Ulysses 1922-2022

Since the Little Review claims to make no compromise with the public taste, the sources gathered here tousle with that statement, and the publication of Ulysses, in fragmentation as it was intended, without guarantee of a follow up to the story. Along the topic of united readers over a divided and “offensive” story, there’s many comments to be made on its censorship, disallowing readers a proper book.
In public opinion of one fellow, having asked the question of how the reader situates oneself with a fragmented publishing, a reader angrily admits “I’ve read his “Ulysses” and haven’t found out yet what it’s about, who is who or where. Each month he’s worse than the last. I consider myself fairly intelligent,” “Essays, Letters, and Comments” The Little Review "Ulysses" S.S.B Chicago. Through the public response garnered in the comments left in this section of the book, it is direct in answering what very vocal readers felt about the way Ulysses was published, and with the Little Review itself at the time. It offers framework of opinions at the time, although the writers from the Little Review fight to push against negative comments, and criticize the censorship in the US, somehow contradicting their slogan. 
Paul Vanderham offers some views on the censorship of Ulysses, specifically as Ezra Pound was an editor involved in the Little Review’s publication of Ulysses. He reveals passages that were deleted to appeal to the USA’s censorship in “Calypso”. Under the realm of public opinion, Vanderham claims Ezra had done this for reason of “clashing aesthetics” (Vanderham, 583), which in a way is self-inserting into the novel. By adding an editor/author into the mix, it complicates the relationship between Joyce and reader through the Review, and how with absence makes a difference to readers, especially critical readers in chapter “Essays, Letters, and Comments”.
As it was being written as it was published separately, the Little Review and Joyce’s legal troubles appeared in the book, so said in David Weir’s “What Did He Know, and When Did He Know It: The ‘Little Review,’ Joyce, and ‘Ulysses.’” Which contextualizes the novel for the reader, it’s relevance to the public as not only a story but a stream of conscious of Joyce at the time. In a way it’s direct correspondence to readers and critics of the Little Review and Joyce himself at the time. This is further contextualized in. “Reviews and Notices of James Joyce in the United States, 1916-1920.”  by George Mointero, which compiles letters and commentary leading up to the censorship trials in the USA, and how reader wrestled with the idea of his writing (one writier questioning his sanity based off a single paragraph out of Ulysses). For a reader to situate themselves while reading the Little Review it required some news of current events surrounding an effervescent Joyce to fully be involved in the experience, and not solely the expectation of it going on coherently, and without a full fledged-novel.

In terms of public taste, James Joyce’s Ulysses ‘Calypso's’ gutsy, urine filled pages were (and still are) a great displeasure to some, to Ezra Pound certainly, to the United States of America absolutely. To the readers of the Little Review, though, the objected and censored parts Pound decided to censor as a foreign editor, detailed in Paul Vanderham’s ““Ezra Pound’s Censorship of ‘Ulysses.’” James Joyce Quarterly (cultish Joycian magazine). Calypso’s famous opening remains untouched, as Joyce had intended (Vanderham, 584) to deliver it

MR. LEOPOLD BLOOM ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver-slices fried with crust-crumbs, fried cods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine. (Joyce, 45)

Pound, as well with the USA, who were seizing and denying the publication of Ulysses, make Calypso the perfect example of why. Urine, feces, “shitty” magazine, kidneys, infidelity, Joyce painting bodies as bodies. Pound does not like that, and Pound is ruining the Little Reviews little mission statement by disallowing the public to discern their own taste by slapping in his own, labelling it “bad art” (Vanderham, 586). He replaces “cunt” from the passage about the dead sea with “belly” rendering it unable for reader’s imagination to react or form ideas from what Joyce intended. ‘Calypso’ is also the only subject to removal of so-called obscenities. But it’s also part of the important discussion of sexuality and the body; the meaning of belly does not hold the weight of cunt. If a reader tries to situate themselves in a plot that is being criticized before it reaches the page in front of them and being adjusted to someone else’s definition of “art”. The division between chapters, to the division between parts of a chapter and to the division of derived meaning and intention is wholly disorientating. How would the public have reacted to the dead, sunken cunt of the world? The Little Review’s choice of editor did not let the reader have the chance, and so it is like the vulgarity of sex is removed, the eroticness is dumbed down and as Vanderham puts it, “reduces the image's power to precipitate Bloom's (and the reader's) moment of desolation.” (Vanderham, 587). The effect is ruined for reader’s monthly issues, never reading it the way Joyce read it. If anything certain, to remember what happened in last month’s issue, holding on to defecation and obscenity wrapping up in Judaism        (dead sea) would be a lot more memorable than trying to pick apart a consciousness and redefine the art of it. The relationship between Joyce and reader is vulgar and with current times, jdugement of his craft and the way it was published could be disorienting.