Sentence:  It would be profitable , I believe , to read these realistic humorists alongside Faulkner 's works , the thought being not that he necessarily read them and <WSD>owed</WSD> anything to them directly , but rather that they dealt a hundred years ago with a class of people and a type of life which have continued down to our time , to Faulkner 's time . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  be indebted to, in an abstract or intellectual sense