Stoner - Book Review/Thoughts

“The love of literature, of language, of the mystery of the mind and heart showing themselves in the minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words, in the blackest and coldest print—the love which he had hidden as if it were illicit and dangerous, he began to display, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then proudly.”

Stoner, by John Williams

Now this is a book I wonder why I haven’t heard about or read earlier. Yet I have no doubt I’ll be rereading this again in a couple of years. I ripped through the pages in three sittings, and found myself thinking about it daily. It isn’t an exciting book, but powerful nonetheless. It is a story that draws you into yourself; a narrative that forces reflection upon what makes a successful life. Who we are and who we become is a process, an erosion between “force of person” and “accident of fate,” and thus the lives we end up with are the often unexpected products between us and the world itself. John Williams has skillfully brought his characters vividly to life, with a distinctive style of writing masked by coolness and clarity.

Published in 1965, this is a classic that will withhold the test of time. A marvelous discovery for anyone who loves literature.

A Life of Failure?

To say that Stoner is a simple tale about the life of a quiet man who lives an unremarkable life in early-20th century America would be factual but untrue.

The novel traces the obscure and, to all appearances, unsuccessful life of an assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri in the forty-some years that span before WWI until after WWII. A man of desperately humble origins, he sees the Academy as an “asylum” to his otherwise agrarian upbringing, a place where he finds, at last, “the kind of security and warmth that he should have been able to feel as a child in his home.”

His lifelong dedication to the university and to the sanctity of scholarship is exemplified by his integrity for the pursuit of purity and intellect. Juxtaposed by his grossly unfulfilling marriage and a modest academic life, his love for the arts becomes the epicenter of his existence.

Stoner’s devotion to relentless learning and teaching reminds me of a nameless quote that strongly resonated with me in my early 20s; one which great influenced my winded career choices: “If you’re a teacher your words can be meaningful, but if you’re a compassionate teacher, they can be especially meaningful. If you’re a doctor you can do some good things, but if you’re a caring doctor you can do some other things.” The difference is love. How much of our lives do we act with integrity and intent? Do we contemplate with love? Not only in our interpersonal relationships, but in our everyday work and in the values we live by.

When we ask ourselves, “am I following a path with heart?” we discover that no one can define for us exactly what our path should be. We must look at the values we have chosen to live by, irregardless to circumstance. Where do we put our time, our strength, our creativity, our love? We must look at our life without sentimentality, exaggeration, or idealism. If we are still and listen deeply, even for a moment, we might find our deepest calling.

It is the love infused behind all that we do that is essential. What makes a good life cannot be judged externally, for what is essential cannot be seen with the eye. If I were to say that the novel has one central idea, it is surely that love takes many forms.

“In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. 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, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.”

Stoner’s marriage, on any measure, can only be said to be a failure—empty and unfulfilling. His best attempt at being a good father is regretfully sabotaged by his cruel and pitiful wife. His career, his life’s pursuit, is shamefully stymied by office politics. And while his sweet and passionate affair gives him a taste of fervor—it is short-lived and tempered by outward forces.

Yet Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude. The unlikely hero finds joy and refuge in the “minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words.” Perhaps his life wasn’t as he had imagined, but it is the life he had made, consciously.

Despite his plentiful failures and tragedies, he lived virtuously, courageously even - with a sense of purity and integrity that, in my opinion, dignifies remarkableness.

“He was himself, and he knew what he had been.”