How a book begins often sets the tone and John Williams does this in a masterful way. Page one is a pen portrait of Stoner, an image of failure and depression. Williams is like an artist painting from a palette of greys and browns with hardly a hint of colour.
He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor….few students remembered him. His name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all.
Turning the page his parents and their farm are painted in:
Stooped by Labour - gazed without hope - arid patch of land - long moments that she had to endure - eyes were pale and blurred - small eggs from a flock of spindly chickens - at 17, his shoulders were already beginning to stoop - a lonely household - weary movement of a body - unpainted timbers sagged around the porch - the colours of the dry land, grey and brown, striped with white - sparsely furnished - floors unpainted planks, unevenly spaced, cracking with age up through which dust steadily seeped. His father grew slower and more weary with the passing months.
Williams is unsparing as he lays on the misery, noun by noun, adjective by adjective. The gloom seeps into the reader's mind. This is book is going to be a slog.
When I first read it, I couldn't understand what the fuss was about. I didn't enjoy it and gave my copy away. I had a vague memory of a teacher of English Literature at an American University but that was all. Yet it does feature in lists of 100 best books, including. The Reader's Choice of 100 best books in The Guardian – equal 37th with Frankenstein.
Second time through as my book group's choice, I tried to see more clearly why some rate it highly. There’s no riveting plot, no memorable characters, if light does break through the gloom it is swiftly snuffed out. To cap it all, Williams sadistically finishes off poor Stoner on the last page, thus depriving the poor man of a happy retirement.
Stoner, leaves his depressing family and the depressing farm and goes to live with depressing relatives. He studies agriculture but becomes fascinated by literature. This seems to be the spark that ignites vitality and hope within him and you think, ah, now we're going to get a different sort of story. We are moving on from the grim trudge of his early years into the glorious sunlit uplands. But no, Stoner trudges on.
Out of nowhere he sees a woman at a party. He doesn't know her. She looks nice. He has little romantic spark, she has even less. They marry out of some grim, conventional necessity and spend their lives regretting it. Surprisingly, they have a child who brings some life and joy into Stoner's humdrum life. But having given Stoner a taste of happiness and raised a glimmer of hope in the reader that a door has opened and better things lie ahead, the author for some perverse reason slams the door shut.
Another glimmer of hope is the arrival of Katherine Driscoll, the rain stops, the clouds roll away, the sun bursts through. There are moments of pleasure, an oasis of joy in the remorseless dessert of Stoner’s life. It doesn't last long. She leaves. He never sees her again.
An academic dispute with Hollis Lomax that drags on reveals Stoner as a man of deep integrity. His reverence for literature and the academic ideal will not allow him to pass one of Hollis' students. This is another blight on his life and adds to the hopelessness the reader feels,
When I first read it, I couldn't understand what the fuss was about. I didn't enjoy it and gave my copy away. I had a vague memory of a teacher of English Literature at an American University but that was all. Yet it does feature in lists of 100 best books, including. The Reader's Choice of 100 best books in The Guardian – equal 37th with Frankenstein.
Second time through as my book group's choice, I tried to see more clearly why some rate it highly. There’s no riveting plot, no memorable characters, if light does break through the gloom it is swiftly snuffed out. To cap it all, Williams sadistically finishes off poor Stoner on the last page, thus depriving the poor man of a happy retirement.
Stoner, leaves his depressing family and the depressing farm and goes to live with depressing relatives. He studies agriculture but becomes fascinated by literature. This seems to be the spark that ignites vitality and hope within him and you think, ah, now we're going to get a different sort of story. We are moving on from the grim trudge of his early years into the glorious sunlit uplands. But no, Stoner trudges on.
Out of nowhere he sees a woman at a party. He doesn't know her. She looks nice. He has little romantic spark, she has even less. They marry out of some grim, conventional necessity and spend their lives regretting it. Surprisingly, they have a child who brings some life and joy into Stoner's humdrum life. But having given Stoner a taste of happiness and raised a glimmer of hope in the reader that a door has opened and better things lie ahead, the author for some perverse reason slams the door shut.
Another glimmer of hope is the arrival of Katherine Driscoll, the rain stops, the clouds roll away, the sun bursts through. There are moments of pleasure, an oasis of joy in the remorseless dessert of Stoner’s life. It doesn't last long. She leaves. He never sees her again.
An academic dispute with Hollis Lomax that drags on reveals Stoner as a man of deep integrity. His reverence for literature and the academic ideal will not allow him to pass one of Hollis' students. This is another blight on his life and adds to the hopelessness the reader feels,
Stoner has little victories here and there but his life is unmemoraable and undistinguished. Williams does not even grant him a happy retirement but finishes him off with cancer,
“Stoner is a perfect novel, so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving that it takes your breath away.” New York Times.
Our bookgroup was divided. One member put up a strong defence, describing the novel as a portrait of that time in America:
Stoner is a story not just of one man but perhaps of a whole generation. The setting is the period from 1891 through to 1940, the key period being from 1910 through to 1940 and it was set in Missouri. These years cover WWI, prohibition, the 1929 financial crash, the 1930s Depression, the Dust Bowl, and culminates in WWII. Stoner’s Mother believed, life was a long moment to endure. When you think about the period in which he lives, what were the mores of the time, you then start to understand this is what he's actually writing about. This generation, the hard times they went through and the constraints under which they lived.
Another member said:
It was a little life. It was Stoner's life. He led his life as far as I could see, as honourably as he could. The revelation that came to him when he was doing literature and the reading of the Shakespeare sonnet came as an unexpected shock. He realised for the first time the whole world of beauty and wonder that lies in literature. This he held sacred and he was not going to let it be defiled by a student who was plagiarising or by a professor. He lived his life as honourably as he could. We don't use the word honourable anymore. I do think the novel is about an honourable man. And that came through to me in spades. I think it is a masterpiece.
These are interesting defences of the novel, yet for me you need light and shade and Stoner was almost all shade.
Henry Thoreau in his book, Walden, writes: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”
It’s as though Williams knew this quote and decided to turn it into a novel. Stoner led a life of quite desperation..
I’ve now read the novel twice and will not read it again. It leaves me stone cold.
The Sonnet that inspired Stoner's love of literature:
It’s as though Williams knew this quote and decided to turn it into a novel. Stoner led a life of quite desperation..
I’ve now read the novel twice and will not read it again. It leaves me stone cold.
The Sonnet that inspired Stoner's love of literature:
Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold
By William Shakespeare
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.In me thou see'st the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west,Which by and by black night doth take away,Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.In me thou see'st the glowing of such fireThat on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed whereon it must expire,Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
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