1922 Novel by a Famous Author Was Just Named the 'Greatest Book Masterpiece' of the 20th Century

To be considered a literary masterpiece is quite the feat, as even some of the most objectively well-crafted novels still don’t overwhelm readers with their brilliance. Colliderrecently highlighted a few of the very top literary classics written before 2000 by releasing a ranking of “the 10 greatest book masterpieces of the 20th century.”

Books featured on the list included 1966’s In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, 1965’s Dune by Frank Herbert, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1925, and 1967’sOne Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. Collider gave the title of the “greatest book masterpiece” published in the 1900s to 1922’s Ulysses by famed Irish author James Joyce. Ulysses, an adaptation of TheOdyssey by Homer, has a rating of 3.76 out of 5 from 141,119 readers on Goodreads.

Joyce’s language student, Georges Borach, kept a record of 1917 comments Joyce made about The Odyssey, which appeared in a 1954 volume of College English. According to Borach, Joyce said that “the most beautiful, all-embracing theme is that of the Odyssey.”

“It is greater, more human than that of Hamlet, Don Quixote, Dante, Faust. The rejuvenation of old Faust has an unpleasant effect upon me. Dante tires one quickly; it is as if one were to look at the sun. The most beautiful, most human traits are contained in the Odyssey,” said Joyce, per Borach.

According to Borach’s recordings, Joyce said that he was most interested in the Odyssey‘s “mysticism” when he was introduced to the epic poem when he “was twelve years old.” In addition, he said that he had planned on titling his 1914 short story collection, Dubliners, “Ulysses in Dublin, but gave up the idea.”

“In Rome, when I had finished about half of the Portrait, I realised that the Odyssey had to be the sequel, and I began to write Ulysses,” said Joyce, who died in 1941 at the age of 58.

During a 1922 interview with fellow writer Djuna Barnes for Vanity Fair, Joyce shared some insight into writing his characters in Ulysses, which include Leopold Bloom and Molly Bloom.

“In Ulysses I have recorded, simultaneously, what a man says, sees, thinks, and what such seeing, thinking, saying does, to what you Freudians call the subconscious,—but as for psychoanalysis, it’s neither more nor less than blackmail,” said Joyce in the Vanity Fair interview.