An Invasion of Delicate Details

A well-written book, whether fiction or nonfiction, is invasive.

It saturates the mind and challenges the reader’s worldview. If what we read does not move us intellectually, then what is the point?

Stoner by John Williams is subtly and thoroughly invasive. The title character, William Stoner, will stick with you after the novel is complete. The main character appears so normal, living a life much like so many of us, that his thoughts and reactions to his circumstances are very close to how many readers may respond to the same situation. For this reason, it is easy to internalize what happens to Stoner throughout his personal and professional lives.

The irony is that for a book that is so close to perfection, it has only sporadically been in print. Originally published in 1965, it enjoys a rebirth every few decades. The New York Review of Books is the latest publisher to bring Stoner back to life in 2006.

This was my fourth time reading Stoner over the past 30 years. During my first reading, I recall marveling over the clean, crisp prose and the straight-line narrative, with no fussy or pretentious distractions from the storyline. I was completely transported to the Midwest in the mid-20^th century and felt I knew William Stoner, perhaps better than he did himself. In subsequent readings about a decade apart, I began to understand William Stoner and why he accepted the indignities, either self-created or random, thrust in his direction. It was, I think, his love of life and the experience of literature. I could reflect my life into his and empathize. Like Stoner, I look forward to reading after a day of work, not living vicariously through sports teams or pop stars, but reflecting the day against what I may be reading at the time. I find sustenance in the world of ideas. William Stoner made me wiser. When I walk by Stoner on my bookshelf, I slow down, and his memory invariably overruns my senses.

The story is simple. Boy leaves hardscrabble Midwest farm in the early 20th century to study agriculture and is expected to return home. But a college survey course in literature opens the possibilities to a life of the mind. William Stoner changes majors, marries, earns a doctorate, and pursues a lifelong teaching career. His life is unremarkable. But Stoner’s stoicism against those indignities—some minor, a few major—is remarkable. Literature and teaching remain his unwavering focus and solace. This is the heart of the novel.

At the core of Stoner’s small tragedy is his deeply unhappy marriage to Edith, relieved to some degree by their daughter Grace.

“Within a month he knew his marriage was a failure, within a year he stopped hoping it would improve,” Williams writes. Regardless, there is a subtle, almost unspoken pact about having a child: “I’m—I’m glad you want a child, Edith. I know that in some ways our marriage has been a disappointment to you. I hope this will make a difference between us,” Stoner says.

Edith Stoner manipulates her husband to assure the outward appearance of the protected life she feels is her rightful destiny. She repeats a contrived narrative through actions and words to lower expectations of a healthy father-daughter relationship. Take this moment as a group of other mothers visits the Stoner home: “Once when there was a lull in the noise, he heard Edith say, ‘Poor Grace. She’s so fond of her father, but he has so little time to devote to her.’”

Even Stoner’s end is uneventful. Exiled by his wife to work and sleep in a glass-enclosed porch at the rear of their home for many years, he expires on his sunroom bed without as much as a sigh: “the fingers loosened, and the book they had held moved slowly and then swiftly across the still body and fell into the silence of the room.” Stoner dies in peace. We should all be as fortunate.

Critics have lauded Williams’ “plain” writing style. This is superficial and oversimplified praise. True, his words lay smoothly on the page as one brick evenly stacks upon another in the construction of a home. But “plain” suggests undemanding and boring, a dry bagel without cream cheese, and William Stoner’s inner life is anything but.

Clarity would be the wiser word to describe this contemplative work. A literate author strives for the utmost in lucidity, using words, the tools of the trade, to create precise truths about life. For example, here is Stoner encountering literature for the first time: “He was aware of a change within himself, and as he was aware of that, he moved outward from himself into the world which contained him.” In 26 words, our main character is irrevocably altered, motivating his response to everything that occurs throughout his life.

In over 80,000 words, Stoner has not a single superfluous phrase. Every sentence is crafted with both delicacy and necessity.

Because Stoner’s life appears, at least externally, to be so normal, maybe even boring, we begin to understand how he sustains himself through a rich interior life of reading and academia. He becomes a hero of sorts to those of us who prefer cogitation over visible agitation, contemplation over conflict, mediation over machination.

Borrowing the straightforward prose style of John Williams, here is my CliffsNotes review of Stoner: this book is one helluva fine read.