Apple Relents on Censoring ‘Ulysses Unseen’

How did Apple celebrate Bloomsday? It relented on censoring an iPad app for a comic book adaptation of  Ulysses. Judge Woolsey would shake his head. Welcome back to the 20th century!

NPR caught up with the story today:

Almost 90 years since the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, the novel is still pushing the limits of the publishing business.

When the makers of the Web comic book adaptation Ulysses Seen submitted their work to Apple for sale as an iPad application, the company required them to remove images containing nudity. But as word of the censorship spread, Apple changed its mind, just in time for Wednesday’s celebration of Bloomsday, the day the action in the novel takes place.

It was after a recent Bloomsday celebration, and a few pints of Guinness, that a group of Joyce enthusiasts got the idea to adapt Ulysses — all 700 or so pages of it — as a graphic novel and reader’s guide. They started a publishing company, and earlier this year they submitted the first chapter of Ulysses Seen to the Apple Store. Business manager Chad Rutkowski then got a call from an Apple representative.

“They asked two things of us,” Rutkowski says. “One, please remove the image of the bare-chested goddess on page 37 [seen above]. And please rate it NC-17.” Read more.

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