Name-dropping:
James (pronunciation: like LeBron) Joyce (pronunciation: like Brothers) (1882–1941).
Irish writer, widely considered the best novelist of the 20th century, whose magnum opus Ulysses brought modernism in literature to the forefront and became an instant literary classic, even though it’s well known that about 11 people in all of human history have read it. Fortunately for you, your friends at mental_floss are among those 11, and we aim to spare you the trouble.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
Bibliophiles everywhere will find your knowledge of Ulysses both enchanting and intimidating, and you can speak with authority about it, because—in all likelihood—they haven’t read it either.

The Basics
James Joyce once wrote of Ulysses, “I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant.” Mission accomplished. In 2000, Ulysses was hailed by the Modern Language Association as the greatest novel of the 20th century, but not everyone can even agree that it is a novel. It is, regardless, hilarious and self-referential and dazzlingly, ostentatiously brilliant—but most of all, it is extraordinarily difficult to read.

And yet, the plot is quite simple. Two men—a Jewish adman named Leopold Bloom and a young man with writerly aspirations named Stephen Dedalus—walk around Dublin, together and apart, on June 16, 1904. That’s it. Not much happens: Stephen teaches some bored kids English; a fellow is buried; Bloom goes to a bar; Bloom and Stephen go to a brothel but don’t hire anyone, etc. Told from a dizzying array of perspectives, often in the best stream-of-consciousness prose ever produced, Ulysses is much more than what happens. It’s a perverted retelling of the Odyssey, a meditation on human consciousness, an exploration of nationalism, and an annoyingly punny comic novel (“Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job”).

It took Joyce seven years to write Ulysses, which he composed primarily while living in exile in Zurich and Trieste. But you wouldn’t know he was a decade removed from life in Dublin to read the novel—Joyce imagined 1904 Dublin so perfectly that you could for many years precisely retrace Bloom’s steps.

The Quotable Ulysses
Ulysses really is worth reading if you can find the time and summon the dedication. But if you can’t, you can—like many millions before you—just pretend to have read it. Memorize these three quotes and you should be fine.

If someone says that Ulysses is a tough read, you say:
“Indeed it is. I laughed out loud when I read ‘I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.’ ”

If someone is talking about the themes of Ulysses, you say:
“My favorite line is ‘History, said Stephen, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.’ ”

And finally, if someone points out that you’ve just said something ridiculously untrue about Ulysses, you say:
“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and the portals to discovery.”

Bloomsday
Every June 16, literary nerds across the world band together to celebrate Bloomsday, an annual celebration of all things Ulysses. Readings are staged, academics present papers at conferences, and Dublin hosts marathon pub crowds. (Well, that happens on a lot of other days, too, but you get our drift.) In 2004, the 100th anniversary of Bloom’s exploits, the city of Dublin served 10,000 visitors a free breakfast on Dublin’s main thoroughfare, O’Connel Street.

A VERY FORWARD FOREWORD
After a magazine serialized a chapter from Ulysses featuring masturbation, that chapter (and then the entire book) was decided obscene and banned from the U.S. A trial finally ensued in 1933 (which had a great title: “United States v. One Book Called Ulysses“). In the end, Judge John M. Woolsey ruled that the book was not obscene but was in fact “an amazing tour de force.” Woolsey should have been a book reviewer! Joyce was so impressed with Woolsey’s cogent, well-written judgment that Joyce insisted it be published as a kind of foreword to the book in the United States.

Conversation Starters
◆ When a young James Joyce and an aging W. B. Yeats (the two literary titans of 20th-century Ireland) first met, Joyce was stunningly pretentious. “We have met too late,” Joyce told Yeats. “You are too old for me to have any effect on you.”

◆ Joyce could have a sense of humor in conversation. When a young fan approached Joyce and asked if he could “kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses,” Joyce replied, “No. It did lots of other things, too.”

◆ The final chapter of Ulysses contains only eight sentences, though it is dozens of pages long (also, the chapter features no commas). Narrated in a stream of consciousness by Bloom’s wife, Molly, the longest sentence in the chapter (known as “Penelope”) is 4,391 words long. It held the record as longest sentence in a published novel from Ulysses’s publication in 1922 until 2001, when Jonathan Coe’s The Rotter’s Club, containing a 13,950-word sentence, was published.

◆ Joyce chose June 16, 1904, not for some complicated, metaphorically resonant reason, but because it was on June 16, 1904, that he and Nora Barnacle—who would later become his wife—went on their first date.