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In a 1922 essay he wrote for the student newspaper at Ole Miss, William Faulkner had called Twain a “hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe.”

Wikipedia: "Faulkner has often been cited as one of the most important writers in the history of American literature."

I'm extremely well-read, and I've never read a word by Faulkner. His stuff never had any interest for me. Boring self-indulgent tripe, by the look of it.

Clemens, on the other hand - these are the ones I've read:

(1867) The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County 
(1869) The Innocents Abroad (non-fiction travel)
(1872) Roughing It (non-fiction)
(1873) The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (fiction, made into a play)
(1876) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (fiction)
(1877) A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime (stories)
(1877) The Invalid's Story (fiction)
(1878) Punch, Brothers, Punch! and other Sketches (fiction)
(1880) A Tramp Abroad (travel)
(1882) The Prince and the Pauper (fiction)
(1883) Life on the Mississippi (non-fiction (mainly))
(1884) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (fiction)
(1889) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (fiction)
(1892) The American Claimant (fiction)
(1893) The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories (fictional stories)
(1894) The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (fiction)
(1896) Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (fiction)
(1900) The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (fiction)
(1901) The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Updated (satire)
(1902) A Double Barrelled Detective Story (fiction)
(1904) Extracts from Adam's Diary (fiction)
(1905) The War Prayer (fiction)
(1906) The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (fiction)
(1906) What Is Man? (essay)
(1906) Eve's Diary (fiction)
(1907) Christian Science (non-fiction)
(1909) Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (fiction)
(1946) The Portable Mark Twain, Bernard DeVoto editor, Penguin Classics (2004)
(1962) Letters from the Earth (posthumous, edited by Bernard DeVoto)
(1969) No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (fiction, published posthumously)

My life has been immeasurably enriched by Samuel Clemens. :-)