointed, but also said that he did not feel censored by Apple. "It's their rules," he told The New York Times. "We're coming to their dinner party at their house."

Their dinner party? Our philistine contemporaries at Apple are going to have to wake up and smell the mountain flowers. Head over to Dublin. There's a party going on. Tenses practice, next page.

Anne Hodgson