'Stoner' by John Williams. Anyone care to comment?

[Michael T]

I've just come back from the bookshop with a copy of Stoner by John Williams. (First published around 1965 I believe) The many recommendations on the cover, and on the inside are very impressive, for example: "The greatest novel you've never read" Sunday Times (UK) and "Stoner is a perfect novel, so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving, that it takes your breath away" New York Times. I have to confess that prior to today I had never heard of the book or the author before. I would be very interested to hear what others have to say about the novel and/or the author. I shall start reading it this week, so please don't reveal too much without some sort of spoiler alert. Thank you fellow Lit-Netters. :smile5:

[kev67]

I noticed the local branch of Waterstones were piling them up high the last time I went in there. I have not read it. I heard the book discussed on the radio. One reviewer said it was not her favourite book; that was still The Perfect Soldier by Ford Madox Ford.

[Michael T]

Hi Kev, Waterstones was where I bought my copy from. Apparently it's their 'Book of the Year 2013' ...seems quite odd since it was first published in 1965!

[mal4mac]

This is the review that sold it to me:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/13/stoner-john-williams-julian-barnes

And I wasn't disappointed.

[ennison]

It's a very good book and Williams was a very good writer. It's good to see it being read again.

[Ecurb]

I read "Stoner" yesterday and it blew me away. It's a short novel about an academic who enters the U. of Missouri as a Freshman before WWI, and remains there, as a student and professor until his death 50 years later. William Stoner grew up on a hard scrabble Missouri farm. His laconic parents (whom we are invited to scorn for their ignorance, until they turn out to have a simple nobility of spirit) send him off to study agricultural science.

He putters through his AG classes, until, in a required English Lit. course, Professor Sloane asks him to explain Shakespeare's sonnet #73 ("This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong/To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”). Stoner doesn't know how to answer -- but he knows that "English literature troubled and disquieted him..."

So Stoner switches majors, and commences on a long career studying and teaching literature. His specialty is Rennaisance English Lit. The events of Stoner's life are outwardly unremarkable. He gets his PhD. He marries a woman whom he doesn't know well,and with whom he is completely incompatible. He engages in a departmental feud with a Harvard educated hunchback.

By literary standards, Stoner hardly seems like hero material. He is timid rather than glamorous. His academic career is mediocre. Yet the clear-eyed dignity with which he accepts life's challenges shows a simple, heartbreaking nobility. Stoner is not literary giant -- but his life spent aongst books is a good one, dsespite its many challenges.

As Stoner lies dying, he reaches for the only book he ever wrote.


"It hardly mattered to him that the book was forgotten and that it served no use; and the question of its worth at any time seemed 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.

He opened the book; and as he did so it became not his own. He let his fingers riffle through the pages and felt a tingling, as if those pages were alive. The tingling came through his fingers and coursed throgh his flesh and bone; he was minutely aware of it, and he waited until it contained him, until the old excitement that was like terror fixed him where he lay. The sunlight, passing his window, shone upon the page, and he could not see what was written there."

Evidently, "Stoner" (by John Williams) has been revived by a new French translation. The French love it. OK, they love Jerry Lewis, too. This time, though, they have it right.