Stoner (New York Review Books Classics)
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.
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Readers say *Stoner* is beautifully written, emotionally powerful, and explores themes of love, disappointment, and life's existential struggles, espe...
In the end, and overall, a fairly moving story about love for what you do, about disappointment, about the trials of the generation that saw both world wars, about university life, about the inevitable failure of a life devoted to sharing with others the purity and beauty of art getting dragged down into 'compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality.' At times, beautiful but spare, meaningful but concise prose.
On the other hand, I actually started this novel and had to stop because it was so boring around chapter 4. But I had seen so many people of actually fairly diverse backgrounds and tastes praising the book, so I went back to it. After all, the chapters around his first love of literature and around the war did have some interesting moments. And even when I reopened the book yesterday, I still found several chapters that were either incredibly slow or incredibly frustrating.
Frustrating because the main character is not a traditional hero or protagonist to a book. He makes some mistakes. Other times he is competent. He is very much an everyman in a (potentially) very boring occupation (I've taught at university - I know of which I speak).
Moreover, he is often incredibly passive. His marriage falls apart - not so far I read it even slightly his fault. He does nothing. He stands up for principle against a dishonest colleague and gets railroaded by a petty department chair - it takes him over a decade to do anything about it despite having plenty of recourse. He lets department politics interfere with his love life in a way that is mostly unnecessary. He lets his wife ruin his relationship with his daughter and just stands by and accepts it, and as a consequence his daughter grows up scarred and dysfunctional. It is so frustrating to sit through and root for someone that just continually lets these things happen to him and barely tries to stop them.
So I don't think the book is near as flawless as some of its contemporary evangelists contend. But it also has extremely meaningful and heart rending moments of empathy. It struggles with the essential meaninglessness of life and its various slings and arrows, and it doesn't offer up some pat theological or ideological solution, nor does it succumb to utter despair (in the end - there are a few moments where it gets quite close though).
So on the whole I think it is worth a read, but there will be passages you may want to skim.
On the other hand, I actually started this novel and had to stop because it was so boring around chapter 4. But I had seen so many people of actually fairly diverse backgrounds and tastes praising the book, so I went back to it. After all, the chapters around his first love of literature and around the war did have some interesting moments. And even when I reopened the book yesterday, I still found several chapters that were either incredibly slow or incredibly frustrating.
Frustrating because the main character is not a traditional hero or protagonist to a book. He makes some mistakes. Other times he is competent. He is very much an everyman in a (potentially) very boring occupation (I've taught at university - I know of which I speak).
Moreover, he is often incredibly passive. His marriage falls apart - not so far I read it even slightly his fault. He does nothing. He stands up for principle against a dishonest colleague and gets railroaded by a petty department chair - it takes him over a decade to do anything about it despite having plenty of recourse. He lets department politics interfere with his love life in a way that is mostly unnecessary. He lets his wife ruin his relationship with his daughter and just stands by and accepts it, and as a consequence his daughter grows up scarred and dysfunctional. It is so frustrating to sit through and root for someone that just continually lets these things happen to him and barely tries to stop them.
So I don't think the book is near as flawless as some of its contemporary evangelists contend. But it also has extremely meaningful and heart rending moments of empathy. It struggles with the essential meaninglessness of life and its various slings and arrows, and it doesn't offer up some pat theological or ideological solution, nor does it succumb to utter despair (in the end - there are a few moments where it gets quite close though).
So on the whole I think it is worth a read, but there will be passages you may want to skim.
I hate this book and I hate my husband for recommending it to me!
The writing was beautiful and eloquent which is the only reason I'm giving it a 2 instead of 1. I'm serious though!!! My husband has never recommended a single book to me in our 8 years together except for this one and I hate it so much, I'm considering divorcing his ass! Pray for me!
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