Previously.

When conversations are held pertaining to what towering figures of literature were among the most important to the medium during the twentieth century, you’ll find many august names will be present on almost everyone’s list of potential G.O.A.T.s.

Hemingway. Faulkner. Vonnegut. Orwell. Wolfe, if you want to get a bit more obscure, and Waugh, too. Dick and Tolkein and Lewis aren’t usually on there, I find, but they should be.

In my own experience, one name that you will invariably find repeated time and time again in this conversation, usually somewhere near the top of the list, is that of James Joyce.

To those uninitiated with Joyce’s work, he may seem like an unorthodox inclusion into this catalogue of storied authors that shaped the literature of their century. While writers such as Vonnegut and Hemingway have extensive libraries of work, James Joyce’s repertoire of material published during his lifetime consists of only three novels, two short story collections, and three collections of poetry, and a play1.

Yet, Joyce’s impact on modern literature far exceeds the relative paucity of his offerings. He may not have published much in his life, but what he did write served as the foundation for which some of the most respected literary figures of the 20th century would build upon.

Born in 1882, Joyce was a native of the city of Dublin. It would be his home throughout his childhood and much of his young adulthood before, in 1904, he abandoned Ireland in what he described as a self-imposed exile. Though his reasons for leaving the Emerald Isle were many, he cited the country’s stifling, parochial culture that he felt chafed against his creative sensibilities as the preeminent factor. He also took umbrage with the heavy-handed influence exerted by the Catholic Church - an institution Joyce shared a complicated relationship with - over Irish society, as well as his own muddled thoughts on the increasingly tumultuous (and violent) matter of Irish nationalism.

Joyce drifted around Continental Europe for the remainder of his life, spending most of his time around the Adriatic, Paris, and Zurich, where he’d ultimately die at the age of 58 from complications following a surgery on a bleeding ulcer. He worked chiefly as a teacher of English at various educational establishments, with his literary endeavors largely funded by the largesse of English suffragist, magazine editor, and political firebrand, Harriet Shaw Weaver. Weaver would act as his life-long patron and, after his passing, the executor of his literary estate. If we could all be so lucky to find someone so fond of our works that they tell us, Here, I’ll throw money at you to keep doing what you’re doing, just don’t stop.

Despite living on the continent for almost all of his adult life, it’s a curious thing that all of Joyce’s works, to the last, take place in the very same city he had exiled himself from. Though he never had a shortage of criticisms to level towards his ancestral home, it’s said that he was deeply interested in Irish affairs, politics, and happenings for the remainder of his life. In that way, Joyce’s relationship with Ireland, as well as the Catholic Church, which he never outright professed to have abandoned, reminds me of a strained relationship between a disagreeable father and son; despite the issues between the two, the former’s profound influence on the latter is of a sort that can never be ignored nor shirked. The city of Dublin and the country of Ireland made Joyce the man that he was.

Irish writer and legalist Constantine Curran reportedly visited Joyce in Zurich during the twilight of his life and asked if he’d ever consider returning to Dublin, which he’d only visited three times since departing for the continent in 1904.

To this question, Joyce answered simply, Have I ever left?

As it was so eloquently stated in End of Beginning by Djo2, You can take the man out of the city, not the city out the man3.

James Joyce first published work, printed in 1914, was called Dubliners; a collection of short stories, glimpses of profound moments within the otherwise unremarkable lives of mundane, middle-class citizens of Dublin. Though the collection was met with a modestly warm reception upon release, poor sales and extensive struggles with a revolving door of publishers left Joyce dejected in the aftermath. Today, however, Dubliners is considered by some of as a palimpsest of the modernism and realism movements that would define much of 20th century literature. The final piece, The Dead, is widely considered one of the finest short stories in the English language.

You may not believe it’s quite literally the single best collection of short fiction in existence - I wouldn’t make that claim, though I do like most of the stories in it - but it’s difficult to read Dubliners and come away still ignorant as to why Joyce was held in such high regard.

Dubliners, despite its lofty credentials, is not Joyce’s best known work. It is likely his most widely read, if only because of its modest length and relative ease of accessibility to the average reader.

Neither of those virtues are present in what most consider Joyce’s most noteworthy work; one that many would describe as his magnum opus - Ulysses.

I had heard of the book in high school, at some point, but I encountered it for the first time during a British Literature course in college. And, yes, I know - Joyce was Irish, but… well, you really can’t talk about British Literature in the first half of the 1900’s without discussing Joyce.

My professor described Ulysses along these lines:

It is a story about three different people experiencing the same day in Dublin.

And then he added this single word as a caveat:

Ostensibly.

If you were ever wondering why I like that word so much, now you know.

This professor was not incorrect. The narrative does, indeed, take place over the course of a day in Dublin; June 16th, 19044, to be precise, which is now celebrated as Bloomsday by dedicated Joyceheads and named after the central character, a veritable nobody named Leopold Bloom.

It is also seven hundred and thirty two pages long, 265,000 words, boasts a lexicon of 30,030 distinct words, and consists of eighteen episodes, all of which are meant to parallel and evoke the plot of The Odyssey.

Yes - that The Odyssey. The one that you probably didn’t actually read when you were supposed to back in your Junior year of high school because the curriculum mandated that you had to use the most esoteric translation out of dozens of different choices? Like, I remember if we didn’t bring the specified translation and the right edition of it - which it was, I’ll be damned if I recall - with us to class, the teacher docked points from our tests. I bought it just to have it and sold it to Half-Price Books once we were finished with the unit, but, at home, I utilized a different translation of the epic to do my homework.

I still got the highest grade in the class, though the teacher kept red-lining Pinkie Pie’s name in my papers and scribbling in this word - Odysseus - which I did not see come up in my translation. Not to cast aspersions, but I highly suspect she didn’t actually read The Odyssey herself, since Pinkie Pie is kind of the most important character in the book.

Duh.

I also have to mention that it’s pretty damn impressive that the State of Texas’s education system somehow managed to make covering one of most enduring (and badass) stories in human history into a grueling, miserable slog of an educational unit that sucked every ounce of fun right out of the wild world of Greek mythology. Like, really think about just how diligently one has to work to make the works of Homer boring.

These losers in the Educational-Industrial Complex have the audacity to sit there and kvetch that kids don’t read anymore and never seem to think that the problem… well, it might just might stem from the fact that a good 90% of the mandatory reading is crap and the 10% that isn’t is made totally joyless to study and read.

I digress.

The point is, Joyce’s Ulysses isn’t named after the Latin name of Odysseus because it sounds cool. Which it is objectively a badass name.

Much like the very literal translation of Big O of Ithaca’s Totally Bogus Nostos I was forced to read in high school, Joyce’s tome is not easy to either finish or understand. Light reading for the john, Ulysses is not.

Though there are plenty of novels that dwarf Ulysses in scope, scale, and word count - do keep in mind that the longest piece of English fiction is a fucking self-insert fanfiction of The Loud House that clocks out at sixteen million god damn words5 - but the contents in it are dense.

Not only does Joyce frequently swap writing styles which range from straight forward to poetic and lyrical to experimental and then outright nonsensical, I have heard the book described as metatextual and intertextual.

Metatextual is a term used to describe a literary work that is… well, meta. It ruminates on itself. There’s a self-awareness, some introspective commentary on itself and it’s connection to other works woven into the fabric of the narrative.

Intertextual is a term used to describe a literary work that is constantly referencing other material, and these references are crucial to understanding the content of the book. This is not just a Family Guy Call-Back gag-level of witty pop culture references that age poorly, either. To grasp Ulysses fully, one needs a working understanding of the city of Dublin in general, Irish culture, Irish history, Irish politics, Irish cuisine, then-current events in Ireland, then-popular media in Ireland, and, oh, Begorrah! I’m just not Hibernian enough for it. Someone pass the Jame-o, I’m getting a headache.

Oh, and you need to be up on your Bible studies, Greek mythology, and a whole lot else, too. If you want the full, uncut and unleaded context of Joyce’s Extended Wide-Screen 42069 FP Director’s Cut (With Deleted Scenes) take on the text, at least.

Now, you don’t need to have a firm grasp on any of these very Irish and very niche fields to read the book - mostly - but, if you aren’t a specimen of 100% Pure Hibernian Phenotype who came out yer mummy’s loins wavin’ the trídhathach - oh, sweet Janey Mack, you’ll find yourself more befuddled than a blind leprechaun looking for a four-leaf clover in a field of sourgrass by more than a few lines, and miss out on some of what Joyce is trying to impart.

These two qualities are perhaps the two greatest reasons, aside from Joyce’s frequent changes in style, that Ulysses is considered such a difficult text to tackle. They’re purposefully challenging, cerebral, and demand a lot of thought, consideration, and effort on the reader to parse.

But fortunately for us idiots of the world, much like how Shakespeare’s works have editions in which the original Elizabethan English text is translated into more palatable and intelligible modern vernacular for us 21st century dummies, English literary critic and author Harry Blamires published The Bloomsday Book6 as a companion piece to Ulysses in 1966, which dissects the novel line by line and basically lays out everything the reader needs to know in a more cohesive manner.

As of today, there are three editions of The Bloomsday Book. And it is far from the only scholarly guide to the novel. This should tell you how alive, well, and active rigorous study of not just Joyce, but this one single book, is today. This is to say that people are still fucking arguing about what Joyce was trying to say, and as long as people speak English, I doubt the squabbling between turbo-nerds over Joyce using this word here or omitting a comma there will ever truly end. And, I’m not slamming that; there’s a time and a place for challenging literature, and, frankly, I think we might be in dire need of some in a culture suffused with thoughtless garbage.

But what I am saying is that Ulysses is just not a book that a lot of people are going to want to read, be able to read, or thoroughly understand. It’s definitely not a suitable entry for Baby’s First Piece of High Art.

So, if you were previously unaware, you’re probably beginning to see why Joyce’s Ulysses is considered one of the most difficult novels in the entirety of the English language. I’m not sure if this is an entirely accurate assessment since David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, and Thomas Pynchon all exist, but also, Joyce also wrote Finnegan’s Wake, which is, um…

I’m still not convinced that Finnegan’s Wake wasn’t just a practical joke Joyce cooked up, where, in a scheme straight out of Mel Brook’s The Producers, he wanted to write a novel’s worth of nonsense just to see if people would actually believe it to be high art. If that was what he had in mind… it worked.

Now, Ulysses isn’t Finnegan’s Wake; you can actually read it. But I do distinctly remember reading Ulysses in college, where I’d be cruisin’ through one episode and thinking to myself with typical early-twenties confidence, I don’t get why everyone thinks this book is so scary. This is an easy read. I had more difficulty reading Magic Treehouse books.

Then, I’d get to another episode, and think -

This formidable reputation has lead to Ulysses becoming short-hand for a work that is densely packed, difficult to understand, and goes on for a needlessly long time - kind of like the average Irishman’s drinking binge.

You know how epic pro-gamers compare difficult tasks to the game Dark Souls, since Dark Souls is considered a pretty tough game? Like, y’know - talking to women is the Dark Souls of social interactions. Taking a shower is the Dark Souls of a hardcore gamer’s nightly routine. Finding the motivation to haul my ass out of fucking bed in the morning is the Dark Souls of my day.

Yeah, comparing things to Ulysses is the literary nerd’s equivalent of that joke. Perhaps you might even say that Ulysses… is the Dark Souls of English literature? Or would Dark Souls be the Ulysses of video games?

I think more people have completed Dark Souls than Ulysses, so I don’t think the comparison is terribly apt.

And with this context, my lovelies, we can throw away our Bloomsday Books, down our pints of Guinness, and trouble ourselves no longer with anything by a one-eyed Irishman as we finally arrive at our destination:

The Ulysses of the Internet.

Homestuck.

I am not the person who first drew a parallel between Homestuck and Ulysses. Frankly, I’m glad I wasn’t, because I’m torn on whether or not it’s one that holds up under serious scrutiny. But it does have such a nice ring to it and it was such a popular comparison that I couldn’t think of a better name for a series covering Homestuck.

The first instance I can find of this term being used traces back to September 5th, 2012, when the then-popular, now-defunct PBS Ideas Channel on YouTube uploaded a video titled, Is Homestuck the Ulysses of the Internet?

I believe that comparisons between the Homestuck and Ulysses had been made in passing before - I don’t think the PBS Idea Channel writers were so creative as to pull it out of their ass - but this is what I recall cementing the two together in the wider internet culture. Mostly because, until this video dropped, I doubt most Homestuck fans actually knew what Ulysses even was.

This begs the question - what about Homestuck invites a direct correlation to being the new media equivalent to one of the most famously difficult and challenging works of 20th century fiction? I don’t think most in the fandom ever really knew, aside from the self-evident fact that both are TL;DR7.

But the answer to that question? Well, it’s because both have insane fandoms that are known for being annoying in public, reading way too much into the text, and cosplaying.

I’m not even fucking joking. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true. Bloomsday isn’t just a day where all Joyce Respecters sit around and talk shop; it’s a veritable Hajj that happens annually, where Joyceheads descend upon Dublin in multitudes, dress up as Leopold Bloom or James Joyce or just in period-appropriate retire, and retrace the path that Bloom takes through the city.

Okay, okay - so that’s not really the connection, though it is a very bewildering overlap.

The real and concise answer is that the two works share four very integral qualities. They’re both very long and very verbose. They’re both very experimental and unconventional in their constitution. They’re both heavily metatextual and intertextual. And, above all - they’re just plain not easy to read.

The long answer, though?

Well, you could just watch the video above, but… well, you wouldn’t do that, would you? Not to me - you’re ol’ pal, Yakubian Ape… right?

Right.

Besides - the PBS Idea Channel’s video won’t give you the look into Homestuck that I can. Oh, no. They approached their theory from an academic, analytical perspective as detached observers.

Me? There was nothing detached about my observations. I was in the thick of it. I clicked through all 817,925 words and 2,700 pages of it as it was being published, day by day, parsing through ream after ream of color-coded, heavily-formatted dialogue.

1 C4N ST1LL FUCK1NG R34D (4ND TYP3) T3XT L1K3 TH1S 4S 3FF0RTL3SSLY 4S 1F 1T W4S MY M0TH3R T0NGU3.

I was there, my proverbial boots on the cyber-ground, hunkered down in a little foxhole of my own creation amidst the cratered battleground of one of the internet’s most legendary and tumultuous fandoms, dodging cast-iron buckets lobbed by lunatic zealots wearing candy corn-colored papier-mâché horns; a digital hellscape littered with plush dragons, broken dreams, and vaguely pornographic puppets, all unfolding beneath the baleful gaze of a mad god who’s surname is synonymous with women of ill-repute. I was in the convention center halls, where the walls were slathered and smeared in a foul mixture of sweat and unsealed gray body-paint8 that had melted off human skin in the smothering heat of Texas summers. From the balconies of hotel rooms, I quietly gazed down into the atriums, where undulating throngs of cosplayers in their colorful God-tier get-ups danced in blind, idiot revelry before the horrified eyes of overworked and underpaid hospitality employees… and high school athletics coaches.

It was my own dark, beautiful, twisted fantasy; I smoked my first cigarette with Gamzee by the riverside grotto beneath San Antonio’s Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, I drank myself stupid with Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff in Houston, DJ’d an impromptu rave with Dave in Dallas, and in Austin I was wearing Karkat’s shirt when I kissed Jade at midnight on New Years Eve. It was twisted fictions, sick addictions9, and the monster waiting for me at the turbulent crescendo of this fantastic and frightful MS Paint dream was wearing my face.

I was on Tumblr, I was on the MSPA Forums, and I was there at the beginning, and I was there right up until the bitter end of it all.

Like Joyce said of Dublin, I look at the way these experiences shaped me in such profound ways, what with these events taking part during the most formative years of my life, and I wonder sometimes - did I ever really leave?

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.

And I’ll tell you about them.

But behind every Ulysses, there’s a Joyce holding the pen.

And before I can tell you my stories… I have to tell you his.