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Loading... Stoner (original 1965; edition 2014)by John Williams, Rose-Marie Nielsen
Work InformationStoner by John Williams (1965)
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Golly, what a great book. It's an intimate, and both quite painful and joyful at times, insight into the heart and mind of William Stoner, a man from a poor farming family who becomes an English professor. Not much happens - unless you count a troubled marriage, an intense love affair with a student, and academic rivalries and friendships. But the writing is clear and clean and warm and vital - just the right balances of dialogue and description, of plot and reflection, of bitter and sweet. As the introduction rightly explains: 'If the novel can be said to have one central idea, it is surely that of love, the many forms love takes and all the forces that oppose it.' A heartbreaking story of a small life lived in quiet desperation , inflicted mostly by Stoner's naivety and the revenge of a small-minded university colleague. However, this literary gem raises Stoner out of the victim role and into a 'hero'. Two wars are fought; two characters have physical deformities ... broken men in a broken world. But instead of the brokenness destroying his life, it reflects Stoner's inner goodness like a kaleidoscope. (If it becomes a film, Jeremy Irons has to be Stoner.)
Part of “Stoner” ’s greatness is that it sees life whole and as it is, without delusion yet without despair. Stoner realizes at the last that he found what he sought at the university not in books but in his love and study of them, not in some obscure scholarly Grail but in its pursuit. His life has not been squandered in mediocrity and obscurity; his undistinguished career has not been mulish labor but an act of devotion. He has been a priest of literature, and given himself as fully as he could to the thing he loved. The book’s conclusion, such as it is—I don’t know whether to call it a consolation or a warning—is that there is nothing better in this life. The line, “It hardly mattered to him that the book was forgotten and served no use; and the question of its worth at any time seemed almost trivial,” is like the novel’s own epitaph. Its last image is of the book falling from lifeless fingers into silence. Is contained inAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Classic Literature.
Fiction.
HTML: William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar's life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a "proper" family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude. John Williams's luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world. .No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. NYRB Classics2 editions of this book were published by NYRB Classics. Editions: 1590171993, 1590173937 |
Written in the 60s, much of this story is timeless. As the only child of farmers, Stoner has the opportunity to study agriculture and does so for two years until he has to take a class in literature. It is during that time he realises the potential of books to change the world, changes his degree and in doing so changes his own world.
He marries a woman who has mental health issues and is at times disturbing. I don't know of many people who do not have sex with their husband on their wedding night and then some time later lie on the bed naked all day waiting for their husband to come home and impregnate them. At times she is viciously mean, turning their daughter Grace against Stoner, imperious, frightened and often to be found in bed. The impact of her behaviour on their daughter lingers and although she escapes the home, she doesn't escape the trauma of a mother whose illness was left undiagnosed and untreated.
Stoner makes an enemy of a colleague who becomes the Head of Department and who does everything in his power to get rid of him. An argument over whether a student is brilliant or a sham is played out in detail and nothing is the same at work for Stoner after that. It has to be said that this academic back-stabbing and politicking is played out time and time again in books with nothing changing and with this version being extremely well-observed and recorded for posterity.
All through the ups and downs of Stoner's life, and it does feel as if there are more downs than ups, he maintains an air of acceptance about what he can not change but is passionate about being a teacher and what it means to teach. When he discovers what it means to be a teacher, there is guilt for all the students he dealt with beforehand. It is as a teacher that he comes to understand himself and literature and its place in our world.
The power of the voice in this book is incredible. It is restrained yet persistent. It never slips for one moment and never lets us out of its grasp. It is of one who is resigned to his life and to the fact that posterity is not his despite writing a book and being a good teacher. I waited and waited for Stoner's fight back, his triumph, but it never came unless it is disguised as resilience. It feels quite pessimistic but in fact is probably nearer to the truth of most people's lives ( )