Stoner, by John Williams

What the books we love to read say about us (if anything)

I was desperately casting about for a book I could read all the way through. I’m a bad reader, I give up too quickly if I’m not fairly immediately taken by the characters in any book. Then I remembered a novel I’d enjoyed some years ago called Stoner and I thought, it was a while since I read it, let’s have another look at it, so I downloaded it onto my Kindle and as I spent many days at home recovering from a lung infection, I read it through again.

Stoner original cover

A short way into the novel I began to wonder what it was I’d loved about it before. Set mostly in Missouri it’s a sad story about a sad man, the son of a farmer, who unexpectedly discovers a love of medieval literature and decides to become a teacher. He has a sad marriage and a fond yet tricky relationship with his daughter and with his university colleagues. He suffers, both at home and at work, from antagonism from rival teachers and a wife who shows him not the slightest bit of affection.

So it’s not exactly a barrel of laughs. And yet, uncharacteristically, I found it strangely uplifting while all the time wondering why I was so taken by the story of a man whose life was so downtrodden. The book tells us right at the beginning that Stoner was not a teacher or a man who people remembered or talked about. His life had very little impact on anyone really. He had an extra marital affair that brought him brief happiness before that, of necessity, had to end. He stuck with his wife despite their continuous estrangement, as he stuck with his job despite determined efforts on the part of rival professors to undermine him or to get rid of him.

The answer is that I loved William Stoner. He was a truly decent man and a person of total integrity. He was capable of deep love – for his daughter and for his lover – who gave far more than he received and never gave up on anything, personally or professionally. That none of this brought him much happiness is deeply poignant. I suspect there are William Stoners all over the world, good men and women leading lives of selfless, quiet desperation, ignored by posterity yet crucial members of our fractured society. For me at least Stoner is not a nonentity, and I at least will never forget him.

As for what it says about me? I’d like to say I identify with him, to some extent. Hard-working, dedicated and persistent, like Stoner I and many others like me know we will die unremarked and unremembered by posterity, but it doesn’t mean our lives have been wasted. Not at all.