Letter from Bernard Shaw to Sylvia Beach

Dear Madam,

I have read fragments of Ulysses in its serial form. It is a revolting record of a disgusting phase of civilization, but it is a truthful one; and I should like to put a cordon round Dublin; round up every male person in it between the ages of 15 and 30; force them to read all that foul mouthed, foul minded derision and obscenity. To you possibly it may appeal as art; you are probably (you see I don’t know you) a young barbarian beglamoured by the excitements and enthusiasms that art stirs up in passionate material; but to me it is all hideously real: I have walked those streets and know those shops and have heard and taken part in those conversations. I escaped from them to England at the age of twenty; and forty years later have learnt from the books of Mr. Joyce that Dublin is still what it was, and young men are still driveling in slack-jawed blackguardism just as they were in 1870.

It is however, some consolation to find that at last somebody has felt deeply enough about it to face the horror of writing it all down and using his literary genius to force people to face it. In Ireland they try to make a cat clean by rubbing its nose in its own filth. Mr. Joyce has tried the same treatment on the human subject. I hope it may prove successful.

I am aware that there are other qualities and other passages in Ulysses; but they do not call for any special comment from me.

I must add, as the prospectus implies an invitation to purchase, that I am an elderly Irish gentleman, and if you imagine that any Irishman, much less an elderly one, would pay 150 francs for such a book, you little know my countrymen.

Faithfully,

G. Bernard Shaw

Joyce was amused, and then amused again when Pound thought he’d pursue the matter with Shaw.

Beach says that their correspondence went on for some time, and that “judging by a post card Joyce showed me, Shaw had the last word”:

It was a card with a reproduction from a painting of Christ’s entombment, with the four Marys in tears around Him. Underneath this picture, Shaw had written; “J.J. being put into his tomb by his editresses after the refusal of G.B.S. to subscribe to Ulysses.”

Then the question: “Do I have to like everything you like, Ezra? As for me, I take care of the pence and let the Pounds take care of themselves.

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1. Bloomsday
2. Mangan’s sister