William Faulkner

I concur, but it was required reading in high school so that's probably the real reason I didn't like it then. I like the style, I just didn't care for the story and subject matter.

I had to read it for American Lit last semester and i don't get it, i found it very boring. Maybe it was ahead of its time or something but i'm not sure why we're studying it.

What exactly didn't you enjoy about it? As I lay Dying has short chapters compared to most, which are centered around one character--often in his other books there's as much as fifty or seventy pages before a break, and it isn't always clear who the narrator is or who the narrator is talking to or about.

There's a joke about that last thing in 'The Town,' where Ratliff is going on about different people, describing an intricate plot to Gavin Stevens' little boy, and Ratliff says something like, "And then he--" and the boy goes, "Who!? Who?" which is the complaint of a lot of critics on Faulkner, not only the pronoun lacking antecedent but the subject lacking antecedent, lacking introduction, lacking anything but it being talked about right there on the page, and Ratliff says, "Lawyer, your uncle," and the boy says, "Well then why didn't you just SAY that?"

And then for the rest of the trilogy, Ratliff always says, "And then he--Stevens," or, "And then he--Flem Snopes," when he's talking, but you know Ratliff so well now that you know who he's talking about. Who else? And you know even that he's gonna say who he's talking to because he doesn't disagree with the boy, who even as a boy is more educated than Ratliff but not accustomed enough yet with talking to people to realize that because of Ratliff's inability to speak outside southern metaphors and analogies and slang and, "as the fellow says," that from then on he didn't even have a choice but to say who he was talking about every time from then on, and only because a boy--Lawyer Stevens' son-- who had gone to grammar school when V.K. Ratliff didn't, complained, and in that complaint Ratliff saw maybe the next ten years and what it would bring, Lawyer Stevens being by then retired and still more Snopes' in town and no one to talk to but to the boy who would be a man then and thus obliged to put his work in at keeping things afloat in Jefferson, and so he--Ratliff, had no choice but to make sure when he was talking about someone that the person he was talking to knew who he was talking about.

But not reading anymore Faulkner would mean an entire Paris and the Hiltons album would go cleanly over your head. And it might be that most people don't enjoy their first Faulkner novel or don't enjoy the introduction to his writing, or the transition rather, as a reader, to a different mood and style of storytelling, wherein the reader is to remain curious, throughout, and attentive, and then to gain the fruit of that author's ability, to reach that point where everything comes together seamlessly, from a not unintelligible series of seemingly unrelated concerns and fears and efforts to a complete picture, an incident or life impossible to foresee but, in hindsight, inevitable.

I've been meaning to read The Snopes Trilogy for years.

I've only read one Faulkner book The Sound and The Fury. It was a difficult. But I really liked it. I've said this before, but I've been meaning to read more Faulkner for so long.

I started with The Sound and the Fury for class, back in the 11th grade and hated it. I'd read the translation. Then I began reading on my own, all of them in English, and loved them with a passion - Light in August, Absalom Absalom!, Sanctuary and A Rose for Emily. I'm actually reading Requiem for a Nun these days (today).

Also this. Reading Journals is a fantastic album, with 22 epic tracks. Hell, even the interludes are awesome.