Will I love Stoner?

This is the best book out there about the ups and downs, the value and the degradation, the profundity and the shallow pettiness of universities. 

It is also an achingly profound commentary on the disappointment of life, when beauty and fulfilment are always just out of reach. 

Stoner reminds me that the vast archive of books out there is always growing, and there’ll never be enough time to read the best of what’s already been written, never mind try to grapple with a steady stream of new classics. Even so, I know I’ll read this book again and again.

Stoner lived a passive life with the sparks of his agency arriving late in his life against Holly Lomax, his boss who undermines him and tries to destroy Stoner’s career. The entirety of Stoner’s life was defined by what he did: he was a college professor. As a student he attends University of Missouri, gets his degree there and spends the rest of his life there, teaching. His affair with Katherine Driscoll brought a change to his life, a bright light, and when she was forced to leave, it was extinguished, although much later when he was almost sixty, he… show more.

First, the writing in this novel is phenomenal. Williams really knows how to put words together in a simple but engaging manner. I also loved the way this book made me think about human nature and how we show up in relationships. Stoner is the main character and throughout the entire novel, you're imploring him to behave differently, to act differently, to do something. But then you realize it's such a perfect reflection of how humans behave and although it's infuriating, it also makes you think deeply about your own behaviour.

This novel is the story of William Stoner, raised on a US midwestern farm, who becomes an English professor at the University of Missouri. It follows his life throughout, in simple prose, becoming both moving and profound. It was introduced to me by a knowledgeable NY city book dealer back in the 90s. I pick it up every few years for another reading experience. It’s become a bit of an obscure classic.

I remember when I first started reading Stoner—it felt quiet, slow... like sitting by the sea and watching the waves. I didn't really know what to expect, but what intrigued me about it was how quiet it was. It felt very human, more so than any other book I'd ever read. The way the scenes played out, as if I was standing in the middle of the room with the characters, sensing their despair, their loneliness, their desire for happiness. And I remember where I was when I finally finished the book: I was sat on my kitchen counter,… show more.

This 1965 novel, which would not become a bestseller until two decades after Williams’ death, has been categorised under the genre of academic novel, or campus novel. This is fair; Stoner, we learn in the book's first paragraph, was a lifelong academic, who entered the University of Missouri as a student in 1910, and went on to teach there until his death in 1956. For me, however, the book’s perfection lies in its descriptions of Stoner’s relationships, both with his quiet, stoical parents, who fall out of his life after his marriage into a ‘proper’ family, and with his wife… show more.