What the Faulkner?

William Faulkner is known as one of the greatest American authors--that's a fact that's pretty much undisputed, especially among teenagers like myself, who really just want to get an A in their AP Literature class, so  they don't argue when a teacher labels an author as "great". Having not actually started The Sound and the Fury yet, I'm really only basing my opinions on Billy Faulks on different articles I've read in the past ten minutes. There's one question that continues to pop up in my head, though--why would ANYONE read Faulkner if they don't understand a single sentence that he writes?

Well, people probably want to feel smart and get A's--William Faulkner seemed to always have a Tom Sawyer-ish knack for getting what he wanted through clever manipulation of the human mind. At a very young age, Faulkner would tell stories to other children, but would purposefully not tell them the ending until they did his chores for him. In a similar sense, the superiority a person feels after having read a Faulkner novel seems to have an amazing appeal. In this case, I could read the first chapter of The Sound and the Fury and proudly declare to my fellow classmates that "I only had to read the chapter three times in a row!" whereas it may have taken someone else five, or even, two re-reads of the first paragraph, before giving up and typing up "Sparknotes.com" into Google. 

However, aside from the superiority complex that one gets after having read a Faulkner novel, they also get a plethora of insights from the insane amount intelligence which Billy had. Having been raised in the South by an aristocratic family, Faulkner had a greater understanding of the complications of the Post-Civil War South. Through his writing, he is able to display, in ironic and cold variations, the most despicable facets of humanity. The Sound and the Fury is known as one of his greatest novels--and I honestly look forward to reading it, even if it takes up my entire spring break. Let's rock and roll.