If I understand him aright be sets out to depict not merely the fair show of things but the inner truth, and whether it is dubbed ugly or beautiful, or is a heart-wracking inextricable mixture and mystery of ugliness and beauty, has nothing to do with him as artist. This may not be your view or mine, but if it is Mr Joyce’s he has no option but to fulfil his mission as a writer. If the thoughts of men and women are such as may be properly described as obscene then how can you show what life is unless you put in the obscenity. This is undoubtedly an obscene book but that, says Mr Joyce, is not his fault.

He makes the painter who plumes himself on putting in the warts exceedingly foolish and outmoded, for he paints not from the outside but from the inside. Undated picture shows James Joyce (R) and Sylvia Beach, owner of the Paris bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. This is what he feels about the human comedy. You may like or you may dislike Ulysses, and you are entitled to express your opinion of its merits or demerits, but you are not entitled to demand that it should be other than it is you are not entitled to dictate to Mr Joyce what he should do. Whatever virtue there is in Mr Joyce, whatever value in his work, is there because he will listen to no advice and brook no impertinent discussions. But one does not, one must not, argue with authors. Personally I may consider him misguided personally I might find much to write about the folly of a fixed idea. An expurgated edition? Not if his labour were to be entirely lost would he consent to cancel half a line! He would rather that nothing were printed than that all were not printed. I suppose he wants readers, but he is perfectly prepared to do without readers. Of his sincerity – the sincerity of an artist –there can be no doubt. It is enough to know that Mr Joyce felt that he had to write Ulysses, and that accordingly, he wrote Ulysses.

What, it will be asked, is the good of a book which must be carefully locked up, which only a handful of people will read, and which will be found unspeakably shocking even by that little handful? But one must not talk about the utility, the wisdom, the necessity, of a work of art.

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