James Joyce’s novel Ulysses got traction right out of the gate because people thought it was a dirty book. It was banned in Great Britain and the United States upon publication in 1922. Actually, U.S. officials were so eager to censor the book that they deemed it obscene a year before it was published, basing their decision on excerpts published in literary magazines.
So, until 1934, when the U.S. deemed the book not obscene, and 1936, when it was at last published in Great Britain, Ulysses was a book that people were dying to read, precisely because they couldn’t.
Once people did get their hands on Joyce’s novel, things changed. It was read not because it was dirty (it wasn’t; frank, yes, about previously taboo subjects like adultery, masturbation, or defecation; but not dirty) but because it was hailed as a masterpiece (it was).
