Sorry, but I think Joyce was a grossly self-indulgent novelist and his novels drove the postmodern novel into a literary cul-de-sac that some would argue it never recovered from. Joyce and his fans, imo, confuse self-indulgence for erudition. And his novels crippled the novel with what the writer Colin Wilson has called ‘the narrow vision’.
Greatest of the last 100 years? Better than Steinbeck, Bennett, Hemingway, DH Lawrence, Faulkner, Orwell?. I cant agree at all.
And to suggest either AF or 1984 has no great lyrical use of prose, again I cannot agree. Many of the famous lines from both novels have a (dark) lyrical beauty and immense power. Subtlety and density. Yet lean and empassioned. Those lines are perhaps the most descriptive yet spare lines of 20th Century literature.
Joyce was not a Post-Modernist. He was quitessentially Modernist. ‘Portait of the Artist As a Young Man’ is the prototypical 20th century ‘maturation’ novel and Ulysses is the great modern epic. And his shorts stories are among the greatest in the language and his command of English prose unmatched in the 20th century.
You’re projecting your strong feelings on what Orwell was talking about to the quality of his writing. He may have been ‘right’ but 1984 is quite crude. I’ve never heard anyone cite Orwell for poetic language.