Sentence:  It would be profitable , I believe , to read these realistic humorists alongside Faulkner 's <WSD>works</WSD> , the thought being not that he necessarily read them and owed 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:  applying the mind to learning and understanding a subject (especially by reading)