Banned in America 

Joyce, Orwell, and the War on Fiction

Where lies the obscenity?

Today I learned that a sweeping book ban still hangs in the balance in Iowa, as the state’s Attorney General weighs a second appeal to uphold Senate File 496. The law, first passed under Republican Governor Kim Reynolds in 2023, bans a wide range of books from public school libraries, including Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, 1984 by George Orwell, and Ulysses by James Joyce. Too dangerous or too filthy, the legislators reason. A federal judge had to step in to stop the school board from hosting a book-burning party straight out of Fahrenheit 451.

I want to comment on two books in particular, caught up in the sweeping ban. First, Orwell’s 1984—practically THE instruction manual for modern-world authoritarianism. How dare someone leave it out in the open where teenagers could find it. No wonder the Trump regime wants it gone—it could get a little awkward when kids start pointing out that newspeak, doublethink, and the Ministry of Truth all sound suspiciously like they were lifted straight from the President’s press briefings. And we certainly can’t have young minds reading about Big Brother’s devious plans to police desire, bottling up sexual frustration only to redirect it as hatred and leader-worship.

Clearly the book hits too close to home. And if you’re trying your hand at a covert coup—hoping for a swift slide into dictatorship—then clearly, leaving Orwell on the shelves is a surefire way to kill the vibe at your authoritarian victory ball.

But Ulysses? Banning the book on the grounds of “obscenity” is the literary equivalent of banning a nuclear physics textbook because you’re worried about teenagers building a bomb in their basement. If any high school student makes it through Ulysses and emerges aroused rather than bewildered, offer them a tall glass of cold milk and a full ride to Harvard.

James Joyce didn’t write pornography. He wrote dense, layered, linguistic labyrinths that require footnotes, a support group, and some stiff drinks along the way just to begin deciphering the complexity of his text.

I say this not as a casual observer, but as someone who—many years ago—elected to take a university course on Ulysses as part of my academic requirements in English, as a newly arrived foreign student in art school. English wasn’t my first language, and I was the only non-native speaker in that class. So, week after week, I wrestled with Joyce’s sentences like they were written in some ancient code. I had the good fortune that my professor was a preeminent Joyce scholar. The class was both maddening and revelatory. And yes, there’s a scene, where Leopold Bloom, the book’s protagonist, has a solitary seaside moment of self-love while contemplating a passing woman. After all, the book is an unvarnished exploration of human fallibility. Messy, mortal, and mundane. It’s less Fifty Shades of Grey, and more Fifty Shades of One Grey Afternoon, Set to a Rambling Inner Monologue.

The irony, of course, is that most of the legislators supporting this ban probably couldn’t find their way very far into this epic work. Not because it’s pornographic, but because Joyce wrote Ulysses like he was trying to make it deliberately inaccessible. Calling it ‘inappropriate’ comes from the same mindset that would take issue with Moby Dick because it’s about, well, a dick.

But to be fair to Iowa’s lawmakers, they are not the first ones to find Ulysses objectionable. The book was banned for ‘obscenity’ in the U.S. upon its publication back in the 1920s, until in 1933, a Judge John Monroe Woolsey, in a moment of literary clarity, ruled that it was not ‘pornographic’ but rather a work of art, even genius, ruling that “a literary work is not obscene where it does not promote lust.” But sadly now, over a century later, we’re right back to a place and a time we thought we had transcended.

Governor Kim Reynold, if you’re reading this, I’d love to know: Have you actually read Ulysses? Or are you just afraid someone might?

Because please remember, that a society that bans books is a society that fears ideas. And the books we choose to ban say far more about us, than the books themselves. If 1984 is too real, and Ulysses too impenetrable, or too human, what you’re really banning is critical thought, curiosity, nuance, and (heaven forbid) intellectual discomfort.

Ultimately, banning Ulysses doesn’t protect children. It just ensures they grow up in a state that’s intolerant of complexity, afraid of art, and subservient to ideology. And that, dear Governor, is far more obscene than anything Leopold Bloom ever did alone on a foggy Dublin beach, one fictional afternoon in June, 1904.

This was previously published on Substack. You can find more of Urs Baur’s writing at https://ursbaur.substack.com/