He beat Flaubert, Stendhal, Baudelaire, de Beauvoir, Camus and Celine, and lost only to Proust. William Faulkner was the second most-cited author in a French magazine's poll asking French writers to name their favourite books; Absalom, Absalom and The Sound and the Fury were joint fifth with eight mentions apiece, with A la recherche du temps perdu and Ulysses in first and second place