Being a big fan of Joyce, I had to check the "evidence." If that's the best they could produce, I'm unconvinced. Only three paragraphs from letters to his wife? Puuuuuuulease.
Joyce's letters remind me of his description of a newspaper advertisement for the "Wonder Worker" in Ulysses. Basically, it's a device to curb flatulence that consists of a giant dildo. The ad supposedly reads: "Designed to assist nature in a most formidable way." You can figure out the rest.
Oscar Wilde would have been an easier target. But even his "perversions" were fairly mainstream fetishes at best.
Originally Posted by sky_wire
You have to look at Joyce with respect to his time, not ours. Hence, for his time, Joyce was on that moral edge. While Oscar may be more "acceptably" perverse, I so dislike his body of work that I can't label him a genius. To me he's nothing more than a dime store trash novelist.