I'm afraid that Great Literature and I parted company pretty young. Boring is not what I do.

It is the universities that set the standard for what is deemed great literature, and they have an educational agenda they want to enforce. They want 'good writing' to be about the meaning of life, to teach us all how to be good little human beings.

I'm afraid that I simply love a good yarn. Send me up there with Luke Skywalker, Paul Atreides, D'Artagnon, Lizzie Bennett, or Tarzan, and I'm lost in other worlds.

Force me to read Ulysses (Joyce also wrote Finnigans Wake) or The Great Gatsby, and I'm Gone with the Wind. I have no need to further investigate the misery of failure, heartbreak, or corruption. What I want is the hero, the shining star, the one who makes my heart beat faster because there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! :)

More than that, I don't think Joyce can write a damn. I think the idiots who say he can are of the same variety as the people who insisted that the prince was wearing clothing. It seems few people have the balls to question the status quo.