Stoner: Brief Thoughts
“The Thinker: Portrait of Louis N. Kenton” by Thomas Eakins (1900) is used on the New York Review of Books reissue of the novel.
Stoner is a reflection of the human condition, seen through one man’s eyes. Authored by John Williams and initially released in 1965, it saw a resurgence of popularity in the early 2010s.
This is a novel about a Professor whose rote, unfulfilling life is punctuated by moments of beauty, passion, and excitement. So many—perhaps most?— lives are lived like this, and so an outwardly unassuming story reaches profound emotional depths.
You could say that the protagonist, William Stoner, is a boring man whose life is nonetheless interesting. The novel begins around 1900 in middle America and barely makes it past 1950. Thus, the mere passage of time in the book is interesting in its own way—the flavor of life before the internet, before television, even pre-electricity, all of this is seen even if only in glimpses. You witness the monumental changes of World War I and Two through the eyes of Stoner, and this gives the wars a sense of distant drama.
As many books about the wartime period zoom in on dramatic scenes of fighting, this distance is surprisingly interesting, and is a window into how most Americans likely experienced that time. Discussing the war, a teacher tells Stoner;
“You must remember what you are and what you have chosen to become, and the significance of what you are doing. There are wars and defeats and victories of the human race that are not military and that are not recorded in the annals of history. Remember that while you're trying to decide what to do.”
John William’s writing is engaging and, in moments, truly beautiful, cutting to the core of the the human condition. This passage on love is one of the most popular in the book;
“In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another.”
Make no mistake, this is a book about universal feelings, even though it placed firmly in a specific time and place.
Parts of it are maddening, not because the writing is poor, but instead because it conveys Stoner’s powerlessness to change failed romantic or workplace relationships. But in both of those areas, although the protagonist suffers serious, wounding defeats, he also has moments of happiness and victory.
In the sense that this novel is not always exciting, but remains essentially interesting throughout, it captures something critical about what life is.
About the work: Stoner was originally published in 1965 but experienced a surge in popularity in the early 2010s. Tom Hanks, the actor, is apparently a fan. Like the protagonist of his novel, John Williams did his PhD at the University of Missouri.