Stoner
by John Edward Williams(1965)
Novelc. 280 pages
“An occasional student, curious about the man who taught him, would wonder about him; but he would learn little, for there was little to learn.”
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One great work, every day
by John Edward Williams(1965)
“An occasional student, curious about the man who taught him, would wonder about him; but he would learn little, for there was little to learn.”
John Edward Williams(1965)
William Stoner, son of Missouri farmers, discovers literature in college and spends his life teaching it at the same university where he studied. Nothing dramatic happens: a difficult marriage, a problematic daughter, academic politics, a love affair that ends. Williams wrote this in the mid-1960s, it was barely noticed, and then it was rediscovered decades later and became an unlikely bestseller. The prose is plain and quietly devastating. The novel is about the life of the mind, about what it means to love something purely, about the dignity of an ordinary existence. You finish it and realize that nothing was ordinary at all.