Reddit Trashed My Favorite Writer | RESPONSE 

I will NEVER trust a book review that starts with "I had to read this for school and i hated it". Of course you won't like something that you feelt forced to do. It's sort of like leaving a travel review by saying "I was kidnaped and brought there against my will , I hated it. Never go there!". Btw, you made me put this book on my tbr. :)

High-schooler: *reads the book once(probably half assed)* "ANYONE WHO FINDS MEANING IN THIS TEXT IS JUST MAKING UP MEANING FOR THE TEXT"

I had a teacher in high school who had a pretty incredible speed reading and retention talent. He would let every student pick a book every month, read all the books and create custom tests for each student. That must have been a hundred books a month. Amazing teacher.

This has actually convinced me to read Faulkner.

I fully believe that "I didn't like this" doesn't mean "this is bad" but I will say I do much prefer strong opinions to soft ones. The OP took it too far by saying that anyone else that likes Faulkner is wrong, dumb, etc. Honestly their criticism makes me want to try and see why Faulkner is living rent-free in their head lol

It's always bizarre when somebody approaches critiquing classical literature like the AVGN does a shitty game lol

"bizzare, abstract idiot" is going on my tombstone

As I Lay Dying was one of the most badass books I’ve ever read. Also they made you read as I lay dying in high school? That’s fucking sadistic

"My mother is a fish 😳" 😅 honestly the more I hear Falkner rants, the more I want to read him.

"I will not give this fool another second of my life," the original poster says before writing more about this so-called fool, presumably in what took at least 1 or more seconds.

This is what I really disliked about r/books, probably half of the posts are just people shitting on books they hate, because that gets upvotes. It feels like all the posts are written in an overly exaggerated style to purposely start arguments which is kinda irritating. I don't mind if people make posts about disliking books where they point out what they didn't like, but doing it in a professional way is so much nicer.

Ok “My Mom is a fish” being the entire chapter sounds dope AF , I wanna actually read the book now

Wish I felt as passionate about ANYTHING the way this person feels about hating Faulkner. I can only imagine that they have recited that entire reddit post (word for word) to every single unfortunate date they've ever been on, and I picture them wearing round thin rimmed glasses and a Carhartt beanie with a jean jacket slung over the back of their chair while drinking a flat white at a very posh cafe that also sells very tiny cake pops for $8 and their sign one of those chalk boards has written "don't talk to me until I've had my coffee" on it and the entire time their date is too afraid to say that they're pretty chill with Faulkner. It's Twain they personally hate. Also, now I really wanna try Faulkner........

"It's so poorly written in every way" is one of those digs like "It's like a five year old made these graphics." It just... doesn't mean anything.

It takes a great writer to make something that someone hates so vehemently that they begin to hate you as a person, not to mention hating everyone else who likes your work

Reddit's a series of echo chambers kinda. One of my friends pointed this out to me when asking reddit for advice. Ay ur laptop blue too. Blue laptop squad?

There's nothing better then reading a "hard to understand" book... It's rewarding! I'm reading through Blood Meridian right now, and while I feel like I'm way too much of a dumbass to even scratch the surface of the book, trying to figure it out has been one of the most rewarding reading experiences I've had in a long time. I can't wait to read some Faulkner sometime soon, also!

As I Lay Dying is a masterpiece. The frame narrative of the entire book detailing the journey of a family transporting a corpse while they all go through their own cycles of death and rebirth in the events surrounding the hearse is magnificent.

Yep. This is why I get annoyed when people let contemporary trends in popular genre fiction define “good writing”. I heard another RU-vidr say something along the lines of “writing has gotten demonstrably better each generation” like it’s trending toward some perfect type of prose over the arc of history. Everybody is entitled to an opinion but that sure seems to be constrained by a narrow view of what “writing” should be. I think this sort of opinion comes from a lack of curiosity in the art of writing and a vapid consumerist mindset where anything that makes you work harder when reading is worse because it stands in the way of you and the story.

As I lay dying is honestly one of my favourite books of all time, I can't understand why anyone would hate it. It's so human and honestly heartbreaking in parts.

Honestly was just a great advertisement for Faulkner for me lol. The last few minutes of this vid were on point, I'm definitely going to check out As I Lay Dying now :)

The guy who made the post, “u/Karl_Marxs_Left_Ball” is my best friend and current roommate. He was absolutely plastered when he wrote this rant, finds it hilarious that it got as much attention as it did, and as of last year has finished his Bachelor’s Degree in history Magna Cum Laude. To this day I personally have no idea who Faulkner is, other than my friend still hates him.

Never read Faulkner but I've encountered similar sentiments about my favorite author gene wolfe. His work is also rather confusing and takes work to suss out, and he's also made comments about how he writes his books with a second reading in mind. A lot of people have a visceral negative reaction to that approach to literature for some reason.

How to fix everyones misery: Add a postscript that reads "This is a weird-ass fucking book-AND IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE"

Strangely, I can relate to the person trashing Faulkner a bit. I used to love reading as a kid up through elementary school, and even though I lapsed a bit in middle school, I felt like high school literature classes had their moments for me. On one hand, I hated vocabulary tests and having to spend an egregious amount of time reading through Shakespeare (I actually really liked reading them, but we read it IN CLASS, and it took forever to get through). On the other, I got back into reading again because I had some great teachers for the first 2 years where we went through To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies, and despite me not liking the fact that we were "forced" to read these books, I still really enjoyed what the books were about, and from that feeling this spark of inspiration to read again. Cut to junior year, and I had a teacher that was very much a piece of work (strangely not the worst teacher I've had, but this one ran a very close second). We had your usual groups of "slack-offs, jocks, nerds, and academics" in the class, where if you weren't one specific group, you were multiple (I was technically a mix of all of these, but besides that), and the teacher seemed to hate anyone who didn't give 200% to their class. They were one of those hardass teachers that would almost never give anyone an A for anything, but unlike other hardass teachers I've had like this where they "expected you to treat this like college", it never felt like you could improve, just struggle. My assignment grades ranged from A's to F's, and almost all the time I felt like my most rushed work did better than the work I felt proud turning in 90% of the time. There were TONS of stories people had about their interactions with this teacher, and while I have quite my share of stories to tell, this sadly isn't the place to tell them, and I'm not one to recite gossip new or old unless I have a valid reason (which I hope this will constitute as). Couple that with the fact that I was constantly sleep-deprived from staying up late playing games AND being on a swim team that practiced at 5AM in the morning, plus some insufferable kids in the class making hell for both other students and the aforementioned teacher, and you have one of my worst memories. Cut to when we had to read As I Lay Dying. It was tough, fucking bizarre, and mismanaged heavily by this teacher because they kept trying to push this book as one of the greatest things ever, only to be met by about 70% of the class being apathetic or just confused as to why they should like this book. But unlike other teachers where they would be met by this budding high schooler cynicism and either just brush it off or move on, this teacher took it SUPER PERSONALLY, and while I can't remember the specific timeline of when we read it, I remember just hating the whole experience, hating that class, and ultimately, hating As I Lay Dying because it did seem like this pretentious book that lay at the center of my problems, and I ended up keeping this opinion for a number of years. Skip forward to senior year of high school and college, and how I barely could read anything, to the point where I feel like I can't even sit down to read a textbook without taking a nap in between sentences. I can get super in-depth with movies or games that might explore interesting themes or give me these vibes that I love to discuss, but I felt so out-of-touch with my own logic because I felt like I had to simplify everything so I could understand it. I read Dracula for said high school senior year, but instead of really digging into the book, I ended up forgetting most of it and having my paper on it be more about how various adaptations tell the the story or depict Dracula himself. Part of me reasons that it just held my attention more, but I'd also argue that some of these adaptations were what made me analyze the themes of the book (and the concept of vampirism and how it applies to class, sex, etc.) sooo much more. And now that I've come across these videos, I've been trying to get back into reading again (to which I've mostly failed, but I plan to keep trying), and my opinion on As I Lay Dying now is that I should probably read it again of my own volition, not even out of obligation or pity, but more out of curiosity. Even if I don't end up liking the book or Faulkner as a whole in the future, I hope I can at least appreciate and respect it more than I did when I was a teenager who just wanted to get a good grade and not sacrifice myself to do so. Most teenagers (and college students) that I know don't wanna go out of their way to read books because forcing them to do something they might end up loving will immediately kill their interest. Let them read what interests them; or better yet, find a better system to get them to try these "classics" on their own that they might be interested in, like I did with Dracula. It won't lead to way more of them wanting to read stuff like As I Lay Dying, but it won't completely kill their interest in reading and have them groan when they have to think about required books.

I’m tickled you’re so passionate about Faulkner to post this video. The disgruntled student seems to be only parroting the thoughts of their similarly disgruntled colleagues. I find in my life,when it comes to most matters of the subjective nature that they can only be truly appreciated and understood during exactly the right season of life. This person hasn’t experienced enough of the world to open themselves up to it.

Forget Ulysses and go straight to Finnegan's Wake. I want to see this person go nuclear.

I can upvote Faulkner here as well for what it's worth. The Sound and the Fury still strikes me as one of the most creative and interesting novels I have ever read. The pure beauty and the passion of the language is something I think you only find in the very greatest of writers and the way Faulkner is able to find this poetry and intensity in the life of a fairly unremarkable southern family is really an incredible achievement. Of course, everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but it does sound like our reddit critic was probably just venting their own limitations onto the book and probably read it, as you suggest, at the wrong time of life. Reading says a lot about the reader as much as the writer, as we have to bring our own emotions, empathy, and imagination to it and it sounds like the reader in this case did not bring much of an effort to it. Of course, once again that is the reader's right, but it says a lot more about them than Faulkner.

I have no experience with or opinion on Faulkner, but that post is going into borderline Nostalgia Critic territory of rage, it's almost funny

2:57 Ahh the same old “anyone-who-likes-this-is-dumb-or-delusional” argument XD As a music fan I’ve seen people like the OP on online music communities too, especially when an album with a peculiar style is well received. Those comments make me want to ask them “you know people have different tastes right…?” lol

3:07 I like Faulkner and I think that's a fair criticism. I don't agree but I can understand why someone would think that.

That's the pain I felt when someone on Goodreads called my favorite author, Walter Moers, a Harry Potter rip off.

I recently read As I Lay Dying after seeing it on a test prompt in high school (currently in my 2nd college semester) and I don't wanna judge, but this sounds more like misunderstanding that this book is abstract. It's planned crazy and that's good! If you look for order in this work, you're not gonna find it. I think that's why OP was upset. In a novel about grief, pain, and confusion, they thought it would be far more clear in its direction.

The author of the comment is just amazing at trashing authors xD

As I Lay Dying in High School feels a bit too early in my opinion. “My mother is a fish” chapter made me laugh pretty hard the first time I saw it. I like the first opening statement of TSatF compared to what it became. It was really fun to see some of the changes to try to better represent a sensory view of life was very interesting to me.

I just can’t imagine being this mad about anything tbh

There's something wholesome in passive-aggressive Internet feuds about books

I had three Faulkner books on my Goodreads TBR before this. I now put As I Lay Dying on there too and I'm going to read it ASAP. Thank you for this unusual advertisement.

People should start with one of Faulkner's short stories, like "Barn Burning".

I've been reading for years now, and I've read books that I love and books that I don't love. But I have never read a book that when I finish I said "that sucked". I just can't imagine reading something and immersing yourself in the writers and characters head and coming out the other end hating it so vehemently.

I enjoy your videos. I especially like the content on William Faulkner. I’ve only read a few short stories by Faulkner but I plan on reading more.

I read As I Lay Dying after I graduated from high school on my own, and I only read it once and it made Faulkner one of my favorite writers. I think this person is just upset because they had to read a book for school and it was difficult, which admittedly it is. I don't know. I know I hated plenty of books I was forced to read in school that I now love. So...

I first read Faulkner in 11th grade for a book report. We were given a list of books and had to choose one. I chose The Sound and the Fury because it sounded interesting to me. I didn’t know anything at the time about Faulkner’s reputation. I had heard of him, of course, but knew nothing about him. So I was %100 not influenced by the reputation surrounding him as I was unaware of it. I was gobsmacked at how brilliant it was. It’s not hyperbole to say that book changed my outlook on literature forever. It was the dividing line between me subsisting on a steady diet of Stephen King and YA fiction and diving head first into more dense literature, leading ne to the likes of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Pynchon and countless others. That was 26 years ago and I never looked back.

Honest, I'd go to this post and like it just cause this person took the time to bash that author so passionately it's almost poetic. This reminded me of The Scarlett Letter, which I thought was the trashiest trash in human history, after "La acrtiz que nadie queria" which will forever hold first place. However, I agree reading for school vs reading for pleasure is different and once I picked up the Scarlet letter again... I still hated it, but I kinda understood it better so now I hate understandably.

To be honest, As I Lay Dying isn't anywhere near the most obtuse of Faulkner's work. The Sound and the Fury is still the only time I have ever had to completely give up on a section of a novel (Quentin's section, obviously). For me personally, As I Lay Dying was actually incredibly approachable. I had a professor who introduced it as a batshit insane ride of a book, and because of that I was able to let go and enjoy the ride of it. I also appreciated how it's broken into chunks that are easier to process than plowing through a monolith of a large chapter. I think the reason the book is taught in high school is because it's a pretty good example of how wild modernist literature can be while still being relatively understandable, at least conceptually.

When people say something takes multiple reads/watches to understand, they don't usually mean it takes multiple passes to understand at all anyways. They mean to fully understand it. You can still critique the novel for being incomprehensible, I'm just critiquing the critique of that statement.

I read the entirety of As I Lay Dying in one night because I had to start an essay on it the next day. It was bloody brilliant. One of the most satisfying ways I’ve read a book ever, with many cherished memories of cackling insanely at “my mother is a fish.” Got a 100 on the essay too

I agree with most of what you said. A better choice for high schoolers would be Light in August since it's written in conventional prose and has a cool story, and I actually read it in high school and loved it. And since then, I also read and loved Faulkner's books The Sound and the Fury, Go Down, Moses, Sanctuary and As I Lay Dying (twice), and I'm now reading Intruder in the Dust. I get that Faulkner's stream of consciousness style can be confusing, but trying to understand what Faulkner tried to say and trying to submerge your mind in it can be rewarding in the end.

Having never read Faulkner, that excerpt was quite interesting, I thought, though I did kind of lose the meaning of the last part. Maybe I'll pick up that book

That reddit post is such a huge cope. Some things take effort to read.

I read "As I Lay Dying" once and finished it and thought, "God, that was awful! I have NO IDEA what was happening!" Then I thought, I really want to be able to understand Faulkner, so I checked it out from the library again, but this time I read every chapter and after each one I would read the sparksnotes summary of the chapter. After about the fourth chapter I realized I was following along and then just finished the book and thought, "That's one of the best books I've ever read!"

I tried Faulkner for the first time recently, reading "The Sound and The Fury". Ended up being a bit of an intense read and I'm still wondering if I at all really got the point, ahaha. That said, I would like to try more and wonder which book of his would be good to hit next? Still though, I feel a bit for this kid. I remember reading The Great Gatsby in High School and the experience gave me a completely irrational dislike of the novel, though I'm sure that was more the fault of the teacher and coursework than anything.

Kid’s lucky it wasn’t The Sound and the Fury 😂

I read as I lay dying. I didn’t really care for it at the beginning but by the time I finished it I absolutely loved it

Okay, I've watched almost all of your videos now & the one thing I find weird is that so many people were required to read so many books at school. The only book I remember having to read was Anne Frank. College was a different story, but I picked classes like Harry Potter & Mythology.

I didn't know Holden Caulfield had a reddit account!

I agree that Faulkner isn't for everyone. He can be difficult to understand, and you may have to re-read a sentence or paragraph a couple of times to understand what's going on. However, he's an awesome writer and I highly recommend him to anyone interested in Southern Literature or Southern Gothic. Finally, As I Lay Dying is a great example how certain women shouldn't become mothers and will put their families through tremendous trouble to get "revenge" for being a mother.

Reading As I Lay Dying in high school is only good when it is taught really well, otherwise it’s painful and not enjoyable

I honestly agree with the reading over and over point the OP made, if you have to read something over and over to understand it, it's probably not a very good text

Can’t wait for you to read Malazan. 🌝

knowing the professor taught “As I Lay Dying” as a postmodern text, and given the online discourse surrounding Postmodernism, I’m willing to bet OP approached the novel with some B I A S.

The only Faulkner novel that I have read is Absolom, Absolom!, that I just happened to see at a secondhand sale. I grabbed it because it was ~50 cents and I had heard he was a great writer. Although the beginning was impenetrable and the structure strange, it won me over aggressively. It doesn't seem to be one of his better regarded books, and is possibly a companion piece to other works, but I felt like it was one of the best books that I've read for exploring themes totally through subtext and what's implied. There was no aspect of preachiness - in fact, it seemed when characters made bold statements the reader were meant to disagree with them or at least be highly critical or suspect of what they were saying. He took a hackneyed framing device - of the real story being told to the narrator by another character - and inverted it after a couple of chapters by other characters taking up the narration, culminating with a guy who knows none of the people of the people involved but frames his speculations as certain fact. It's incredibly bold writing, to explore the idea of how mythologies start by drawing your attention to the artifices of his own narrative. Not many books have left me thinking about their content for as long as that novel did. I really should read some more.

The top comment on this Reddit post saying this was written by the ghost of Ernest Hemingway made me laugh so much xD

The logical question for the reviewer would be for him to name a work or a writer he _does_ admire.

That post was prime r/bookscirclejerk bait.

I'll admit, I tried to read As I Lay Dying and I disliked it intensely. The style is aggressively not for me. I just don't like the way he wrote the characters. Faulkner may not be for me. Which is weird, because his influence on Cormac McCarthy is both obvious and profound, and I love McCarthy.

Thank you now I will be giving Faulkner a try. The fish chapter does in fact sound dope as hell

I listened to Light in August on Audible after hearing how great Faulkner was, and if not for Will Patton's great performance I would have never made it through the whole book. It was agonizing trying to force myself to finish.

Hey, some people still insist that the world is flat.

This reminds me a lot of Gene Wolfe. The difference is, rereading Wolfe is what makes his books even more captivating the second, third, ad nauseum time around!

I read Blood Meridian By Cormac McCarthy and found out there were similarities, or that McCarthy was somewhat influenced by Faulkner. I had only read a couple of short stories by Faulkner and it was so long ago that I don't remember much about them. I started reading Light in August by Faulkner 6 days ago and I am finding it to be pretty awesome. Also I am thinking back to being in highschool and college and what an close minded evangelical idiot I was. I started improving my critical thinking skills and chipping away at the dogma throughout college.

I promise anyone on this planet that if they read “Absalom, Absalom” 3 times, they’ll understand

Faulkner writing a book stream of consciousness from midnight to 4:00 am over the course of six weeks and not changing a word of it: haha literature Me, an exhausted high schooler, writing essays stream of consciousness from midnight to 4:00 am over the course of six weeks and not changing a word of it: haha these be some high academia standards up in this b*txh

Every time you reference William Faulkner i think of Peter Falkners emmy speech…epic.

I really had no dog in this fight but once you got to "Greatest dereliction of duty" I seriously laughed.

POV: you just failed your Faulkner essay

If I hadn't already read it, this would have convinced me.

Intro music?

I understand his frustration, just didn't thought I would say it.

Having never read Faulkner books I saw this video and paused at 6:40 to read the passage the commenter highlighted as evidence the book is unreadable. As I started reading it, I thought it was brilliant and started laughing. Sounds like an interesting book. Maybe someday.

I mean I didn't like Of Mice and Men in high school when we had to slog through that, but that doesn't mean I'm dumb enough to assume everything that author ever did was bad. Or even that that book was bad: I was forced to read it and I doubt I would have been interested anyway so its not like I was the intended audience

Yep, you're right. Faulkner's not post-modern, he's considered a modernist writer. To me those two are very different; for instance, I am completely fascinated in modernist literature, whereas I never really got into post-modern literature.

"They don't know how to be, but it do." -Man Carrying Thing

you read the Hamlet? that's a good one!!

i agree, an entire chapter of "my mother is a fish" is so fucking cool

I WOULD define The Sound and The Fury as Post Modern.

Can't get my eyes off that computer, it's looks so purple! I guess it was actually blue? What is that thing?

It’s amazing how Faulkneresque some of these comments are

The characters in "As I lay dying" are not developed. The nivel is basically about a guy who is too cheap to spend in his family because he is in love with the new wife he presents at the end.

As I Lay Dying is in my top 3 books of all time, and I don't really care if I sound pretentious this poster didn't like it simply because he didn't understand it and didn't analyze or even think about the text. The characters are some of the best realized in any book, with extremely real and strong character traits. The cognitive dissonace of characters like Anse or Cora, constantly spewing self reightous platitudes and then acting completely out of accordance with their supposed values. The ire and disillusionment of Addie, that once introduced shed sso much more insight on the familys dysfunctional relationship. Darl's realization of the absurdity of reality around him and knowing that the only way to stop this absurdity is to confront it in the most drastic way possible. I could go on and on but really everyone should do themself a favor and read As I Lay Dying, definitely not for school because I think that will take a lot of the enjoyment out of any book( I read the book at 21, in college, 18 still might be too young to understand most of the subtext but everyone has different reading levels). As I Lay Dying is one of the most insightful books into the real human condition and while it may be a "difficult" read(it really is not too challenging you just have to be analyzing the subtext and not just be taking things at 100% face value) it is also a very enjoyable and deep read that I would recommend to everyone that is trying to get into more "advanced" literature.

Thas was insane ... Thanks for defending Faulkner & Literature in general!

My mother is a fish.

oh my god you looking amazing with short hair, I love it

6:00 oh, yeah yeah, Faulkner wasnt a poor writer, he was just differently abled :p

Preach!!!!

I get how people can thrash your favorite author. I mean I disliked reading King's "The Drawing of Three". It just killed my desire to read any King Novel.

I think of stuff in a duel nature: objective and subjective. People seem to think everything is subjective and that is, no, STRONG NO! there is an objective quality to something and a subjective measurement of your enjoyment. Objectively, there is no argument that Faulkner was a highly gifted writer. But that kind of conversation is crap and lame. I like the subjective conversation and why you like or dislike something.

what a cesspool

Faulkner isn't for everybody, but he is a titan of American letters. Other masters of American literature have admired him, and I agree with them. But other readers can't stand him. I get that. He can be maddening at times. It takes commitment to stay with him and, if you haven't the time for that, well, that's your choice. But don't come to WF if you want an easy read because you will be frustrated. Just keep in mind that your shortcomings as a reader, aren't his as an artist. It's not his job to make things easy for you.

Read Henry Miller's universe of death and frank o'connor the distorted mirror and you'll get it.