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I had originally rated this as a 4 but it stays with me like a 5. Five stars means a change in my world view. The heavens have shifted a little since I finished reading Stoner. So 5 Stars.

'Stoner' is an extremely powerful book written with a gentle touch. If you are familiar with the Daoist ideal of "Wu Wei", you might say that John Williams has produced the literary version of it in literary style.

I shall not retell the story here. Many other fine reviews in GR have already done so.

I have read several other reviews of this book and am taken by the fact that they vary so greatly. The story is in the eye of the beholder. One fairly common view, in whatever language, seems to be that "Life sucks and then you die.". I can understand how a reader can come to that conclusion about this book. Stoner never seems to become really happy, struggles against his fate, or gives into it, and still the pain continues until the moment of his death. It is easy to see this as the basic human condition, at least as the book represents it as life in Western societies. And I can especially understand how one would come to that conclusion looking at the story from the beginning of adulthood. From the viewpoint of youth it seems that everything that Stoner undertakes turns to ashes. He never achieves full satisfaction in his life. Whatever promise it might have held at any point in his life is betrayed.

It is also easy to understand a view which says that Stoner is the cause of many of his own problems. So often, he seems not to decide, not to act when he should. He lets things happen to him. He allows others to ride roughshod over him. He never seems to challenge the powers that be, the social conventions. Indeed, he never seems to take a chance to improve his lot in life, except of course in his pursuit of Edith to be his wife, which proved to be a disastrous undertaking.

But I am reading 'Stoner' from the other end of life. I am at the age at which Stoner dies. My view of Stoner is different, but difficult to explain. Perhaps that is because the author, John Williams, has written a complicated book that stands on its own and I have trouble seizing that complexity. Stoner never clarifies his thoughts on it either. Perhaps it comes as an emotion at the end. As he is fading away, he thinks of his life, of what he had wanted from life:

“Dispassionately, reasonably, he contemplated the failure that his life must appear to be. He had wanted friendship and the closeness of friendship that might hold him in the race of mankind; he had had two friends, one of whom had died senselessly before he was known, the other of whom had now withdrawn so distantly into the ranks of the living that ... He had wanted the singleness and the still connective passion of marriage; he had had that, too, and he had not known what to do with it, and it had died. He wanted love, and he had had love, and had relinquished it, had let it go into the chaos of potentiality. Katherine, he thought. "Katherine.

"And he had wanted to be a teacher, and he had become one; yet he knew, he had always known, that for most of his life he had been an indifferent one. He had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire; he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality. He had conceived wisdom, and at the end of the long years he had found ignorance. And what else? he thought. What else?

What did you expect? he asked himself."

This becomes the motif,"What did you expect?". What do we all expect from life? I suspect that John Williams is touching the core of us all here? Plato tried to define the 'Good' and we have carried that with us throughout history. What is the good life? This concept, that I would suggest sits as a social imaginary in all of our psyches, defines how each of would like to see ourselves live our lives, fulfil ourselves. The Good Life is moulded in each of us according to our social surroundings, our families, our experiences, our era.

Stoner has stepped out of the rural farm life almost by accident. He has developed a passion for teaching literature. He wants friendship, family, love, a fulfilled career. It was really not a great deal. Stoner is not a complicated character. In a sense, he is the American Everyman of the first half of the 20th Century. What else could he expect? And anyone, his colleagues, his students, his family would likely see him as a failure.

I would suggest that, in those terms, Stoner's life can be judged a failure. Indeed, in those terms, many of us must consider our lives to be a failure. What we have expected from ourselves has not been fulfilled. We have not found the close friends, the deep love, the happy warm families, the fulfilling work that we had imagined. We have allowed ourselves to be constricted by social pressures we should logically reject. But we do not. We do not leave the loveless marriage, nor do we seize the opportunity and the risk of giving it all up in order to immerse ourselves in a new love. We do not take the time to find and cultivate friendships. And along with those, perhaps, common place "Goods", we fail to complete our even riskier dreams. Stoner published a mediocre book of literary criticism. He wanted to do another book, a better book... a book which reflected his true passion for literature. He felt that passion at times. He even , displayed it in the classroom at times. But mostly, it eluded him. The book Remained unwritten. How many unwritten books are there in our lives?

Yes. Life sucks and then you die. But 'Stoner' seems to want to say more. In the quote above, "Dispassionately, reasonably, he contemplated the failure that his life must appear to be.". Yes, it "appears" to be a "failure". But really, what more could he expect? Is it possible to find Plato's "Good"? Does the good life that, not only philosophers, but all of us in our own way try to define possible?

What does Stoner have to look back on? He went after the woman he felt he loved and married her. He published his one book. He spent many hours in his study with his young daughter and never forgot the joy of seeing her there at her desk, reading. He knew a deep and passionate love that brought him true happiness, if only for a short time. Finally, he did not give up on everything. He did fight back against some of the injustices in his life and won some of the small battles. What else could he expect? Why would he, we, expect anything more? We do not live in a Disney World. We live in an Old Testament 'Genesis'.

'Stoner' is not just a story about how life sucks and then we die. It is not a simple tragedy but I propose that we should see John William's presentation of Stoner as a strong man, a modern day hero. In the traditional tragedy, the hero suffers and then overcome, even if it does result in his own death. But, in Stoner's world, death will come in any event, He will not overcome the dragons. It is in the realization that he cannot expect more, that he has had his good moments and not given up that his life has not "sucked". This is not a young person's "Good". This is a viewpoint that one reaches with age and experience. The closest thing to wisdom. Go with the flow and practice 'wu wei'.

For many of us, like Stoner, the expectations are, perhaps, beyond our grasp, but we persevere. From my perspective of my 'old age', I am still not certain that I will, or even have been able to, persevere in that sense. I still expect something more, which is absurd.