A review by sherbertwells
Stoner by John Williams

challenging informative reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

“An occasional student who comes upon the name may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual question. Stoner’s colleagues, who 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 that evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves and their careers” (1)

This book is all about disappointment, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

John Williams’ novel Stoner has a reputation as an underrated classic; the cover of my Penguin Vintage Classics copy has a nonremovable button hailing it as “The greatest novel you’ve never read.” Its protagonist, assistant professor William Stoner, is a similarly unremarkable. In fact, his life is so standard that the back of the book doesn’t mind giving away most of the plot.

Neither do I. Stoner is born to a farm family in the late 19th century and initially studies agriculture at the University of Missouri before switching to literature and becoming a professor. He makes two friends, marries an upper-class woman with whom he does not get along and struggles to raise a daughter. On campus, he contends against Hollis Lomax, a pretentious colleague. He participates in an affair. He dies in middle age and is forgotten afterward.

Rather than turning the title character’s life into a melodrama, Williams focuses on little moments and low-stakes, drawn-out conflict. His greatest virtue is his accuracy: as a literature professor himself, he has plenty of experience with the minute dramas of campus life, and as a writer, he realistically recreates Stoner’s infatuation with literature. His novel is essentially a love story between man and university.

“‘Have you gentlemen ever considered the question of the true nature of the University…Stoner, here, I imagine, sees it as a great repository, like a library or a whorehouse, where men come of their free will and select that which will complete them…You see it as a kind of spiritual sulphur-and-molasses that you administer every fall to get the little bastards through another winter…But you’re both wrong,’ [Masters] said. ‘It is an asylum or—what do they call them now?—a rest home, for the infirm, the aged, the discontent, and the otherwise incompetent. Look at the three of us—we are the university” (29)

Since my parents are two academics working at a midwestern public university, I had a lot of fun comparing their experiences to Stoner. I can tell Williams nails the experience of having to fail an unrepentant and arrogant student. But, for me, his writing might be too familiar.

I’ve seen the story before.

I’ve seen the ending before in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. I’ve seen the literary enchantment in Confusion by Stefan Zweig. I’ve even seen the rich girl/poor boy dynamic in The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I’m not mad at John Williams for being influential. But I’m not moved by him either.

Stoner is like an empty, dawn-lit corridor of a university library. It is lonely and beautiful, and you will end up seeing it a thousand times in your life. It may be a whorehouse or a clinic or an asylum, depending on who you are. Whether you linger is your choice.

“It hardly mattered to him that the book was forgotten and that it served no use; and the question of its world at any time was almost trivial. He did not have the illusion that he would find himself there, in that fading print; and yet, he knew, a small part of him that he could not deny was there and would be there” (288) 
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