A Reader’s Guide to Not Reading Ulysses. It can happen to anyone. You’re at a birthday party, Bar Mitzvah, or PTA meeting. The day has gone well, the weather outside is perfect, you’re happy to be alive. But then the rabbi, soccer mom super hero or neighbor’s boarding school brat references James Joyce’s Ulysses. The innards of your bowels roar, your heart goes all NASCAR, a tsunami of sweat floods your brow, back and underarms. You flashback to Thanksgiving three years ago: the last time someone referenced Ulysses — you confused it with Homer’s The Odyssey. Five minutes later, the host informed you that, unfortunately, they had miscounted the table settings and you soon found yourself eating turkey at the kids table. And now the book rises again like an unread wraith into your otherwise literate life. You have two choices: confess to never having read Ulysses or toss the Hail Mary question: “Is that the one where he masturbates?” Neither choice has a happy ending. You go home alone, despondent. Food loses its taste, sex is mirthless, even an episode of Modern Family fails to elicit a chuckle. You’re not alone. Every year, millions of American’s suffer in silence for not having read the greatest novel of the 20th Century. But now there is hope. I’ve read Ulysses so you don’t have to. Your days of struggling through mile-long passages of impenetrable language and backbreaking bulk when all you really want to do is luxuriate in the grocery store prose stylings of James Patterson and Nora Roberts are over. Just follow these three simple “Ulylessons” and you will sound like a second-year Joyce Studies PhD candidate to friends, loved ones and pets (all of whom have probably also never read Ulysses). Ulylesson #1...

. …send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee. — John Donne . There but for the grace of God go I — I have no idea who said this The news of David Foster Wallace’s death suicide by hanging hit me hard on Saturday. Not because he was a great talent. Confession: I’ve never read his most acclaimed novel, Infinite Jest. Had it on my book shelf for 3 years before I admitted that I wasn’t going to read it, and even worse, didn’t really want to read it. It was over 1000 pages, and from the whole 2 pages that I had read of it, I could tell that it wasn’t exactly a page turner like the last over-1,000-page book that I had read, The Count of Monte Cristo. I gave Infinite Jest away to the Squirrel Hill Library in Pittsburgh right before departing town for L.A. And I didn’t give the thick book with the pretty cloud cover much thought after that. Also, I don’t read essays, which he reportedly excelled at. (This dislike of essays may also be why I seem to be one of the few people in my Facebook circle who is not a “Fan Of” David Sedaris.) No, I was most struck by the David Foster Wallace’s death for two reasons: 1) At a party that I attended after I read the news online of his death, the most common reaction to the announcement of his suicide was,  Who is David Foster Wallace? You see, no movie had ever been made out of his book, so though he was a darling of the literary world, the vast majority weren’t aware of his existence. If a writer hangs himself in his home, and...