Stoner: 50th Anniversary Edition

Last year the New York Review of Books republished a half-century old novel by John Williams titled Stoner. Although the title misled me at first, it turned out to be one of the finest pieces of literature I have ever read. It revolves around a protagonist named William Stoner and traces his life from matriculating at a fictionalized version of the University of Missouri, his academic career, his marriage, and ultimately his death. While meeting the definition of a campus novel, in actuality it is about a man whose one pure and unfailing love is for literature, even as the rest of his life in mired in defeat and mediocrity.The first page of the book opens with a brief description of the medieval manuscript that was dedicated to the university library by Stoner’s faculty colleagues upon his death. The prologue notes they “held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers.” That glum note sets the tone for the rest of the book. Stoner, the son of poor dirt farmers, originally enrolls in the university as an agricultural student focused on soil renewal. Upon hearing a professor named Archer Sloane lecture in his sophomore year, however, Stoner sets upon a different path and embraces literature as his calling.Eventually, Sloane comes to admire the young man and encourages him to pursue his doctorate, hiring him as a teacher for the university at the same time. Stoner earns his master’s degree and later his Ph.D., and befriends two fellow students, Dave Masters and Gordon Finch. Finch will become the dean of the college and his only consistent ally, while Masters cannily predicts that the university is a sanctuary for each of them from the broader world and how their futures are entwined with it, but then Masters is sadly killed in the First World War. Sloane eventually dies in his office alone and is not discovered for two days, a foreshadowing of the protagonist’s own isolated end. At the same time, Stoner pursues and eventually marries a woman named Edith, who proceeds to make the next forty years of his life miserable. The daughter of a repressed childhood, her inability to reach out and connect with another person causes the couple prolonged unhappiness, and within a month of the wedding their marriage descends into petty retribution by her whenever Stoner seems to become too happy. The only benefit of their marriage, their daughter Grace, whom Stoner loves dearly, is slowly taken from him as Edith crafts her into a frigid and isolated child. Grace in turn enters a brief, loveless marriage and descends into alcoholism.The only other person Stoner loves is a graduate student named Katherine Driscoll whom he meets in his forties. For a year, Stoner has happiness, but eventually the outside world intrudes upon their romance and it is forced to end with Katherine leaving town without a goodbye. Years later, Stoner discovers she surreptitiously dedicated her book to him. It is the only moment in literature I have ever come close to crying. After his romance with Katherine ends, Stoner spends the next twenty years in a silent war with his department head, Hollis Lomax, a hunchback (physical deformity being a hint at moral cripples in the book) whose animosity Stoner earned when he tried to fail an incompetent pupil of Lomax. It is only when Stoner finally grows indifferent to Lomax’s reprisals that his situation improves.By the end of the novel, Stoner is alone, trapped in a loveless marriage, with an alienated daughter, mostly ignored by his colleagues and students, separated from his one true romantic partner, with a hostile boss, and on the precipice of mandatory retirement. Then he develops intestinal cancer and it metastasizes. The surgery to remove the tumor proves a failure and Stoner slowly dies at home. In the final pages of the novel, Stoner lies on his deathbed and flips through the pages of his only book. The words themselves are already forgotten, even by him, but he feels a sense of excitement pass through his fingertips at the feel of the paper. It was only through his love of literature that he could define himself. Although the world may intrude upon his life and shatter all else that he loves, it could not destroy the thing by which he derived meaning. In a final moment of clarity, his soul cleans itself of all else but that love and he dies pure.The afterword of the modern edition includes an interesting series of letters between the author and his agent. Williams was little noted in his own lifetime, and haunted in many ways by the abuse of alcohol and wartime experiences which echo in the pages of the book. This is a novel that becomes instantly relatable to anyone who has ever felt like a failure or endured the insults of others, particularly those we love, in silence. Although this book is rarely heard of today, it is one of the few pieces of American prose that pierces the shiny veneer of our country’s life and shows the melancholy of isolation that haunts so many.

Williams's Stoner is old-school American Realism at its best, modern in presenting story without explanation, allowing the reader to interpret. The writing is clean, clear, and emotionally engaging. The narrative is linear, the voice consistent in its focus and level of omniscience. The title character, a particular man in a particular time and place. a person who succeeds by some measures and fails by others, whose excellence and integrity go unrecognized until past time it will do him any good, stuck for life in a loveless relationship (his wife is bi-polar, although the novel obviously - 1965 publication - does not know that word), his story is one of the human predicament.Apart from literary considerations, this book is also an argument for the institution of tenure. Early in his career, Stoner has a falling out with a colleague, Lomax, and when this fellow rises to power, becomes a department chair, Stoner is made a political victim and suffers deeply, in life-altering ways. As often happens in the real world, this falling out proceeds not from anything tangible, but from a misunderstanding. Lomax has a chip on his shoulder because of a physical deformity, a condition that no wise impairs Stoner's attitude. In fact, he likes and respects Lomax, but is unable to overcome his innate reserve well enough to demonstrate it.At a party, Lomax gets drunk and shares the pain of his youth, the taunting of other children and consequent distancing his handicap enforces. The next day, Lomax is embarrassed about this unburdening, and as people will do, blames the witness. When Lomax rises to the top, he persecutes Stoner by assigning him, semester after semester, year after year, a schedule of four freshman comp classes, widely separated on the weekly calendar to maximize inconvenience - in essence, torture. Later, when Stoner falls into a serious and meaningful relationship with a young fellow professor, Lomax goes after her, scapegoats her, threatening to ruin her career and personal reputation, and Stoner is forced to give it up, this connection.In both these situations, it is tenure that saves Stoner's job - a job that has become misery, affliction, that only the teaching and helping students partially rectify. Therefore, tenure does for Stoner exactly what it is intended to do - protects him from political change and personal vendetta.I was amused and somewhat salved to learn that freshman English students one hundred years ago were as empty of academic background, and as puzzled about why their professor was so excited, engaged, adamant about a subject that to them is of no importance, a requirement they simply have to get through, fake their way through, as first and second-year college English students are now. I had imagined that students 'in the day' were better motivated and better educated to begin with. Nay, not so, Gentle Reader.The fact that every new teaching post involves a term-long sales pitch is not only my problem, or a contemporary one, not a result of pop culture or decay, but an old, old fact of life, part of what you have to deal with if you want to teach English. Most students don't care for or about writing and literature, and must be convinced these things matter. Finding out that the problem is this old makes me feel better about it, and better about the world, too.

This is great literature, and this you already know. The only good thing to recommend this particular edition is the hardcover (I destroy softcover books too easily), and the addition of a small set of letters between Williams and his then agent, most of them concerning the publication of Stoner. It's interesting to know a bit about the difficulties the author faced getting work of this quality published. Unfortunately, it's a bit too little a suplement: I'd like to read more letters, to have an extra essay added, whatever, to justify better my having two very similar editions of the same book. Many things about Williams trajectory wait the publication of a biography to come to light - let's just hope it doesn't take too long for someone to write this biography and get it published.

One of the best novels I have ever read. Captivating from the first page. I'm a slow reader, taking about 20-30 days for an average size novel; but I read this novel in 2.5 days. I just could not put it down.

Williams is an underrated writer to say the least. Stoner is a masterful work to be read again and again.

I just finished this for the second time. Such a quiet, moving, and beautiful book.

What a powerful read. Probably the best book I'll read this year.

A book not to be missed.