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A review by kevin_shepherd
Stoner by John Williams
5.0
“In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.”
What starts out as a master class in stoicism gradually and painstakingly evolves into something more kinetic. In the space of 278 pages I went from detached apathy to heart wrenching empathy. This is a world where the unethical and immoral frequently emerge victorious while the diligent and principled repeatedly take it in the shorts. That strikes me as pretty close to home.
What starts out as a master class in stoicism gradually and painstakingly evolves into something more kinetic. In the space of 278 pages I went from detached apathy to heart wrenching empathy. This is a world where the unethical and immoral frequently emerge victorious while the diligent and principled repeatedly take it in the shorts. That strikes me as pretty close to home.