RTÉ has fished out its archive a wonderful interview (more of a rollicking monologue actually) with Sylvia Beach originally recorded in 1962.  It runs just over twenty minutes and focuses largely on Joyce, although with several wonderful memories of other writers as well.  Beach recounts how she first met Joyce, the story of Ulysses‘ publication, the author’s surprising interest in Whitman, and even recalls the first book he borrowed from Shakespeare and Company: Synge’s Riders to the Sea.  Her story of facing down a Nazi officer over a copy of Finnegans Wake and her eventual arrest is particularly striking.  The recording will be freely available for a year and is definitely worth a look.

In a decision handed down on 18 January entitled Golan v. Holder, the United States Supreme Court again turned away a case that might have brought more of Joyce’s major works into the public domain in the U.S.  Originally filed by music professor from the University of Denver in 2001, the suit alleged that Congress exceeded its authority when it returned to copyright works (like Joyce’s Ulysses) that had briefly entered the public domain.  The focus of this case was primarily on the 1989 Berne Convention rather than the Copyright Term Extension Act.

The 9-2 decision upheld the circuit court ruling and the court as a whole was not convinced by Justice Breyer’s argument that the treaty violated the ostensible purpose of copyright: to encourage innovation and the creation of new work.  ”By definition,” he writes,” the law “bestows monetary rewards only on owners of old works – works that have already been created and already are in the American public domain. At the same time, the stat­ute inhibits the dissemination of those works, foreign works published abroad after 1923, of which there are many millions.”

A new Ulysses reading group is taking shape that will use social media to lead readers through a year-long examination of the book.  Called Big Reads: Ulysses, it has been organized by James Mansfield and N. Quentin Woolf and is described as “strictly non-academic” and organized “in a spirit of exploration.”

The group will broadcast its meetings as monthly podcasts and anyone interested is welcome to join the conversation through the group’s Twitter feed @bigreads and Facebook page.  It promises to be an interesting experiment that JJQ will follow with interest and perhaps review in its print columns.  The first meeting is scheduled for 1 February and will cover the first three episodes.  Participation is free and open so anyone interested is welcome to follow along and jump into the conversation.

• The James Joyce Birthday Lecture, entitled “Joyce, Exiles, Suffragism and the Summer of 1912,” will be given by Professor Andrew Gibson on Thursday, February 2^nd and followed by a wine reception and recital by Paul O’Hanrahan.
• Monday, March 5^th Professor Luke Gibbons will deliver his lecture, “Remembering Sion: Reflections on Joyce and the Easter Rising.”
• Monday, April 2^nd, Professor Kenny Barry will give his lecture, “Some kind of Eastern Western: Tracking The Dead from Los Angeles to the Bay of Naples.”
• Monday, April 30^th Professor Nicholas Allen will deliver his lecture, “Joyce, Dubliners and the Melancholy of Empire.”

All lectures begin promptly at 6:30 pm.

Admission is free, but there is limited seating.

For more information on the series and location follow this link.

• the cleverly titled “An End to Bad Heir Days” by Gordon Bowker in the Irish Independent;
• a somewhat shorter piece, “The Blagger’s Guide To…James Joyce,” also from the Independent, about new performances and adaptations taking shape around Joyce’s work, including a song by Kate Bush, a staging of the play Gibraltar, a new production of Exiles, and RTE readings of Ulysses;
• a lengthy post on The New Yorker‘s Book Bench blog, “Has James Joyce Been Set Free,”  that includes my own comments on the change;
• and a review of Gibraltar at Dublin’s New Theatre that has appeared in the Irish Times.

JJQ is attempting to compile a list of new works being made possible by the expiration of copyright protection, so please feel free to email us with news or simply respond in the comments section of the blog.

As I say in the New Yorker piece, the expiration of copyright is unquestionably a good thing for scholars and artists alike.  The continuing differences between US and EU law, however, put us all in a very strange situation.  In many ways, Joyce has always been an international, even global writer  and his works, like his readers, shuttle between as well as beyond national boundaries.  Now, however, books like Ulysses and Finnegans Wake will be read, cited, edited, and transformed in ways largely defined by somewhat narrower national contexts.

Yes, the copyrights on the major published texts have expired in the EU, but the unpublished works are still protected and other things–such as the materials in the James Joyce Archive, Stephen Hero, and Giacomo Joyce–are either still protected or in an uncertain space.  Conversely, in the United States the unpublished works are now in the public domain, making it at last possible to publish letters and some maunscripts, but Ulysses, the Wake, Stephen Hero, and Giacomo Joyce are all still copyright.  This means, for example, that although the unpublished letters can now appear, they cannot be easily integrated with the existing volumes and they cannot be legally sold or distributed outside the US.  Similarly, the newly edited and annotated editions of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake being prepared in Dublin and elsewhere can’t make it (legally) to scholars and students here.

More significant than these scholarly concerns, I think, are the consequences for artists and performers who might want to adapt Joyce’s texts or use them for other purposes.  Such innovative work will be done primarily in the EU but not in the United States.  In an age of global information networks and digital editions these differences might be less imposing than they once were.  Nonetheless, Joyce scholars and journals alike will have to work particularly hard to overcome these gaps so Joyce studies more generally can retain their distinctly international character.

Generous scholarships are available to support graduate students and post-doctoral scholars.  Applications must be completed by 10 February.  All inquiries should be directed to Luca Crispi at luca.crispi@ucd.ie.  You can find reports on earlier colloquia in the back issues of JJQ.

• Palgrave Macmillan is offering a 20% discount on advance orders of Margot Norris’s new book, Virgin and Veteran Readings of “Ulysses” with the coupon code P356ED.
• The University of Florida Press is discounting six of the new and recent titles in its Joyce series for the MLA.  The discount code is EML11.

Reviews of all these titles have been published or are forthcoming in JJQ.

JJQ’s offices have reopened today and we are delighted to ring in this new year with the news that the copyright restrictions on Joyce’s major published works have been lifted in Europe.  This means not only that new editions can now be freely published (several are already in the works), but that artists will be free to adapt and perform the texts. Here’s a short segment from RTE on the end of the restrictions as well as an article from the Irish Times.

We will do our best to record and review the events that will accompany the freeing of Joyce’s works from copyright throughout the year.  Please feel free to write us with any news you might have.  Meanwhile, we here in the United States will look on somewhat jealously since copyright restrictions introduced by the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 mean that the 1934 Ulysses will remain protected until 2030.  It looks like once again Americans in Paris might well find themselves smuggling copies of Ulysses (in all its new forms) back home!