Stoner (New York Review Books Classics) [Paperback]

John Williams (Author), John McGahern (Introduction)

Book Description

Release date: June 20, 2006 | Series: New York Review Books Classics

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics (June 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590171993
• ISBN-13: 978-1590171998
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (156 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,251 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This reprint of Williams's remarkable 1965 novel offers a window on early 20th century higher education in addition to its rich characterizations and seamless prose. Sent by his hard-scrabble farmer father to the University of Missouri to study agriculture, William Stoner is sidetracked by an obsessive love of literature and stimulated by a curmudgeonly old professor, Archer Sloane. Sloane helps Stoner avoid service in WWI, and Stoner eventually becomes an assistant professor. He then meets and marries a St. Louis beauty, Edith, who quickly subjugates her contemplative, passive husband. As decades pass, Stoner entrenches himself deep into the life of the mind, developing into a master teacher but never finding solace in the outside world. Stoner's single joy is Grace, their daughter, whom Edith appropriates as a weapon in her very personal war against Stoner's quest for inner peace. Williams (1922–1994) won the NBA for Augustus (1973), and NYRB will republish his western, Butch's Crossing next year. Williams's prose flows in a smooth, efficient current that demands contemplation. (July)
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Review

"It’s simply a novel about a guy who goes to college and becomes a teacher. But it’s one of the most fascinating things that you’ve ever come across." — Tom Hanks, Time

"Stoner is written in the most plainspoken of styles….Its hero is an obscure academic who endures a series of personal and professional agonies. Yet the novel is utterly riveting, and for one simple reason: because the author, John Williams, treats his characters with such tender and ruthless honesty that we cannot help but love them." — Steve Almond, Tin House

"[T]he work deserves to be called a 'perfect novel' — there's not a misplaced word or a trace of contrivance." -Boldtype

"The best book I read in 2007 was Stoner by John Williams. It’s perhaps the best book I’ve read in years." -Stephen Elliott, The Believer

"John Williams's Stoner is something rarer than a great novel - it is a perfect novel, so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving, that it takes your breath away." -The New York Times Book Review

"Williams didn't write much compared with some novelists, but everything he did was exceedingly fine...it's a shame that he's not more often read today...But it's great that at least two of his novels [Stoner, Butcher's Crossing] have found their way back into print." -The Denver Post

“A masterly portrait of a truly virtuous and dedicated man” —The New Yorker

“Why isn’t this book famous…Very few novels in English, or literary productions of any kind, have come anywhere near its level for human wisdom or as a work of art.” —C.P. Snow

“Serious, beautiful and affecting, what makes Stoner so impressive is the contained intensity the author and character share.” —Irving Howe, New Republic

“A quiet but resonant achievement” —The Times Literary Supplement

"Perhaps the greatest example of minimalism I’ve ever read...Stoner is a story of great hope for the writer who cares about her work." -Stephen Elliott

“Stoner by John Williams, contains what is no doubt my favorite literary romance of all time. William Stoner is well into his 40s, and mired in an unhappy marriage, when he meets Katherine, another shy professor of literature. The affair that ensues is described with a beauty so fierce that it takes my breath away each time I read it. The chapters devoted to this romance are both terribly sexy and profoundly wise.”—The Christian Science Monitor

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics (June 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590171993
• ISBN-13: 978-1590171998
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (156 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,251 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

200 of 207 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Understated masterpiece, akin to Joyce and Tolstoy. July 18, 2003

By Michael Leone

Format:Paperback

I'd never heard of this author or this book until I read an essay about him in an old back issue of Ploughshares by the novelist Dan Wakefield. I was suspect, too, because I'm not one for academic novels, unless they're farcical, because the only thing there seems to be at stake in academic novels is tenure, which in my opinion, doesn't make for such great reading. Well, not so in Stoner. Stoner is a quiet look at a man's largely unheroic and drab life, "an adventureless tale" as Joyce wrote (and in many respects William Stoner, the protagonist, comes right out of Dubliners). The feat of this book is that Williams makes the diurnal and fairly dull activities of an academic utterly riveting. How does he do it? By not being precious or pretentious about it, which is how so many other writers would have handled the material. Instead, Williams believes in the integrity of his hero, for whom nothing is easily achieved, or for that matter, very attractive. Even Stoner's honeymoon is a fairly squalid affair, and somehow, as bad as the story gets -- and it doesn't get bad in a dramatic or gimmicky way, just bad in the sense that Stoner never really experiences any joy in his life -- we keep reading. The book is grim, yes, and yet it will leave you feeling oddly enthralled. Read it.

119 of 122 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Hero or A Loser? July 1, 2007

By Robert Derenthal

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

On the first page of this fine novel the author tells us that the protagonist is a man of no particular esteem, a university professor who, after 38 years of teaching at the University of Missouri rose no higher than the lowly rank of Assistant Professor.

William Stoner came to the University of Missouri from a poor farm, became entranced by medieval and renaissance English literature and went on to get a PhD in that field. He was a shy man, and throughout his life had but two real friends. His wife was not one of those two. Within a couple of months of marriage Stoner realized his marriage was doomed to failure. Early on, a situation arose at the university in which Stoner, adhering to principle, earned the lifelong enmity of his department head. Another situation arose that offered Stoner a chance at happiness, and that failed.

One reviewer of this book wrote that he didn't see why anyone would want to read this book about a loser. But was he a loser? In an interview the author, John Williams, stated that he felt that Professor Stoner was a "hero." Surely this is a story of a man who really never got anywhere in life, his marriage was a failure, his parenting poor, and he never was really a vibrant member of the university faculty. Yet in some ways Stoner never gave up. Lacking innate teaching skills he worked hard at it, and became a popular teacher. He was never bitter, and, though struggling as a parent and father, he held on.

So there are two ways of looking at our "hero" or "loser." I found the book to be a wonderfully different view of a man's life. Certainly we can identify with him in some of our own failures, with our own wishes that maybe somethings in our lives might have been different.... Then again, I don't read a book necessarily to find someone that I can identify with. I am intrigued by interesting lives that may be totally different from my life, or my fantasy life.

One final comment. I found the last 20 pages of this book to be heartbreaking. Being an older person myself, I am especially touched by the difficulties that age brings on. This is an excellent literary novel abounding with elegant writing. For me it was one of those books that I thought about for days after I finished it. Read more ›

69 of 70 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book About a Small Ordinary Life March 14, 2004

By Mark

Format:Paperback

In this remarkable, overlooked work, John Williams chooses as his central character an undistinguished English professor (Stoner), who lives a largely uneventful life teaching at a drab Midwestern university. Neither Stoner's wife, nor his colleagues, nor his students think much of him. Yet the degree to which Williams succeeds in bringing the reader to identify with -- and care for -- his most unlikely protagonist is nothing short of a triumph. The final pages, in particular, are sad, transcendent, and unforgettable.

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply stunning January 20, 2006

By Susan Dougherty

Format:Paperback

Stoner is a truly moving work. Its brilliance lies partly in its rectitude, partly in its discomfort and mostly in its artistry. As reviewers have accurately summed, the novel's ultimately about a man's stoicism (which sounds truly boring) and honor, but is really a meditation on individuality.

As an English teacher I'm encouraged to teach Ethan Frome to the students, and would much rather teach this novel for its depth, complexity and beauty

Please buy, read and pass this book on! (I am a Northerner, not a relative, yet simply a reader!)

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Marvelous Rediscovered American Novel August 5, 2007

By Steve Koss VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Every once in a while, a worthy but largely unknown novel registers on the literary radar screen and receives deserved attention. Dow Mossman's verbally hyperactive but extraordinary THE STONES OF SUMMER is one such example, rediscovered a few years ago by Mark Moskowitz's STONE READER documentary. John Williams's STONER is another, revitalized by Morris Dickstein's June 2007 paean in the New York Sunday Times Book Review. A thousand thanks, Mr. Dickstein - STONER is indeed a marvelous tale of American life and academia in the first half of the 20th Century.

Published in 1965, STONER was the second of Williams's three novels. Despite the date and serendipitous title, this is far from a beat or hippie generation story. To the contrary, hero William Stoner is a salt of the earth middle American, born and raised on a modest family farm in Missouri at the beginning of the 20th Century. Through intelligence, hard work, and good fortune, Stoner enters the University of Missouri to study modern agriculture. Williams presents his hero as a classically naďve farm boy, utterly awed by the buildings, the books, the other students, and the general aura of academe. All goes well until Stoner the freshman literature class of Archer Sloane. Despite being publicly embarrassed by Sloane for his inability to explain a Shakespearean sonnet about lost love (which also foreshadows his own later life), Stoner nevertheless discovers his true calling in literature. He changes majors, obtains his degree, and ultimately accepts a teaching position at his alma mater. One of his few good friends from the university, Dave Masters, subsequently describes the young Stoner with dead-on precision as "our own midwestern Don Quixote without his Sancho" - prophetic words, indeed.... Most of Stoner's subsequent troubles in his professorial life arise from his quixotic insistence on intellectual purity and refusal to play academic politics. Although it takes him far too many years to learn how to fight back, he eventually proves to have some modest skills at windmill-tilting.

STONER the book traces the surprisingly tempestuous arc of Stoner the man's outwardly mundane life: friendships made and lost to wartime death, the ups and downs in a marriage of sexually naďve co-equals, the birth of a daughter, the triumphs and despairs of professional life, and the petty jealousies and irrational retaliatory behaviors engendered by academic politics. Williams presents the story of an intellectual idealist, but ultimately it is a story of failure. Failure in the real world to prevent young men from wasteful deaths in two world wars and Korea, failure of a marriage, failure in holding on to a true love, failure to establish a stable family life (Stoner's is classically dysfunctional), and failure as an intellectual in his chosen field. Williams offers Stoner a sole mitigating success as a teacher where, despite difficult departmental odds, he finds a moderate degree of satisfaction and life purpose.

Williams writes in a noticeably direct, matter-of-fact, third-person style. He minces no words in describing his characters, creating an environment that is at once realistic yet inescapably sad. The reader can only feel empathy bordering on pity for Stoner, his wife Edith, and their unfortunate daughter Grace (about whom one can only remark the misfortune that we cannot choose our parents). At age 42, Stoner "...could see nothing before him that he wished to enjoy and little behind him that he cared to remember." What a despairing statement about one's own life. Yet, in the end, Stoner achieves a modicum of satisfaction and self-realization even as he surveys the unrealized expectations and potentialities of a life not so badly lived. He is a tragic hero, but a hero still and all. And a surprisingly likable one at that. Read more ›