I probably wouldn't have stuck with it were not Faulkner held up as the Great Chronicler of the Post War South. Unfortunately, few unfamiliar with the common Southern nostalgia mixing resentment, self loathing and bitterness over falling from the uttermost heights to the abysmal depths of American civilization will care, and no one who is familiar with it needs Faulkners tortuously disjointed and disorienting prose to inform them of it. Apart from that we have a typical stream of consciouness novel, often challenging because the reader must deduce the narrative from (or despite) the authors presentation of it, a process even more difficult when the writing isn't chronological, shifts between narrators and doesn't always clearly indicate either. I prefer Joyce and Kerouacs stream of consciousness (though Keroauc preferred Faulkners and Joyces), and Tennessee Williams does bleakly bitter faded Southern glory more coherently so it's hard for me to feel the appeal with Faulkner, this novel in particular. Perhaps it's ironic, or perhaps it's mere telling, but I found the book confusingly long on technique and short on substance, but then, I'm one of those who doesn't need to be told how the South has diminished culturally, intellectually and economically since 1865.