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“William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen. Eight years later, during the height of World War I, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree and accepted an instructorship at the same University, where he taught until his death in 1956. He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his courses. When he died his colleagues made a memorial contribution of a medieval manuscript to the University library. This manuscript may still be found in the Rare Books Collection, bearing the inscription: ‘Presented to the Library of the University of Missouri, in memory of William Stoner, Department of English. By his colleagues.� An occasional student who comes upon the name may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual question…�
- John Williams, Stoner

Even if I had completely hated John Williams’s Stoner � and there were times while reading it that I thought I did � it would have been worth my time to pick it up. If nothing else, it is interesting, both in its content and its backstory.

Originally published in 1965, this tale of a decidedly average literature professor at the University of Missouri came and went without causing much of a ripple. In 1994, Williams died. Then, in 2006, the New York Review of Books reissued the novel, and it caught fire. Suddenly, critics were calling it “the greatest novel you’ve never heard of.� It became a surprise bestseller in Europe. It helped make the case for John Williams as one of America’s great authors.

For me, that was reason enough to give this a look, especially since its length (about 300 pages) does not require a huge investment of time.

Beyond its peculiar second life, though, I was intrigued by Stoner’s substance. According to an interview given by Williams, this is an “escape into reality,� a portrait of a man’s life shorn of the usual dramatic flourishes found in fiction. The eponymous central figure, William Stoner, is not a brave soldier, brilliant lawyer, or dashing doctor; he does not go on great adventures; he is not part of a love triangle; he does not stand up for the little guy, battle evil, or change the world. He is not, in other words, the typical shoulders upon which you would rest a novel.

From the start, Williams almost dares you to keep reading. His introduction to Stoner, excerpted above, is not only unsentimental, it aggressively downplays the protagonist’s very existence. Williams is essentially telling his audience in the very first pages that Stoner is not worth reading about. This is sort of an anti-hook, a bit of reverse psychology that � in its own way � is as effective as “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times� or “Call me Ishmael.�

Like Stoner himself, Stoner is unpretentious and unfussy. There are no narrative tricks, twists, or turns. The plot is simply Stoner’s life, followed in chronological order in unadorned prose, from his entrance into college until his death. Nothing extraordinary happens. The First World War rages, but Stoner does not enlist or get drafted, taking a curiously uncurious approach to a worldwide cataclysm. The Great Depression falls upon the country, but Stoner has tenure. He gets married to a woman who is a low-key terror (the inexplicable behavior of Stoner’s wife is one of the novel’s major weaknesses), finds himself entangled in the low-stakes, high-intensity politics of the English department (where he simply accepts all the bad hands he is dealt), and writes a book (which unsurprisingly amounts to a ho-hum product). There are moments of happiness, many more of sadness; there are some minor successes, but mostly modest failures.

As I mentioned above, the true fascination I had with this book is Williams’s handling of Stoner. The protagonist of a novel does not need to be a hero, or even a good guy. Typically, though, the main character is an agent of movement, driving things forward by taking action or making decisions.

Stoner is not like this.

Stoner is not even reactive. Instead, he is as passive as a rug. Things happen to him, and he just keeps going, head down. His governing principle for long stretches is indifference, which to me is one of life’s cardinal sins. There are times I wanted to throttle him. I wanted to shout at him. His marriage is a ruin, yet he takes no effort to fix it. His child desperately needs him as a parent, yet he sits on his hands. He makes an enemy at the college, and simply absorbs the abuse. He has a chance to grasp happiness, yet lets it walk right out the door. Stoner is fond of William Shakespeare’s sonnets, but just once I wanted him to read Dylan Thomas, to muster up the effort to rage � just a little � against the dying of the light. It never really happens.

Stoner’s stoicism is part of the reason Stoner has had such a vibrant reemergence on the literary scene. For the most part, I found it incredibly frustrating, as I have mentioned at length. At the same time, one of the ways I know a book is working for me is when a character gets me angry. I wouldn’t have found myself literally talking aloud to Stoner if I didn’t care about him. This is a real bit of wizardry on Williams’s part. Essentially, I found myself loving this mainly because of the audaciousness of the conceit that Stoner is worthy of a novel.

As I reached Stoner’s unexpectedly powerful conclusion, however, I found my reaction deepening. I thought of the oft-quoted lines from Lucius Annaeus Seneca, in his Moral Letters to Lucilius: “Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.� Having seen it so often, I have seldom paused to consider the line’s meaning. Stoner really forced me to ponder its implications.

The most frightening aspect of life is death, and this is an aspect that everyone must � at one time or another � meet head-on. To move forward in the face of this terrifying unknown is an underappreciated facet of humanity. By the end of Stoner’s journey, I began more and more to respect his quiet dignity, his tenaciously-held values, and his calm fearlessness at the precipice of eternity. For all Stoner’s many faults, Williams utterly convinced me � by the final page � that this man’s life was worthy of a tale.