No Modernism Without Lesbians, Diana Souhami [love books to read txt] 📗

too good to miss: she and Adrienne could be closer and their events cross-cultural. Adrienne’s customers were interested in the young American and English writers flocking to Paris. Adrienne was working to publish a French translation of Ulysses. At the end of the street in boulevard Saint-Germain were the literary cafés – the Flore, the Deux Magots. There was more floor space in the new premises, there was a room at the back with a fireplace, and two small upstairs rooms that Sylvia could rent out, as Harold Monro did in London. The composer George Antheil was to live up there for several years. His Ballet Mécanique, first performed in 1926, was played with pianos, drums, xylophones, aeroplane propellers, pieces of tin and amplifiers. Sylvia described him as a ‘fellow with bangs, a squished nose and a big mouth with a grin in it. A regular high school boy.’

In the summer of 1921, Sylvia, Holly, Myrsine and Myrsine’s sister Hélène carted everything to the new shop: baskets of unanswered correspondence marked Urgent, furniture, books, magazines, the portraits, Whitman manuscripts, Blake drawings and Lucky the black cat and Teddy the dog. Adrienne called their new set-up ‘Odéonia’ because the glass windows of their shops reflected each other. Joyce called it Stratford on Odéon. The two bookshops defined the street.

Moving and adapting the new premises involved more expense. On 22 September 1921, Sylvia asked Holly to lend her 1,000 francs:

My carpentry bill will be handed in any day now, and mother, who was going to lend me all the money for my moving expenses, had to stop off in the midst having… had a great deal of expense getting Cyprian equipped as a rising star. My business is going well and I could tackle the carpenter bill if I didn’t have to put every single centime aside to pay the printer of Ulysses five thousand francs on the 1st of December. He requires it and naturally the cheques from subscribers will not arrive in time for that first payment. I am making an average of 100 a day in the shop but I have to keep paying pounds to London publishers out of that and my living expenses which I try to make as low as possible. If you could lend me a thousand I would start to pay you back each month after January all the fortune I owe you. I shall be sure to take in about 4000 a month this winter. My business has increased since I moved and it was a good move in every way. But I’ve had to pay a good many of the moving expenses. Holly dear you must not hesitate to refuse if you can’t afford to loan me anything. You have a right to turn with the ‘poorest sort of worm’. ‘Hell’s Bells’ as Uncle Tom would explain.

Holly sent the money: ‘Holly dear’, Sylvia wrote on 24 October,

I shan’t forget you sending me all that money and some day you are going to get an awful shock when you see me un-lending it again to its owner. ha ha…

Sylvia’s constant requests for money might seem like importuning, but the service she gave needed subsidy. Janet Flanner called her:

the great amateur woman publisher… She exerted an enormous transatlantic influence without recognizing it… she had a vigorous clear mind, an excellent memory, a tremendous respect for books as civilizing objects and was a really remarkable librarian.

In Janet Flanner’s view, no man would have given James Joyce a comparable publishing service: ‘The patience she gave to him was female’, she said, ‘was even quasi maternal in relation to his book.’ She called Sylvia ‘the intrepid, unselfish, totally inexperienced and little moneyed young lady publisher of Ulysses in Paris in 1922’.

the first reading

On 7 December 1921, two months before publication, Sylvia arranged for the first reading of Ulysses at Adrienne’s bookshop. Advanced warning was sent to Les Amis that the language was bold. The bookshop was packed; 250 people crowded in. The lights failed at one point but the event was a success. Readings at Shakespeare and Company followed and people began to view the place as a Joycean workshop. Joyce went on making corrections, alterations and additions to proofs, and then corrections, alterations and additions to the corrections, alterations and additions. And then corrections… At least a third of his novel was added at proof stage. No mainstream publisher would have countenanced such expense and madness. There was no way Joyce would ever, could ever, consider his book finished. It moved to final proof only when Sylvia and Darantiere in despair could take no more changes. Joyce’s prose blossomed and blossomed because Sylvia allowed and financed this, but the unceasing proofreading and changes were a nightmare. Her own eyesight worsened and so did her headaches.

2 February 1922

The autumn of 1921 came and went. No Ulysses. Sylvia and Darantiere vexed over production detail – like getting the right blue of the Greek flag for the binding. Darantiere’s search took him to Germany but the blue was on flimsy paper so he lithographed the colour on to white card.

Sylvia had promised the book would be out for Joyce’s birthday on 2 February 1922. He did not send back final corrected proofs until 31 January. Darantiere worked through the night. On the morning of Joyce’s fortieth birthday, a Wednesday, Sylvia went to Gare de Lyons to collect two advance copies from the Dijon train. She took one to Joyce as his birthday present and put the other in the window of Shakespeare and Company. Within hours there was a queue of people wanting to order a copy. There was an average of one to six errors per page. Attempts to correct these mistakes in subsequent printings led to the creation of new errors. To stir the confusion, Joyce added deliberate mistakes to challenge his readers and delight his critics.

Copies arrived at the shop through February and March. Joyce signed the deluxe editions and helped Sylvia and Myrsine