Book Review: Stoner

By Michael Attard

The story Stoner, by John Edward Williams (1922–1994), is fiction but draws from the author’s own life. A tale of humble beginnings from dirt poor farming, flowing into the world of academia, social acceptance, and success. Yet, while our protagonist finds his calling and becomes an unwavering crusader for the cultural glory of English literature and the lofty standards of erudition, his private life is asunder with misguided affection, weak response, and meek resignation.

William Stoner was born in 1891 on a small farm in Missouri. His human failings are balanced by a strength of character and independence. When a professor and mentor asks about his plans for after graduation, Stoner simply and quickly responds, “I don’t know.” But when the professor inquires further pertaining to a return to the farm, what immediately follows is a “No Sir,” said with such a decisiveness that his own voice surprised him.

America had become involved in the European war, and young men were rushing to the military. Stoner decides not to go to war, well aware that he is disappointing his friends. The author masterfully elucidates the emotional depth of the moment. “He felt no guilt for his decision … but he was aware of the looks that he received … and of the thin edge of respect that showed through his students’ conventional behavior toward him.”

The quality of the writing makes this a great book. With precision and accuracy on every page, the reader finds oneself at the center of Stoner’s world. When he first meets his wife-to-be, Edith Bostwick, the writing captures inescapably the pulse of the young Stoner’s metaphysical heart. “Stoner paused in the doorway, caught by his vision of the young woman…. Stoner was assailed by a consciousness of his own heavy clumsiness … he felt the gaze of the young woman brush warmly across his face.” When referring to Edith’s large pale blue eyes, “he seemed drawn out of himself, into a mystery that he could not apprehend.”

Stoner and Edith marry. “Within a month, he knew that the marriage was a failure; within a year he stopped hoping that it would improve.” But the author does not leave the discourse at that. Rather, using language that literally emanates from under the bed sheets, he shares with the reader Stoner’s animal instincts and Edith’s sense of violation. “Sometimes at night … his resolve and knowledge crumbled … and he moved upon her … performed his love as quickly as he could, hating himself for his haste, and regretting his passion.”

Edith wages a personal and not so secretive war against Stoner. As if one challenging foe was not enough, there is a second antagonist in the person of Professor Lomax, who eventually becomes the chairman of the English department. The duplicitous Lomax becomes an epitome of scholastic dishonesty, an embodiment of moral corruption and dishonor. Stoner and Lomax lock horns over an unqualified student whom Lomax, for an undisclosed reason, wants to push through the system. Stoner, for his part, will not give the student a passing grade. Eventually, Lomax gets his chance to ruin Stoner.

We then meet the stoical Stoner. Morals of the time did not allow a married male professor to enjoy an affair with a younger female colleague. Yet, inadvertently, this is exactly where Stoner found himself. “In his extreme youth, Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being … in his maturity, he had decided it was the heaven of false religion…. Now in his middle age, he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming.”

“With precision and accuracy on every page, the reader flnds oneself at the center of Stoner’s world.”

Nevertheless, Lomax had him: “Stoner knew somewhere within the numbness that grew from a small center of his being, that a part of his life was over.” Stoner and his lover, Katherine, both impassively understood their situation. Saying farewell was necessary to avoid the destruction of their selves. Stoner says, “If I gave it up, just walked out – you would go with me, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“But you know I won’t do that, don’t you?” “Yes, I know.”

Essentially the story is complete at this point, but the author tells us more. This does not imply that the author is filling pages. Rather, there is a wrapping up of one’s affairs. We encounter a change in Stoner’s temperament, more quarrelsome than before, but still “the knowledge of common misery touched him and changed him … and a quiet sadness for the common plight was never far beneath any moment of his living.” He continues to live, acquiescent to Edith’s demands and his daughter Grace’s poor life choices.

Stoner becomes ill. “He had no wish to die; but there were moments … when he looked forward impatiently.”

Interestingly, Williams’ third novel, Stoner, when first published in 1965, was not a commercial success. Less than 2,000 hardcover copies were sold. But it was reissued in 2005 to widespread critical acclaim.

Photograph by Michael Attard.