The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst, Free Speech Renegade by Samantha Barbas

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst, Free Speech Renegade by Samantha Barbas Joseph M. Hassett (bio) THE RISE AND FALL OF MORRIS ERNST, FREE SPEECH RENEGADE, by Samantha Barbas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. 424 pp. $35.00 cloth, ebook. Morris Ernst (1888-1976) was the lawyer who developed and presented arguments that won judicial determinations that James Joyce's novel Ulysses was not obscene. These victories fundamentally changed the law of obscenity in both the United States and England and established authors' right to present the world as they saw it. Ernst's life merits this wide-ranging and fascinating biography by an author with the impressive credentials of Samantha Barbas, who holds a doctorate in history from Berkeley, a law degree from Stanford, and a professorship at the University at Buffalo School of Law. As told in this biography, Ernst's life is a testament to what an individual can accomplish through talent, hard work, and a desire to make public and private institutions deliver a better and freer life for everyone. Barbas shows how Ernst used his considerable abilities to advocate for social reform and civil liberties in court, before legislative bodies, on committees, in the press, during dinners, and on many other occasions. He was a whirlwind. Barbas deftly situates Ernst's accomplishments in the context of the social and political history of his times. Reviewing the book foregrounds the problem faced by one of Ernst's contemporaries in trying to write about him: "There are too many facets, too many angles, and I keep floundering around simply trying to decide which one to grab at next" (292).1 This review deals with the problem by focusing primarily on a subject in which readers of this publication will be particularly interested: the book's account of the Ulysses litigation. The subject merits careful attention because the struggle for authorial freedom is never over, and the arguments that worked for Ulysses will be needed again. Those that failed should be avoided. In this context, Barbas's treatment of litigation forming the backdrop against which Ernst achieved his victories is troubling. The earlier case arose in 1920 out of the publication of episodes of Ulysses in The Little Review. The magazine's editors, Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, were prosecuted on obscenity charges in a New York City court for publishing part of episode XIII, in which Leopold Bloom ejaculates while looking at Gerty MacDowell's exposed "nainsook knickers."2 Barbas's authoritative voice tells readers that New York attorney John Quinn made a "persuasive argument" by urging that "Ulysses was so dense and convoluted that no one could possibly understand it, much less be debauched by it" (152). [End Page 726] In fact, Quinn's argument was not persuasive at all. The first judicial officer who heard it, Magistrate Joseph Corrigan, promptly ruled that the passage "where the man went off in his pants" was unmistakable in meaning and obscene within the meaning of the statute.3 More importantly, it was a disservice to Joyce and the cause of free expression for Quinn to ignore the beauty and truth of Ulysses in favor of the false assertion that the years Joyce devoted to creating a masterpiece resulted in an unintelligible text. Joyce himself did not find Quinn's argument persuasive. After reading reports of Quinn's performance, he wrote to Harriet Shaw Weaver that "the offence is less grotesque than the defence!"4 The important lesson of Quinn's loss and Ernst's win is that an articulate explication of the societal importance of literature was needed—not rhetorical tricks. This biography's use as a guide for protecting speech is also limited by its uncritical repetition of Random House founder Bennett Cerf's account of how Ernst found a way around judicial "resistance to hearing expert testimony in obscenity cases" (156). In this telling, the key to defeating obscenity charges was to paste favorable reviews onto the book that would be mailed into the United States. The theory was that the book itself "would be introduced as evidence" (156) in proceedings that followed its seizure by customs officials. Readers may scratch their...