Stoner

A quiet and rather uneventful life of an English professor at a small university in the midwestern USA, during the first half of the 20th century. The language is light-weight and straight-forward; the events are simple and ordinary, and all together there's immense beauty in Williams' prose and story.

Stoner's life is a life lived quite passively, he stoically accepts the misfortunes life presents him. He is happiest when consumed by his passion for learning and teaching. Yet even this passion is not consistent and he never rises above mediocrity. He's not a hero, as he passively takes every work-related attack and even doesn't react when his wife estranges his daughter from him. Yet you cheer for him when life gives him a few wins.

A couple of paragraphs I had to reread because their quiet beauty resonated.

An exceptional novel. When I first saw the cover I thought, “What classic is this? And ugh, it looks like homework.” Don't be deceived (unless you like homework?) It's a tightly-woven narrative that brilliantly encapsulates the entire life of its protagonist. The author's keen observation and the profound depiction of Stoner's life give readers a sense of deep familiarity and connection. One of the unique aspects of the novel is its setting. It serves as a fantastic campus novel, portraying the academic life with an eloquence that makes it feel real and personal. It's a wonder that such a compelling and insightful novel hasn't been adapted into a film yet.

Questo libro potrebbe essere riassunto con una frase del tipo “una delle più belle storie e scritture che abbia mai letto, sul personaggio più inutile ed irritante della storia della letteratura contemporanea”. E si potrebbe anche finire qui, ma andiamo con ordine...

Stoner è un romanzo del 1965 dello scrittore statunitense John Edward Williams, che è stato un romanziere, poeta e accademico statunitense, vincitore di un National Book Award per la narrativa nel 1973. All'attivo vanta pochissimi libri, solo quattro, pubblicati anche in Italia da Fazi editore dopo la riscoperta di quest'autore semi sconosciuto grazie al passaparola e ai social network che ha fatto di “Stoner” un bestseller. È stato apprezzato da pubblico, critica e scrittori, raccogliendo pareri favorevoli. Pensate che quando questo romanzo fu pubblicato nel 1965, inizialmente non riscosse molto successo, vendendo solo duemila copie.

Ma esattamente di cosa parla questo romanzo? Di un professore universitario, o meglio della storia della sua vita, così piatta e desolata, della sua totale apaticità, che per i tre quarti del libro ti viene voglia di entrare nella storia, prenderlo per il bavero del cappotto alzarlo da terra e fargli sbattere la testa contro il muro: non si allontana mai per più di centocinquanta chilometri da Booneville, il piccolo paese rurale in cui è nato, mantiene lo stesso lavoro per tutta la vita, per quasi quarantanni è infelicemente sposato alla stessa donna, ha sporadici contatti con l'amata figlia (e qui sta forse la sua colpa più grave), per i suoi genitori è un estraneo e per sua ammissione ha soltanto due amici, uno dei quali morto in gioventù.

Dunque cosa fa questo libro un bestseller? Sicuramente la scrittura di Williams: semplice, delicata, fluida, poetica, di grande effetto, lo scorrere delle pagine durante la lettura è veloce e arriva direttamente al lettore, ancor più, emoziona; poi probabilmente questo libro ha successo perché alla fin fine descrive una vita normale, anche se fallimentare a mio avviso, comune a tutti, possiamo riconoscere molti aspetti della vita di ognuno di noi in “Stoner” e dunque ci possiamo sentire anche noi un po' protagonisti con le nostre vite di tutti i giorni, di questo romanzo.

Questo comunque non toglie l'irritabilità che mi ha provocato questa lettura, Stoner è troppo apatico, troppo immobile rispetto alla vita per rendermelo in qualche simpatico e non posso davvero dimenticare, per quanto belle siano le descrizioni dell'autore, i troppi passaggi in cui avrei voluto prenderlo a schiaffi.

Reading fiction has always been a double-edged sword for me. Some of the most intimate moments I've spent alone is while reading fictional stories, while at the same time, feeling a pang of disappointment for myself because I wasn't doing anything “productive.” Is this mere entertainment? Am I just escaping my real-life responsibilities and reading stories of make-believe? While I still haven't found sincere answers to these questions, I've grown more confident of what I enjoy and what I don't, which has consequently helped me find peace with this conflict. Over the years, I've realized that reading good literature is therapeutic for me - not to be used as an afterthought but essential to keep me functional.

Stoner was another great session in my therapy.

A story that on the surface feels depressing and sad, but curiously enough has immense hopeful undertones. This is the ordinary story of a man whose only goals in life are to attain two of the most notoriously difficult things known to mankind - knowledge, and love. He fails in both, but if you look underneath the surface, he succeeds in attaining both as well - just enough to make him feel satisfied but not enough to make the world think the same. The story is simple. A man hailing from rural American farmland attends university, falls in love with literature, and decides to dedicate himself to fulfill his passion. He starts teaching at the university, gets married by following his desire, but without falling in love, has a passionate love affair and, in the end, dies without having accomplished much.

But the way Mr. Williams writes this simple story is mesmerizing, to say the least. There's an existential dread in all the interactions, always pulsing with energy, and the prose flows with a perfection, almost to a fault. When I looked back at the book having finished my 4-hour marathon run through it, I noticed that for the first 100 pages or so, the book had a lot of markings - sentences I had loved, descriptions I had enjoyed - however as it moved further, I got tired of doing so, simply because it only got better and better. If I had continued, the whole book would have been messed up by my pencil.

Throughout the book, I could sense Camus's influence on his writing; the existential dread always present. All the characters felt as if they could easily exist in my universe. The slow torment that the protagonist went through, at times, felt too personal, as if someone had mercilessly ripped out a few chapters from my life and laid it bare for the world to see. One of these moving passages is written at approximately two-third of the book, which I can't help but quote below:

In his extreme youth, Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity, he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which he ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.

He had come to that moment in his age when there occurred to him, with increasing intensity, a question of such overwhelming simplicity that he had no means to face it. He found himself wondering if his life were worth the living; if it had ever been. It was a question, he suspected, that came to all men at one time or another; he wondered if it came to them with such impersonal force as it came to him. The question brought with it a sadness, but it was a general sadness which (he thought) had little to do with himself or with his particular fate; he was not even sure that the question sprang from the most immediate and obvious causes, from what his own life had become. It came, he believed, from the accretion of his years, from the density of accident and circumstance, and from what he had come to understand of them. He took a grim and ironic pleasure from the possibility that what little learning he had managed to acquire had led him to this knowledge; that in the long run all things, even the learning that let him know this, were futile and empty, and at last diminished into a nothingness they did not alter.

A beautifully written story of a kind and gentle man from a poor farming family whose father offers him the opportunity to attend college and who, while there, discovers a life-long love of literature that leads him to the teaching profession. What could be viewed as a sad and lonely life could, upon further reflection, be seen as a life spent in a job he loved. I was frustrated at the main character, Stoner, for being passive in too many parts of his life, for not making the effort to get to know his grandson, for letting others take advantage of him, and I cheered the few times he was proactive. The author is from Northeast Texas so I was of course inclined to like the book!

Le capacità di un libro di farti emozionare, trascendere dalla propria persona e farti riflettere mi meraviglia ogni volta. Ogni volta c'è un libro che sedimenta nel mia anima per dirla romanticamente, ed ogni volta mi sento così fortunato ad avere quel pezzo di vissuto in più. Stoner sarà questo per chiunque lo legga, con una potenza e capacità di trasmettere questo vissuto intimamente e profondamente che raramente ho trovato altrove. È un libro sulla vita, e di quanto questa esperienza, nonostante l'inettitudine e l'incapacità di comprendersi, sia magnifica anche senza scalare una montagna o diventare calciatore. Ho come il presentimento che non dimenticherò facilmente questa storia, e ho già voglia di rileggerlo.

“Deve ricordare chi è e chi ha scelto di essere, e il significato di quello che sta facendo. Ci sono guerre, sconfitte e vittorie della razza umana che non sono di natura militare e non vengono registrate negli annali della storia. Se ne ricordi, al momento di fare la sua scelta.”

Se avessi potuto darne sei di stelline, le avrei date.

Život seljaka, one vrste s početka 20. stoljeća i američkog juga na kojem je William odrastao uvjetuje ovisnost o zemlji, ćudljivom gospodaru koji zahtjeva fiksnu količinu rada i svakodnevni trud, ali čiji prinosi se ne mogu predvidjeti niti se na njih može pouzdati. I ljudi su to prihvatili, ne možeš se pobuniti protiv prirode, ako prinos izostane ostaje im jedino ponoviti cijeli proces i nadati se boljoj godini. Odnos prema zapreci ove vrste traži prihvaćanje datog stanja kao nepromjenjivog, fokus seljaka umjesto na promjenu uvjeta mijenja se na odnos prema ishodu, očajavanje nije izbor, valja prilagoditi svoje radnje, prilagoditi zalihe i nadati se boljim uvjetima sljedeće godine.

U idejnoj izgradnji lika Williama Stonera odrastanje u ovim uvjetima stvara obrazac  kojim će se on nastaviti odnositi prema događajima u svom životu i nakon života na farmi. Gradski život ne može brzo prihvatiti kao normalan, on sam hoda drugačije od drugih, nema novaca da sudjeluje u igrankama, vidi se vanjskim dijelom društva promatrajući ljude oko sebe slično kako Mersault to radi kod Camusa. U tome ima smisla njegovo nalaženje eskapizma u književnosti, apstraktnim idejama srednjeg vijeka i renesanse, radi se o nečemu što je potpuno izvan interesa struje društva, nešto što nikakvu promjenu neće unijeti, što je eskapistički interes Williama i njegovih kolega. 

“It's for us that the University exists, for the dispossessed of the world; not for the students, not for the selfless pursuit of knowledge, not for any of the reasons that you hear. We give out the reasons, and we let a few of the ordinary ones in, those that would do in the world; but that's just protective coloration. Like the church in the Middle Ages, which didn't give a damn about the laity or even about God, we have our pretenses in order to survive. And we shall survive—because we have to.”  

Vjerujem kako Williamova karakterizacija kao osobe koja se ne vidi dijelom društva, služi kao metafora za cijelu katedru književnosti, barem u ono doba, mjesta gdje profesor sa svojim studentima analizu pjesme stare 500 godina doživljavaju smrtno ozbiljno. I to se uzima posve logičnim. Eskapističko mjesto koje služi za utočište za sve Stonere ovog svijeta, jer jedino oni ga i mogu vidjeti privlačnim.

Čitajući knjigu pitao sam se cijelo vrijeme je li William sretan čovjek, je li imao dobar život. Njegov stoički ako ću iskoristiti pozitivan pridjev, pasivni ako ću uzeti negativni, pristup stvarima van fakulteta donosi mu neuspjehe na društvenoj skali. U Edith se zaljubio, jer je u njoj našao svoj unutarnji ideal ljepote, ali za čiju ljubav se prestao boriti nakon nekoliko tjedana braka kad je shvatio da ona želi čovjeka koji on ne može ili možda ipak preciznije, ne želi biti. Njeno zamjeranje je logična reakcija, za razliku od Williama ona je produkt tog vremena, odrasla u visokoj klasi očekujući od muža da pokaže inicijativu i pruži joj sve ono što žene njene klase očekuju imati, stvari za koje William nikad zainteresiran nije bio. Da se njega pitalo nikad onaj mali stan ne bi napustili, ali opet i njih dvoje su tokom godina našli načina da funkcioniraju kao cimeri, ako već ne kao supružnici. Izgubio je kćerku koja je razvila isti eskapistički bijeg od stvarnosti kakav je pokazivao i njen otac, nije imala knjige, ali je pronašla alkohol. Našao je ljubav sa djevojkom iz svog svijeta sveučilišta, u čijim očima on je bio velik, ali čija veza nije mogla trajati u fatalističkom svijetu gdje oboje sebe vide strancima kojima nije predviđen put glavnog junaka modernih priča. Nije moglo završiti drugačije za njih dvoje. Ali opet, ako proglasim Williama Stonera nesretnim, zar time ne pretpostavljam očekivanja životu vođena idejom individualca koji treba imati sve ili umrijeti u pokušaju. U stvarnom životu to baš i ne funkcionira tako, s te strane mi Williamov stav daje nadu, njegovo neprihvaćanje patnje kao baznog stanja bez obzira na okolnosti i fokus na pozitivne dijelove koji će se uvijek pojaviti bez obzira na ukupnu sliku.

This book has lingered in my thoughts long after I finished reading it, leaving me with a profound yearning for other works that evoke a similar sense of longing and melancholy. Initially, I approached it as just another classic—one of those that was tedious with prose that droned. However, something compelled me to keep turning the pages, captivated by the narrative of a man who was raised on a farm and turned away from his agricultural upbringing to pursue academia.

The book explores themes of sacrifice, duty, and isolation, while examining the intricacies of ordinary existence. It chronicles the life of William Stoner, detailing his personal and professional journey, including his marriage, attainment of a doctoral degree, and parenthood. Despite these significant achievements, his life gradually unravels into a loveless marriage, a career fraught with political strife, and a daughter who grows distant. Although he encounters trials, he continues to teach English Literature and his pursuits. Stoner's character is both deeply flawed and deeply sympathetic. In some moments, you wanted to shout at him through the pages as he made decisions that brought his downfall. Stoner had a quiet resilience that resonated powerfully and reminded me of people in my own life, who make decisions or are impacted by life events, but must go on living for the sake of their family, their career, or themselves.

It also thoughtful examined the academic life and analyzed its complexities, flaws, and inherent contradictions. The isolation of the academic, the disillusionment of knowledge and its pursuit, and conflict between practical and idealism.

Stoner draws powerful parallels to everyday life, prompting readers to reflect on their own existence and ask, “How am I living my life?” Personally, while my experiences differ significantly from William Stoner's, I found a deep resonance in his feelings of personal struggle, unfulfilled dreams, isolation, and resilience. The novel raises important questions about whether these themes represent the essence of human existence.

I highly recommend this book and understand why it has become a favorite for many. As of 2024, it stands as my favorite read of the year.

You know that feeling when you read a good book and it feels everything you do can be connected what you just read.

Like a shadow you can not get a rid of, it is annoying but comforting at the same time. You found yourself between those pages and found an author who shares same human feelings and thoughts as you. It reminds you that you are not special, you just need to think less and talk more. And also that shadow throws a shade on everything you read in near future. You wish that every next book has similar shape and words like that shadow. But it is hard to accept that every book should be different and that every man and woman are pretty much the same.

I did not write anything about the book itself, because I do not want to. I want anyone to read it with an empty mind and take from it as much as they can.

Cheers

A beautiful story of a man who's life, of little note from the outside perspective, was worthy nonetheless by pure virtue of it having been lived.

I can't say definitively that I've gained from this book all it wishes to give, nor that I meticulously scrolled over its words at a rationed speed to fully perceive all it's messages...but what I read and what I understood was the beauty of a life lived modestly.

I wish to come back to this book again and again.

este libro es vida. es la vida de una persona cualquiera, pero contada de una manera tan personal, íntima y con una habilidad d hacer empatizar al lector con los personajes

stoner no es un piedrero, pero casi. adicto a no decir lo q siente, adicto a seguir lo q dicen los demás, adicto al trabajo, adicto a dejar las cosas pasar....

tiene algunas cositas q no envejecieron como el vino perse, pero weeeno era los 60 q más

“Stoner,” by John Williams, is a quiet storm of a novel—an unassuming portrait of a man's life elevated to the realm of the extraordinary by its sheer ordinariness. Set against the backdrop of an early 20th-century Missouri, it follows William Stoner, a man who drifts into academia almost by accident and finds himself ensnared in a life of subdued passions and unspoken regrets. Stoner is a character drawn with such restraint that his very lack of dynamism becomes its own kind of tragedy—a life half-lived, where the mundane becomes monumental.

At its core, “Stoner” is a meditation on the quiet desolation that can define a life lived within the margins. The book's exploration of failure—personal, professional, and existential—is haunting. Stoner's steadfast dedication to literature, even as his personal life crumbles, speaks to the tension between ambition and mediocrity, and between the desire for meaning and the harsh, indifferent reality. Williams writes with a precision that cuts to the bone, peeling away the layers of Stoner's life until all that's left is a man standing at the precipice of his own existence, gazing into the void.

Yet, as much as I admired the novel's quiet power, there's a sense that its bleakness borders on oppressive. The stoicism that defines Stoner's character sometimes feels like a cage, locking the reader into a world where hope flickers only briefly before being snuffed out. Still, there's beauty in this desolation—a beauty that resonates long after the final page is turned. As Williams wrote, “It's the beauty of human endurance, of lives that go unnoticed but are no less significant for their obscurity.” This novel is a testament to the power of literature to illuminate even the darkest corners of the human soul.

Williams wrote “Stoner” in the 1960s, during a time when America was awash in political upheaval and social change. Yet, the novel eschews the turmoil of its era, instead offering a narrative that seems to resist the very notion of historical significance. Interesting to note is the book's posthumous rise to fame. After it's publication, “Stoner” languished in obscurity until a revival in the early 21st century brought it the recognition it deserves. It's a reminder of how art can transcend its time, finding new life and relevance in a world that had once overlooked it. In Stoner's quiet rebellion against his own insignificance, there's a universality that speaks to us all—echoing a line from Camus, who wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus, “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.” And so, we find meaning in the struggle, in the quiet persistence of life.