One critic even calls it [Joyce's Ulysses] a 'giant fart joke,' which made me feel somewhat better for having never managed to finish the tome. I've always been slow in 'getting' fart jokes.
Then again, fart jokes have a distinguished history in English literature. Chaucer's best known tale, the Miller's tale, is a fart joke, and Mark Twain wrote at least one example of the genre.