Kate Bush gets permission to cite James Joyce — 20 years later
Tuesday, April 5th, 2011
Congratulations ... kind of...
Bookslut asks, “Is Stephen Joyce softening?” The copyright tyrant who destroyed a generation of James Joyce scholarship by threatening lawsuits and refusing permissions, and whose legal antics tormented Carol Loeb Shloss for two decades before she finally got a verdict in her favor (I wrote about it here), gave permission for singer-songwriter Kate Bush to use his grandfather’s words in a song. The original request was made 20 years ago. According to The Telegraph:
Reclusive singer Kate Bush has been given the go-ahead to use the text of James Joyce’s Ulysses for a song, more than 20 years after asking.
The singer, who next month returns with her first album for six years, was originally prevented from using the Irish writer’s words, causing her to write a new lyric to the track.
But now she has been able to rework the song after finally being granted permission.
A sudden spurt of generosity? A change of heart? Not likely. James Joyce’s works finally begin migrating into public domain in January 2012.
Meanwhile, Carol is busy editing The Collected Unpublished Letters of James Joyce for Oxford University Press. We wrote about it here.
