Stoner by John Williams

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.
--back cover

I knew this book was going to either make me drag my feet through it, or I'd have a good time overall. I'm glad that I fell into the latter category.

I derived enjoyment mainly because the book appealed to my existentialist side, exploring how meaningless life can be if we don't create our own meaning for it. Most of pop culture explores the explosive and dramatic importance of humans and humanity (which I don't have anything against), but I also find it refreshing to read something that's just so quietly and timidly insignificant, even though it's sad and a little horrifying to think about. Admittedly, I don't really read a lot of existentialist books so I can't say how this one stands in that subgenre but from where I am, at least, I did enjoy the whole ride and found myself going through this a lot quicker and with more engagement than I expected.

The writing had a weird effect on me. It was straightforward to the cusp of being boring, but, for some weird reason that I cannot quite name, it sucked me in and I found myself even rereading some passages so I don't miss out on what it's trying to say. That being said, I can absolutely understand people finding it boring and for that reason I wouldn't recommend this book to just about anyone.

Stoner is not a flawless character by any standard. He's pretty much just an average person who isn't deliberately malicious and doesn't aspire to much in life. He'll never be a villain, a hero, or even any other kind of sterotype, because he's so in the middle. There are, I'm sure, millions of Stoners out there in all of human history but because their lives are usually drab and unexciting (from a pop culture standpoint), it's usually never memorialized. I think this book is trying to do that.

Stoner makes good and bad decisions, he randomly experiences leaps of epiphany and seems to find a personality, only to later shrink back into himself and retreat from confrontation or making a stand. Most books might have their heroes as a Gordon Finch who enthusiastically signs up for war and achieves all these accolades in academia, so it's interesting to see things from a perspective like Stoner's, who consistently shrinks away from things. He's the sort of person no one seems to remember for very long after he's gone (like the depressing first few passages of the book), but I think what the book does is to show us the inner workings of all these nameless, faceless people who have faded into the backgrounds of society and time, and that they, like any hero or villain in life, are also trying to create some meaning for themselves if it isn't as flamboyantly or colourfully done.

This book was also just as much about Edith and Grace as it was about Stoner, because, going along with the customs of the times, as the head of the household Stoner would inevitably dictate the course of his wife's and daughter's lives, whether he wanted to or not. Edith sadly doesn't seem to have a happy childhood - the theory that her father sexually abused her is one I only read about after I was done with the book but I buy it, everything does click into place - and, in so doing, she sort of pays it forward and asphyxiates Grace's childhood. Stoner doesn't intervene. Sure, I was annoyed at him for not standing up for Grace more and it's not an excusable reason, but it's also pretty real.

In the end, this book is about an ordinary, flawed person trying to navigate an ordinary, flawed existence. He makes some good and some bad decisions along the way, accumulating some accolades but which is outweighed by a ton of regrets and missed opportunities. The beauty in it is that I think most of us are more like Stoner than we realise or than we admit to ourselves.

La mejor narración de una muerte que he leído hasta el momento.

I cannot think of another book I've read with such a passive protagonist and relatively unremarkable narrative that I've enjoyed as much as this.

And I think that mostly comes down to the prose. I really love books in which the writing style matches the themes of the story and sets a tone through which to experience it.

William Stoner is almost just an observer to most of the events throughout his life and the sort of vague, disconnected narration emphasises this. Conversations are often described rather than transcribed. Stoner's actions and decisions are, besides a few key moments, just things he is resigned to by circumstance. Certain characters act antagonisticly towards him while he, and the reader, barely see any evidence of why they would behave that way.

Though that leads to why this wasn't quite a home run for me. It feels “true to life” to not completely understand the actions of some of the other characters, and the same can be said for events that cause a disruption in Stoner's life and are then quickly moved on from, but that isn't the most satisfying story to read (though that could certainly be the intent of the author).

This was a great book club pick though because I can see from our Goodreads reviews that opinions of it are all over the place, haha.