William Faulkner

On this day in 1929, his "The Sound and the Fury" was published, his fourth novel and most famous. Early reviewers compared it to Dostoesky and Euripides. A first printing of 1789 copies lasted a year and a half - more than he expected. He maintained his folksy, self-depreciating view that the book was a "splendid failure" right to the end, even after wordwide fame and the Nobel Prize.