Stoner(2010)

John Williams

★★★★½ [9/10]

written: 24/06/2024

this review contains spoilers!

A friend from college let me borrow this book. I finally managed to finish it before it slipped through the tracks against a torrent of less-than-interesting readings, more-than-interesting novels, and a general sense of lethargy that kept shaking me around as the days grew colder.

Stoner's journey from below-working-class farmhand, to timid undergraduate, to academic and finally his deathbed is the hallmark of a life seemingly well-lived. He's a bit of a shithead at times in the book - towards his career rival Lomax, further with an over-enthusiastic prospective PHD student who he seeks to put down seemingly just to spite Lomax, but most notably, towards his wife. Edith is by no means a passive woman - her transformation from a soft-spoken and frail housewife to self-determined swinger is evidence of that tenfold - but the clash between her and Stoner isn't grounded in open animosity and crossfire. It's familial tension written to perfection, where both parties are belligerents in a silent war. Though Stoner can by all acounts be registered as a bit of a cunt by any objective third-party viewer, that doesn't stop us from rooting for him throughout the book. Even when he cheats on Edith with the hothead Katherine, could we really put him at fault? Edith seems to agree -- it's the catalyst for her own withdrawal beyond being confined by the relationship to pursue her own desires.

More fulfilling is Stoner's rise to notoreity in the English faculty at the University of Missouri. His kerfuffle with Lomax leaves the two at each others throats. Lomax, evoking old and bitter antagonism paradoxically juxtaposed with Stoner's dead friend Dave Masters, does not fulfill the old role his friend left behind. He exists as an obstacle to Stoner's need for law and order and thereby to his character itself - in their final challenge, where the members of the faculty must choose to either pass or fail a prospective Literature PHD student's dissertation draft that was personally mentored by Lomax, Stoner goes out of his way to disrupt him, either out of spite or resolve. Stoner goes through a second personal transformation, evolving from mysterious faculty member to the stuff of legend, where his legacy speaks louder than his presence.

Not all good things last. All these personal triumphs - the birth of his daughter, his academic tenureship, and his petty revenge over Lomax all burn brightly and not for long. The novel does not end at the securing of Stoner's legacy - it ends with him withering away in bed, where only a few chapters prior we read of his triumphant and defiant challenges against Lomax we now trudge through a pained epilogue cataloging the degeneration of his spirit and dullness of mind. Much like life itself, my final lasting impression of the book is in my memories of its most evocative moments and conflicts - not its humble beginning or bittersweet end.