Interesting choices to represent better literature.
Personally, I think James Joyce's work is the Sokal hoax of highbrow literature, but YMMV. (I'm not kidding.)
I don't think you're kidding, but my response to this will vary depending on whether you have made an honest effort to read Joyce. Have you actually sat down with any of his books? Which ones, and how long did you give it?
Personally, I feel that Ulysses delivered one of the single most transporting experiences I've ever had as a reader. However, the book is deliberately hard in places. It's kind of like "The Neverending Story" -- Joyce is writing about The Hero's Journey but he aims to make you, the reader, experience that journey on a visceral l...
"The kind of classic fifties-era first-contact story that Jonathan Swift might have written, if Jonathan Swift had had a background in game theory."
-- (Hugo nominee) Peter Watts, "In Praise of Baby-Eating"
Three Worlds Collide is a story I wrote to illustrate some points on naturalistic metaethics and diverse other issues of rational conduct. It grew, as such things do, into a small novella. On publication, it proved widely popular and widely criticized. Be warned that the story, as it wrote itself, ended up containing some profanity and PG-13 content.
PDF version here.