“THERE are two kinds of people. Those that have read "Ulysses" and those that haven't,” my best friend stated plumply one day, dropping the surprisingly compact 783-page paperback on the table with a thud. This was meant in a silly, snobbish kind of way, but he was right. Given the flood of ecstatic imagination between the covers of James Joyce's novel, its more patient readers are marked for life by having read it.
 
Today, June 16th, is Bloomsday, the day in which all of the action of "Ulysses" takes place in the spinning clockwork of Dublin in 1904. Joyce's devoted fans can be seen celebrating it every year. While Bloomsday events outside of Dublin tend to be nerdy affairs in Edwardian dress, I do recommend a good public reading if you can find one. (I do not, on the other hand, recommend the Bloomsday Irish breakfast of kidneys and gizzards, which is positively Cronenberg-esque.)
 
Perhaps that breakfast is a good metaphor; some people, not happy with saying "Ulysses" is not to their taste, must pronounce it loathsome. It was banned in America until 1934 because of its “pornographic” nature, a comical artefact of the country's prudishness. And its position atop the western canon's modernist heap has made it an all-too-tempting target for critics. I'll never forget one of my old bosses damning "Ulysses" as the phallogocentric truncheon of paternal oppression, whatever that means. (He felt Gertrude Stein was the real talent.)
 
Just last year, Slate published a humourless piece in which Ron Rosenbaum fulminated about the book's shortcomings, or rather its overcomings: “'Ulysses' is an overwrought, overwritten epic of gratingly obvious, self-congratulatory, show-off erudition that, with its overstuffed symbolism and leaden attempts at humor, is bearable only by terminal graduate students who demand we validate the time they've wasted reading it.” Ouch. This is the kind of wet-blanket misinformation that you will have to ignore if you want to have any fun. And "Ulysses" is fun—maybe the best book you take to the beach this summer.
 
It is true that full-time literature students are in the best position to read "Ulysses": it's our job, with tons of time and a support staff standing by. I had the luxury of a "Ulysses" seminar with ten other undergrads, a professor with a Joyce tattoo on his back, and a pub with Beamish on tap. That's the ideal, but you really don't need all that. The beer is important, but all you really need is a clean, well-lit room of one's own, a copy of "Ulysses", Don Gifford's "Ulysses Annotated", Harry Blamires's "The New Bloomsday Book" for chapter summaries, Joseph Campbell for some colour commentary, and some spare time.
 
Many readers will recoil: “I have to read three other books to read this one book? Zounds!” Trust me: you'll be glad you did. Joyce is allusive and experimental, and the helping books do indeed help the reader mine for historical and literary meanings that reward often. But even a reader who forgoes annotated help can enjoy Joyce's virtuosity. Few novelists have the ability to make the English language do whatever he wants, to make it do cartwheels and sing arias. Even when Joyce goes down (yet another) digressive rabbit hole, you love being along for the ride. 

Two counts in Rosenbaum's indictment against "Ulysses" are worth examining in more detail, since they implicate not just that book but all brainy novels period in today's digital zeitgeist. The first one is pretty easy: the anti-intellectual, knee-jerk reaction to erudition, show-off or otherwise. We're all familiar with the prejudice that horse sense is better than intellect. And it's true that "Ulysses" is a clearinghouse of historical facts, religious and philosophical ephemera, and clever-boots witticisms. "Ulysses" is also a variety show of the sexual and excretory; the denouement is the book's two main characters drunkenly pissing side by side under the “heaventree of stars”, a first I'm sure. The novel is a perfect mix of highbrow and lowbrow, of poetry and patter, the very same flavour we love in our Shakespeare, who also happens to permeate much of "Ulysses". Both Shakespeare and Joyce are industrial-grade humanists who devote every page to the study and celebration of us—smart, dumb, middling, fair, no matter.  
 
The second complaint with "Ulysses", or smart books in general, is that they are too long or too dense, or both, and we simply don't have the time to “waste”. The fear that we are becoming too distracted for big books has consumed the last decade. But what does digital have to do with novels, aside from making them more accessible? Ulysses, more than any novel, was made for the digital age. In the past decade, various projects have already begun to hyperlink the book with nifty annotations and commentary in an entertaining format to make it even easier to enjoy—in bite-sized portions—Joyce's feast of words. 
 
Are we really too busy for one of history's great psychological novels? Many of those who scoff at the idea of reading Ulysses will tell you in the next breath of finishing the 4,000-odd pages of George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" (ie, the Game of Thrones books), or consuming all four seasons of "Breaking Bad" in a meth-fuelled weekend. Let's not kid ourselves: we have the time. Find some room in your summer reading for "Ulysses" or those other loose, baggy monsters it spawned, like "Gravity's Rainbow" or "Infinite Jest". "Ulysses" is perhaps the most written about book ever after the Bible, which should tell you something. It's definitely a better read. Sláinte!

Read more: We review Gordon Bowker's biography of James Joyce