Late Encounters with the Enemy

Abstract

In requesting permission to contest Woolsey’s decision to admit Ulysses to the USA, Conboy acknowledged, ‘there may be a legitimate difference of opinion as to the nature of the book within the meaning of the provisions of the Tariff Act’; none the less, he believed that the book was obscene and hoped that the Court of Appeals would find that Woolsey had erred in finding otherwise. Conboy probably also believed that his predecessors in the US Attorney’s Office had failed to present a convincing case against Ulysses. He was aware, of course, that Medalie and his assistants had not submitted a formal memorandum outlining the government’s objections to the novel. He may also have been aware that the government’s position in 1933, at least as he understood it, was characterized by remarkably weak logic. According to Conboy, ‘It was the Government’s position was that ULYSSES is in no sense comparable to any book, of literary merit or no, heretofore passed on by the courts and that it must be treated as in a class by itself, and that as such it was obscene.’¹ Surely Conboy recognized that such an argument lends itself more readily to a defense of the novel than to an attack upon it: if you want to prove that a work is obscene, it is difficult to see how you further your case by arguing that the work in question is unlike any work hitherto deemed obscene by the courts.