Pornography Ruling And End Of Prohibition -- Same Week, 1933

December 5, 1933, three states voted to repeal Prohibition, putting the ratification of the 21st Amendment into place.

December 6, 1933: the judge issued his ruling. Link here. Appealed but confirmed / held by a 2 - 1 vote.

Book review: James Joyce' Ulysses reviewed in The WSJ. 

Innovative works of literature are customarily slow to gain recognition. I was interested to learn from Catherine Flynn’s essay on Joyce in Paris that André Gide described “Ulysses” as “a sham masterpiece.” It seems a bit unfair of Ms. Flynn to trot out yet again Virginia Woolf’s snobbish first impressions—“the book of a self-taught working man . . . ultimately nauseating”—when she refined her view (under T.S. Eliot’s influence) shortly afterward. In 1920 Woolf conceded that “what I’m doing is probably being better done by Mr. Joyce.” Leonard Woolf tried to find a publisher for the apparently unpublishable novel, the couple having recognized that their own Hogarth Press wasn’t up to it.

The task fell to Miss Beach. In her charming memoir, she recalled first meeting the author at a lunch party. Trembling, she asked: “Is this the great James Joyce?” They shook hands—“that is, he put his limp, boneless hand in my tough little paw.” She gave Joyce “everything I can spare,” including, eventually, all the publishing rights to his novel, from which she could have made a fortune for her bookshop, the only thing she cared for more than she did “Ulysses.”

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Julee Cruise, 1956 - 2022

Wiki entry. 

By suicide.

From NPR:

Julee Cruise, the singer best known for her collaborations with director David Lynch and The B-52s, died Thursday. Her husband, author Edward Grinnan, confirmed to NPR that Cruise died by suicide, and had struggled with "lupus, depression and alcohol and drug addiction" in the past. She was 65.

"She left this realm on her own terms," Grinnan wrote of Cruise in a Facebook post Thursday evening. "No regrets. She is at peace. I played her [the B-52s song] Roam during her transition. Now she will roam forever. Rest In Peace, my love, and love to you all."

Born Dec. 1, 1956 in Creston, Iowa, Cruise was known for her unusual vocal presence, so intensely calm and collected that it could be unsettling — which found a receptive audience in Lynch and score composer Angelo Badalamenti. For the 1986 film Blue Velvet, the two were looking to mimic the effect of This Mortal Coil's version of "Song to the Siren" by Tim Buckley, whose rights proved too costly to clear. The result of their collaboration was the original track "Mysteries of Love," in which Cruise's dreamlike vocals are set to a slow-moving fog of romantic synths and strings.

Falling, Twin Peaks, Julee Cruise

David Lynch.

Interview.

• began on the piano; then,
• the French Horn.