Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Stoner
    Unavailable
    Stoner
    Unavailable
    Stoner
    Ebook320 pages7 hours

    Stoner

    By John Williams and John McGahern

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Discover an American masterpiece. This unassuming story about the life of a quiet English professor has earned the admiration of readers all over the globe.

     

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNYRB Classics
    Release dateMay 5, 2010
    ISBN9781590173930
    Unavailable
    Stoner
    Author

    John Williams

    John Williams (1922-1994) va néixer i es va criar al nord-est de Texas. Malgrat el talent que havia demostrat per a l'escriptura i la interpretació, va deixar els estudis en acabar el primer curs universitari. Va col·laborar en diverses publicacions i emissores de ràdio, fins que el 1942 es va allistar a contracor a l'exèrcit de l'aire. Va passar dos anys i mig com a sergent a l'Índia i a Birmània, i va aprofitar per escriure un esborrany de la seva primera novel·la, Nothing But the Night. Quan va tornar a casa, va aconseguir que una editorial minoritària li publiqués la novel·la i es va matricular a la Universitat de Denver, on es va llicenciar i va obtenir un títol de postgrau, i on el 1954 va tornar com a professor. Va crear el programa d'escriptura creativa de la universitat i va formar part del seu equip docent fins que es va jubilar el 1985. Durant aquells anys, va ser molt actiu tant en el terreny de la docència com en el de l'escriptura. Va publicar dos llibres de poemes i tres novel·les: Butcher's Crossing, Stoner i Augustus (guanyadora del National Book Award 1973). 

    Read more from John Williams

    Related to Stoner

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      'The Fetishist' Examines Racial And Sexual Politics

      Jan 10, 2024

      Katherine Min's well-crafted posthumous novel is inspired by Lolita -- but with an Asian fetishist as Humbert Humbert and the objects of his objectification given voice.

      4 min read

    • Article

      On The Edge Of A Field In Sumner, Mississippi

      Nov 1, 2021

      I pick cottonwith my own handsin the town where Emmett Till’skillers were acquittedin 1955, at the bottomlandsfed by the swollen Tallahatchie. History of the last empireexplained in its white,dreamy bolls. Cash cropso valuable that plantationowners b

      1 min read

    • Article

      Half In Love With Death

      Mar 9, 2021

      Half In Love With Death
      12 min read

    • Article

      Mr. Rain Jacket

      May 20, 2019

      Mr. Rain Jacket
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Fiction No. 261

      Dec 5, 2023

      The Art of Fiction No. 261
      28 min read

    • Article

      East of Eden, South of Frome

      Nov 2, 2018

      East of Eden, South of Frome
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Panopticon: John Updike’s Apartment Stories

      Mar 9, 2018

      Has there, in American letters, at least, ever been a better noticer than John Updike?  By “noticer,” I don’t mean “writer of detail,” exactly.  There are many writers whose use of detail I find more narratively effective:  Saul Bellow, Joan Didion,

      5 min read

    • Article

      The California Gaze

      Apr 1, 2023

      The California Gaze
      7 min read

    • Article

      Simple Steps To HAPPY FEET

      Feb 3, 2021

      Simple Steps To HAPPY FEET
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Bookseller’s Elegy

      Jul 19, 2017

      What can you do when a customer wants a book that you not only find objectionable but also believe actually dangerous in the lessons it portends amidst such a politically precarious time? The post A Bookseller’s Elegy appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Star Letter

      May 6, 2021

      I went out this morning for the first time without the stick, even though my knee is still hurting, from where I sprained it coming off the step ladder after painting a ceiling! I called into the newsagent up at the shopping mall, to get the May Writ

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Woman Of No Importance

      May 16, 2019

      A Woman Of No Importance
      1 min read

    • Article

      Ready Player Two

      Dec 30, 2020

      Ready Player Two
      2 min read

    • Article

      Manuals for Living

      Aug 14, 2019

      IF I conducted a brutal assessment of my reading habits—something I am not eager to do—the results would show that I spend an alarming percentage of my time rereading the same book: the 1965 novel Stoner by John Williams. As a reader and part-time bo

      6 min read

    • Article

      Writing Your Memoir

      Feb 15, 2021

      Writing Your Memoir
      8 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Tolentino, Valentine, Folarin, Marías, Price, and More

      Aug 6, 2019

      If you've been waiting for that debut essay collection from The New Yorker's star culture writer, this is your lucky week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Tolentino, Valentine, Folarin, Marías, Price, and More appeared first on The Million

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Stoner

    4.5/5

    2,234 ratings132 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Very, very extraordinary book. I approached it with some doubt and not so big expectations only to be truly impressed by it.

      In time where everyone "needs" to be next Musk or Gates, when everyone "needs" to share their very intimate moments with everyone else, "need" to be at the most visited/fascinating/tremendous place in their lives, this book is like a trip to the old times, times that now seem like some sort of parallel universe that is unfathomable to anyone living [in our crazy times].

      One of the reviewers said that this is a bleak book. In my opinion it is not a bleak book, it is a book about ordinary life. Stoner is a person coming from the hard-living environment, boy who saw himself laboring on the hard fields inherited from his family until his parents offer him a potentially new future - to attend the university and learn more about the agriculture. Of course, this does not end as expected. Stoner falls in love with literature studies, he decides to pursue this area, graduates and then continues with magisterial and doctoral studies, finally becoming the professor (his passion for the subject identified by his mentor who pushes Stoner towards becoming a teacher).

      In all this time, Stoner is far from passive. While he is not afraid to die in war, he makes a rather unpopular decision to stay in the university and finish his studies instead of joining the army and going to WW1 France. He makes this decision because he sees his future and his life in the studies of literature, and he is blessed by friends who, although maybe not liking his decision, accept it as is. When he meets his wife Edith for the first time, he is smitten and here and there he makes a decision that this is a woman he will spend thevrest of his life with. When his wife gives birth to their daughter, he gives all his love and attention to the child and finds a new purpose in life. When he loses one of the very few friends he has, he concentrates on keeping the connection with the remaining ones. And all the time, his anchor in life is his work as a teacher, doing what he loves, constantly learning new things together with his students, always learning ever more from their [students'] work and passing that newly accumulated knowledge to new generations.

      Of course dark clouds do come up - he loses contact with his parents, although they encourage him to pursue his interests [and this starts to grow the divide]; his in-laws suffer greatly during the Great Depression and this reflects on his wife, who was already very unstable [this shows even in the way she was unsure how to proceed with Stoner's courting to begin with - at the time she just decided to wrap everything up and to get married quickly - by looks of it this was only way she could handle this]; wife who was constantly trying to reinvent herself during the crisis, and who became ever more hostile to her husband (just as a vent for her own frustrations, not as an actual hate towards Stoner), even to the point of making sure father's relation with his daughter is interrupted; his daughter slowly but surely becomes ever more estranged from her father by actions of her mother; genial but very antagonistic fellow professor shows up who will become Stoner's long term enemy for reasons of .... who knows, the thing is that sometimes people just do not understand each other, and then this resentment just keeps on growing.

      And through all of this, Stoner is navigating, trying to keep his family and work. He could very easily break up with his wife, but Stoner is one of those rare people that do not falter and dont give up easily, and that just keeps on pushing forward.
      He is aware of Edith's problems but he does not resent her, he understands the cause of it - he gets into conflict with her, he is not shy about that, especially when it comes to their daughter and Edith's manipulations, and slowly makes her see some reason and forces her to at least give child some freedom. His broken marriage, without any contact, emotional or physical, definitely made Stoner's life difficult, but he does not waver. He still loves his wife and his daughter and finds ways to keep everyone happy and at peace even if this means physical separation with his wife - living in the parts of the house she designates for him as his work (and later residential) area. Stoner is patient, and he takes things as they are.

      This isolation will bring him into a situation where he will inevitably falter and fall, at least morally. His affair with the fellow professor (previously doctoral student attending his classes) will bring him very close to breaking point, both professionally and privately, but will give him insight into what love truly is and what he could have had with Edith under different circumstances. Although he had to break up this relationship (which was done mutually, since young professor was aware there is no other way) it was done again not so much to help him, but to keep the position of the young professor, ensuring that she could keep her title and be able to continue working in education. Heartbreaking as it was, they were both aware that this was the only way forward. But they kept the love and passion they felt for each other, and this remained alive for years to come.

      With age, he will become more hard when it comes to constant fiery exchanges with his nemesis Lomax, but he will keep his reason and try to discuss things with his now boss. In all times, Stoner will keep his professionalism and will work hard to prevent anything that he sees as detrimental to teaching from entering the university classroom, even if it means further conflict with his colleagues. And so things move on until the day Stoner could not continue any more, moment that awaits us all.

      We come to this world alone, and we leave it alone. In between, we need to strive to do as best as we can, trying to do things we love and keep people we love around us. There will be trying periods, but such is life. True moments of bliss will remain - doing work one loves, working on relationships with people one loves and cares about, making sure ones children grow under normal circumstances and are prepared for whatever lies ahead (as much as possible, of course, since children will make choices of their own). These are elements that make a good life. Everything else is just there to make these moments come to the fore.

      Was Stoner's life hard? Definitely. But it was not bad at all, as a matter of fact when compared to other people in that period (and not just that period), his life was pretty good. He lived surrounded by friends and loved ones, and he died, having said goodbye to them. He died knowing he helped lots of people find their calling and that he affected their lives in a positive way. And he died knowing there is nothing to regret about his life, he accepted his deadly sickness as it is, he came to peace with death, accepting that everything happened in the way it was supposed to.

      Is the above bleak? In my opinion, no. It is just life. A life worth living.
    • 5/5
      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.'
    • 4/5
      A deeply thoughtful, beautifully written, very sad novel. It should be better known.
    • 5/5
      Have you ever read a book that leaves you so overwhelmed you don't have words to explain why or how? For me, it's this one!

      "He had wanted the singleness and the still connective passion of marriage; he had had that, too, and he had not known what to do with it, and it had died. He had wanted love; and he had had love, and had relinquished it, had let it go into the chaos of potentiality."

      A simple story of a man from humble origins who pursues a career in academics. This is the story of the life of William Stoner - his early life, his days as a student, his love for English Literature, his marriage and family and his career as an English professor- a life lived with quiet dignity, with its share of ups and downs, regrets, disappointments and small triumphs. It could be anybody's story."Unremarkable" is a word one might use when when talking about William Stoner and in fact, the beginning of the novel stresses that point but then, why does his story feel so significant?

      I read Stoner by John Edward Williams slowly over a week. It will take much longer than that to frame my thoughts or maybe I'd prefer to just keep thinking about this book for as long as I can.

      "And he had wanted to be a teacher, and he had become one; yet he knew, he had always known, that for most of his life he had been an indifferent one."

      In short, all I can say right now is that this is a beautifully penned, insightful and thought-provoking novel that I regret not having read earlier in life. This simple, quiet story affected me on a deeply personal level. Thank you to everyone who recommended this book to me.

      "He had conceived wisdom, and at the end of the long years he had found ignorance. And what else? he thought. What else?"
    • 4/5
      After reading so many wonderful comments, I finally tackled this. Having spent quite some time in the academic world, I think Williams did a brilliant job of depicting it. Stoner himself struck me as a terribly sad figure and I am completely and totally baffled that Williams himself said that he was “anything but” a sad character because he was doing what he wanted. After I read the book, I found a very illuminating interview with Williams’ widow in the Paris Review that helped me understand Williams a bit more—and why he might say that. Still, a very well-done book; I very much enjoyed it and will seek out one or more of his other books.
    • 5/5
      I adored this novel. The prose is absolutely perfect - subtly beautiful and as fresh on the last page as it was on the first. The character of William Stoner is rich and detailed and the reader's understanding of him gradually grows over the course of the novel. And the author is not afraid of addressing grand themes about life and love and what it all means. Big themes plus little lives is just about my favourite combination for a novel, and in a way I think it's one of the reasons the novel still matters as an art form, because no other form can capture it in the same way.

      I love that this book has been rediscovered and that led it to my shelf.
    • 5/5
      A beautiful, meditative book, exploring the middling, mediocre life of William Stoner.

      The book is a real bummer, with his life essentially being a series of failures and disappointments. However in his ability to persevere, there is an existential strength, that is quite uplifting.
    • 4/5
      A Dreiser-like panorama of tsouris, life sucks and then you die. The satisfaction comes from how well it is written and from observing the principle character stand amid hostile Society like Jimmy Stewart.
    • 4/5
      I loved this novel. Most fiction tries to create a Platonic ideal, a narrative sense of how life should be lived, and Stoner is no different. There is a nobility in Prof. Stoner, even if objectively he lived a stoical and failed life.

      The best sections describe English department politics at a land grant university in the earlier part of the 20th century. Stoner is dedicated to learning, to the academic life, but he has some pernicious blind spots. He cannot anticipate the machinations of others, he barely senses his own weakness. A life of the mind can be lonely. You do not really understand those humans who reside outside the covers of books. You look at them in wonder and fear. And then you return to your reading.
    • 5/5
      It's hard to adequately convey how powerful a novel Stoner is, perhaps because there is nothing unusual in Williams's prose style, pacing, or the way he is using the bildungsroman conventions to focus on an erudite, bookish man's familial, psychological, and collegiate conflicts.

      I think that Williams is a master of flow: Stoner pulls you in, and you are immediately swept away—again, not because the prose or the narrative itself are particularly enthralling per se, but because Williams knows how to captivate and capture the reader's attention and then drag him or her alongside Stoner throughout the book.

      A must-read for those who adore reading, especially those who have been lucky enough to make reading their lives and livelihood.
    • 3/5
      Sincere, plain, and maudlin. This isn't the masterpiece that some readers claim.The portrayal of the pettiness and sadness of higher education politics is frighteningly accurate (think of Kissinger's comment: “The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small.”). On the other hand, the majority of the characters are simplistic, even childlike. There is no depth to anyone, but Stoner. I read a quiet misogyny towards the women--Edith, Katherine, Grace, Stoner's mother--each drawn as rather mindless creatures ruled by emotion. There's a real sadness about this book--one where you can't help but think that the author, a professor, suffered deeply and poured his bitter life experience into this narrative.
    • 4/5
      Beautifully written tragedy about University of Missouri Professor William Stoner. It starts near the turn of the 20th century and continues for Stoner’s lifetime. Stoner grows up on a farm but is unsuited for a farming life. When his parents send him to college to study agriculture, he finds his calling as a teacher of literature.

      “The love of literature, of language, of the mystery of the mind and heart showing themselves in the minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words, in the blackest and coldest print—the love which he had hidden as if it were illicit and dangerous, he began to display, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then proudly.”

      The book follows Stoner’s life as a professor, husband, and father. Stoner is a noble character, sticking to his principles and unwilling to bend to the political pressures of the university’s hierarchy. His wife has emotional issues and his marriage does not go well, but he stoically endures. At one point, he finds a modicum of happiness, but it does not last.

      This book is about life, education, and the transience of time. It is a tribute to a lifetime of literature, which is one of the few sources of meaning in Stoner’s life. The tone is sad. The main pleasure in this book is the expressive writing. Recommended to those that enjoy deep character studies on timeless themes.
    • 3/5
      There are a few of these tales about a marriage going sour, due to the irrational and unpredictable demands of a woman who has decided to declare war on her spouse. It always feels one-sided, like listening to a friend explain his divorce, and how everything was ruined by that insane wife. Not exactly convincing.

      To be fair, Stoner is pretty clueless, marrying the first unattached girl he sets eyes on, wandering into a feud with his chair that anyone could see was a set-up. The reader is supposed to just accept this cluelessness, and somehow root for him regardless.

      This makes for a dreary and tedious novel for the most part, though it does pick up towards the end: both when Stoner decides to just chuck civilized discourse and become the cranky old man of the department, and when he reviews his life at its end and realizes how much of its problems were of his own making.

      If the middle had been more convincingly developed, this could have been a very powerful novel.
    • 4/5
      Love of literature is the only bright spot in the main character's life. The rest is relentless sorrow and conflict. Many of the attitudes portrayed now seem a period piece of the first half of the 20th century (the time period of the novel).
    • 5/5
      Review to follow. I don't how I can love a book which was just so relentlessly depressing. And yet. And yet.
    • 5/5
      Stoner ranks at the top of all the novels that I have ever read. It's been about 15 years or more since I last read it. The book flows with the combination of a great story, interesting characters, expressive language from page 1 to the end. Every paragraph, every word are described and written so purposefully. On the surface, the story does not appear compelling. Stoner is a farm boy who becomes student who becomes university teacher who becomes husband and father. His relationship with his daughter is very poignant. His relationship with his wife is tragic.

      However it is Stoner’s struggles with life that anyone can identify. He struggles with his career, a loveless marriage, a torrid but failed affair with a student and his heartbreaks with the daughter he adores. Stoner is a early 20th century Job enduring life’s indignities but how he handles those challenges is enlightening and inspiring.

      I love the story and look forward to re-reading it again and again.
    • 5/5
      Is 'Stoner' a happy or a sad story? On the one hand, this life of a university professor demonstrates the depth of joy that can be had from commitment to a job that's worth doing; but on the other, Stoner's life is one of a series of tragic occurrences, much of which seem out of his control, and despite his best efforts to live a good and moral life, Stoner reaches the end almost entirely alone. I will be thinking about this one for a long time to come.
    • 4/5
      Most likely I would have ditched this book had I read it instead of listening.

      I can picture the solid walls of text early on. It's all telling- telling how Stoner grew up on a farm, telling how Stoner went to college, telling how Stoner worked so very hard, telling, telling, telling.

      Later in the book we do get some dialogue and some interesting things, but never did this tale grip me, and I like to be gripped. I'm not sure what the point of the story was, to be honest.

      After a while though, Stoner himself did grow on me and I found myself insulted on his behalf by the behaviors of nearly all the people in his life. His wife being the worst of them.

      I guess what I took away from this book is, life is short. You deserve to be treated well, if that's how you're treating people yourself; perhaps you should demand that equality or leave. I'm sure this isn't what the Cliff notes would say, but hey, I'm reading for pleasure and that's what I took from STONER.

      *I downloaded this audio through my Audible Plus membership.*
    • 4/5
      Really enjoyed this "classic" (1965) book in the context of professorial life in a small college - but really about a pretty painful life and the challenge of accepting what life gives to you v. steering your own life.
    • 3/5
      The story is coherent and properly oriented, the tone is consistent and plausible, but the whole is rather dreary, like it’s protagonist. Not to this reader leaping forward as the overlooked classic it was briefly heralded as.
    • 5/5
      I first read Stoner a few years ago, when I was a graduate student, writing a dissertation on literature, far from my parents who had not gone to university. This serves as your bright red light warning that my feelings about this book (about a man who becomes a professor of literature, far from his parents, who, I'm pretty sure, didn't go to high school) are entirely conditioned by my past experiences. I have more than once read aloud, to my wife, who didn't care the first time, the scene in which Stoner very calmly tears strips from an incompetent PhD student, who got to his oral exams only because the soon-to-be-chair of the department was his supervisor. THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE INTELLIGENT, I yell to myself, as the English literature PhD student fails to name any medieval literature other than Everyman.

      Having read some particularly difficult and or bad books recently, and then getting a bad cold, I decided to re-read Stoner. It's not as good as I remember, but then, I'm no longer a graduate student, and it's still very good. Williams very carefully, very calmly deals with almost everything that a twentieth century Great Book ought to deal with (class, war, repression, anomie, and a whole range of first world problems, too). But, as a pleasant relief from twentieth century Great Books, which tend toward the "since there's no God, Everything is Meaningless and we might as well kill ourselves" side of things, 'Stoner' suggests that we can come up with our own meanings and have good lives even in the absence of worldly, or erotic, success.

      Finally, a blurb on the NYRB re-issue suggests that it is written "in the most plainspoken of styles." But it's positively baroque, even Gongorist compared to much contemporary American literature; semi-colons, even colons, are scattered throughout Williams' sentences, which, outrageously, sometimes include two or even three clauses:

      "As his mind engaged with its subject, as it grappled with the power of the literature he studied and tried to understand its nature, he was aware of a constant change within himself; and as he was aware of that, he moved outward from himself into the world which contained him, so that he knew knew that the poem of Milton's that he read or the essay of Bacon's or the drama of Ben Jonson's changed the world which was its subject and changed it because of its dependence upon it."

      Which is, in addition, a better piece of literary theory than anything I've read since Adorno. I take it back, this book is as good as I remember. As Finch says, we can't keep the Walkers out; as Stoner responds, we can try.

    • 4/5
      William Stoner was remembered by his colleagues with a donation to the university where he was an assistant professor his entire career, but he wasn't much remembered beyond that. Starting from his roots working hard at his parents' farm, he goes to college and falls in love with the English language, eventually becoming a professor at the same university he attends.

      This close third person account reads almost like a biography, but it's a fictional tale of academia from when Stoner enters college in 1909, and follows his life through both world wars and more, all while working and living at the University of Missouri. There's a precision to the narrator staying tightly to his point of view, not letting us in on the inner lives of Stoner's colleagues or his wife or other characters that allow us to see an ordinary life as it's lived: simply, putting one foot in front of the other, and not always knowing what impact you have. Perhaps the fact that such an ordinary life is the subject of a novel that we read and discuss now shows the inherent dignity of that life, but it's left to the reader to decide.
    • 5/5
      Err, wow? The clarity of the prose and characterization here is awe-inspiring; after reading a lot of genre fiction recently this reminds me of the heights that literature can reach. Read this bad boy asap.
    • 5/5
      I read it in one pass, I just couldn't take my eyes away from it.
    • 3/5
      Stoner has been on my TBR list for a while, without really knowing what the story is about. Well, now I know - and the other suggested titles when searching for 'stoner' look like a lot more fun! If I had known that this was just another novel about a boring 'academic' man existing his way through a miserable personal life and a tedious career as a university lecturer, I would have passed.

      William Stoner is a sad little man. He escapes the drudgery of his parents' farm to go to college and study agriculture, but develops a passion for English literature. When America enters the First World War, Stoner chooses not to fight overseas and stays at the university. His academic career plods along, and he meets a beautiful (but unstable) young woman at a party. They get married, she doesn't want anything to do with him, and he basically rapes her again and again in pursuit of 'married love', but that's fine because this is the 1900s. I fell into believing the portrayal of Edith as frigid and hysterical, but then realised what the author was doing - and started hating the book instead. William and Edith have a daughter, Grace, who William loves more than his wife, so Edith starts using her daughter as a pawn in their marital war. At the university, Stoner is challenged by a 'crippled' student, who is being sponsored by a 'crippled' professor, and the two set about making Stoner's professional life equally uncomfortable. The only light in his pathetic existence comes in the form of an affair with a young female student called Katherine, which is of course doomed, after much 'making love'. Gag. Poor old Stoner, hey? I'm not sure when I was supposed to start caring about him, but I never got there.

      Not at all sure why this is a classic, but at least I can tick it off my list now!
    • 5/5
      What a wonderful gentle read. The life of William Stoner, a student and then a Professor at the University of Missouri. He initially enrolled to study agriculture, and help manage his father’s farm, but in one very significant life changing moment he discovered his true vocation in the world of literature. His choice of Edith as a future spouse was a fundamental mistake….”She was short, plump woman with fine white hair that floated about her face; her dark eyes twinkled moistly, and she spoke softly and breathlessly as if she were telling secrets.”………”in her white dress she was a cold light coming into the room”…..And so with a stoical mind and a shrug of inevitability Stoner fills his days with the enquiring and challenging minds of his students and his lifelong love of books and the written word. Katherine Driscoll, a student completing her dissertation, falls in love with Stoner and he, whose life is totally devoid of any affection, reciprocates this much wanted attention. For a time, his personal and private life were full of joy but under pressure from departmental elders the affair ended….”He had wanted love; and he had had love, and had relinquished it, had let it go into the chaos of potentiality. Katherine, he thought. Katherine.”…….

      The life of Stoner is a life or ordinariness filled with those special moments, full of decisions taken, choices made, right or wrong, good or bad. It is a clever, poignant book and in many ways a reflection of any human life, and the inevitable fate that awaits us all. Beautiful storytelling and highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Is is America at the beginning of the Twentith century and William Stoner, the son of a farmer, is offered the chance to go to college to learn the modern techniques about agriculture. He takes it and leaves home for the first time in his life to go to the University of Missouri. Whilst he is there he discovers a great love for books and literature, and changes course to literature. At the point where the Great War begins he chooses to stay, but a fellow lecturer goes

      AS he settles into university life, he is prompted to become a teacher but a senior member of staff. As he starts to walk down to this new path he knows that it is the thing that he wants to do. He meets Edith as a function one night and almost instantly falls in love, and they are soon married. But it is a loveless marriage and it ebbs and flows between silence and open sniping. He does find love, but it is a forbidden love, and he continues his career with the usual battles and politics that takes place.

      In lots of ways Stoner has an uneventful life; he works and studies and teaches. He suffers love and loss, pain and joy, happiness and sadness, tragedy and fortune, the same as every life offers. But in this uneventful life, it is Williams writing that makes it such a special book to read and immerse yourself in. The prose is effortless, detailed without being overbearing, and was a real joy to read.
    • 5/5
      Best novel I've read in years.
    • 4/5
      "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 which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers."

      So begins John William's novel, first published in 1965, released again in the UK by Vintage Books, and recently championed on the Today programme by Ian McEwan.

      If you want a racy, action-packed story, then this book isn't for you. It is the story of a life, one that never progresses beyond mediocrity. A life, then, that is much like so many lives past, present and future. And perhaps that is the beauty of the book; it reflects feelings that so many of us an experience, the fears we have.

      Despite the mediocrity of Stoner's life, and despite his many apparent failures, or perhaps because of them - a failed marriage, a daughter struggling to cope within that marriage, an affair forced to end, his lack of career profession - his story is a moving one. His wife's use of their daughter as a means to hurt him is one such particularly moving story. My one criticism of the book is the wife's complete personality change when she decides she wants a baby, which felt out of character and out of place.
    • 5/5
      The story of an unremarkable life, but I was compelled to witness his enduring stoicism, such was my admiration for him.
      I'm glad to have stumbled upon this gem.