"Joyce set his novel on June 16, 1904, to commemorate his first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle, a date that ended with a hand job. The detail matters because it reminds us that, for all its high-culture credentials, the greatest novel of the last century is also a monument to perhaps the lowliest of sex acts—one not even deserving of its own Latinate nickname, like coitus or fellatio."