Stoner

Had Raymond Carver written a novel, it may have been a lot like Stoner.

William Stoner feels stuck on a family farm, performing the same chores day-in-day-out. Perhaps his parents pick up on this and decide to send him to university to pursue a course in agriculture, which he gladly accepts, though expresses concern about them running the farm without him. They tell him not to worry, it will be tended to.

After one unusual course in literature with an eccentric prof, Stoner becomes enamored with English literature of the early and medieval era and changes from courses in agriculture to literature courses.

On graduation day, Stoner finally reveals to his parents the nature of his degree in literature and, moreover, his desire to stay on at the University of Missouri to pursue advanced degrees and begin teaching. His parents are shocked, but want him to be happy, and assure him they can work the farm fine without his help by hiring a helper and growing different crops.

The Big War comes and some of his peers who are in the graduate department get fired up and want to join the army; they ask Stoner to join them, but he demures, saying that the department would be too short-staffed. Almost immediately one of his colleagues dies on the battlefield. The other returns safely.

Meanwhile, Stoner’s university political troubles emerge when he rightfully fails a non-performing student who has a powerful ally in the department, setting up what will become an ebbing of his prospects to teach the courses he’d prefer to teach.

Then a mis-marriage to Edith, who turns frosty on him almost immediately after the rush to a ceremony in a cluttered Justice of the Peace’s office. Edith is offputting and indifferent and William gives her space, agreeing to sleep on the sofa. He will, in fact, spend most of his life sleeping on sofas.

They try to save the marriage by having a child and go through the required steps for that awkwardly. Nine months later, Grace comes into their lives and soon Edith is upset that Stoner paying more attention to Grace than to her. She moves back to Columbia, MO, to stay with her parents, bringing Grace. She stays there for a year while Stoner attends to his teaching duties.

Edith finally returns and takes up a whirlwind socialite calendar that keeps her busy and away from William while also taking up most of Grace’s time and attention. Stoner has an awful teaching schedule due to his unpopularity with his department’s head. He can no longer meet and pick up Grace after school.

Eventually a former student, now teacher, comes to Stoner to show him her dissertation. He reads it and is astounded at its quality and that she incorporated some of his comments. Soon they are having an affair, which lasts years, always avoiding from one another in public to keep it secret. When Edith mentions his affair once, not seeming to care, he realizes many more must know.

One day Edith shrieks loudly and Stoner finds her and Grace in the livingroom. Grace announces she is pregnant. Stoner asks Edith to leave the room and he has a calm discussion with Grace telling her it’s her decision what she wants to do. Edith returns with the assumption that a quick marriage was in order and begins making all the plans. They meet the boy and then the boy’s parents. Before it’s done they’re married and he’s off to fight the Japanese.

When word of his affair finally reaches the university, an old nemesis, who has more power now, threatens not Stoner, but his young, untenured paramour. Lomax (his nemesis) gives him an ultimatum: he goes or she goes. The two spend a last week together grateful for their tryst, then she, somewhat selflessly agrees to leave and is off to teach at another far off university and Stoner returns home to his stifled life. He jumps back into academics with renewed energy.

The Great Depression and WWII come and go with Stoner safely ensconced in a tenured academic career. He feels his privilege and also feels the pain of those without such. Grace’s husband has died in the early days of the Pacific Theater. She gives birth to a boy and names him after his father.

Much of the last third of the book is taken up with thoughtful introspection about his life. Stoner, our quiet hero, suffering but grateful for what life and literature has offered him.

In the final chapter, we follow Stoner through what he hopes is an early retirement; but that is interupted by some unfortunate pains, ignored at first, but which turn out to be cancer. He would have stayed on another two years and not retired had it not been for that, and knew he would have been promoted to Professor Emeritus had he lived—a cruel twist of fate.

Grace visits him saying her son is living with his paternal grandparents and that it’s better that way, as she has taken to drink.

The last sentence is Stoner fading out.

The introduction of this edition gives us a little background about this little-known (at least to me) author:

John Williams is best known for his novels, Nothing But the Night, Stoner (1965), Butcher’s Crossing, and Augustus, for which he won the National Book Award in 1973. He also published two volumes of verse and edited a classic anthology of English Renaissance poetry. The novels are not only remarkable for their style but also for the diversity of their settings. No two novels are alike except for the clarity of the prose; they could easily pass for the work of four different writers.