Some of those elements are going to appeal more to Southerners and to those (like Latin Americans, whose Boom Generation writers cite Faulkner as a major inspiration) who have pride in conjunction with a sense of desolate degradation and destruction. I would say read some of his other work (perhaps "A Rose for Emily," which is a short story and his most famous) and then come back to it a year or two from now.

Oh, and if you want to see a much more direct Faulkner, I just posted an excerpt from a crucial passage to his 1948 novel, Intruder in the Dust, that goes much more directly to the heart of the matter. It presages in some ways his 1950 Nobel acceptance speech.