"Real Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An “engrossing� biography of a brilliant novelist underappreciated in his own time who became a twenty-first-century bestseller, from the New York Times–bestselling author (The New Yorker).

When Stoner was published in 1965, the novel sold only a couple of thousand copies before disappearing with hardly a trace. Yet the quietly powerful tale of Midwestern college professor William Stoner, whose life becomes a parable of solitude and anguish, eventually found an admiring audience in America and especially in Europe. The New York Times called Stoner “a perfect novel,� and a host of writers and critics, including Colum McCann, Julian Barnes, Bret Easton Ellis, Ian McEwan, Emma Straub, Ruth Rendell, C.P. Snow, and Irving Howe, praised its artistry. The New Yorker deemed it “a masterly portrait of a truly virtuous and dedicated man.�

This biography traces the life of Stoner’s author, John Williams. Charles J. Shields follows the whole arc of Williams’s life, which in many ways paralleled that of his titular character, from their shared working-class backgrounds to their undistinguished careers in academia. Shields vividly recounts Williams’s development as an author, whose other works include the novels Butcher’s Crossing and Augustus (for the latter, Williams shared the 1972 National Book Award). Shields also reveals the astonishing afterlife of Stoner, which garnered new fans with each American reissue, and then became a bestseller all over Europe after a Dutch publisher brought out a translation in 2013. Since then, Stoner has been published in twenty-one countries and sold over a million copies.

“Like Williams, Shields know how to tell a good story, one that will appeal especially to those interested in the ins and outs of the publishing industry and the ups and downs of a writer’s life.� �Los Angeles Review of Books

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: My earlier reading of Author Shields' excellent made me eager to read this book about John Williams. My as-yet unbligged review of Stoner is below, to add the needed context to my ideas about this book and its subject.

I think the reason this book never got to pop-culture awareness, in spite of Stoner's tremendous success in the twenty-first century, is simple: John Williams is a shitty human being. I mean, men of his generation more often than not were shitty, and abusive, and sexist...homophobic...by our standards of acceptability, irredeemable in ways even Armie Hammer and Neil Gaiman don't approach. Tempus fugit; sic transit gloria mundi.

No one would get away with Vonnegut's misogyny and sexism today, yet here's a man who wrote one of the most horrendous, harridanly women in literature...Edith Stoner...irredeemable even in victim terms, as her malevolence is obvious long before her husband rapes her. What I could never figure out is why she hated Stoner so much, he was never any kind of promising except of failure and disappointment. She wasn't duped; she married the real him, looking down on him every step of the way.

And Williams' life? He insisted Stoner was fictional. I myownself, after reading this book, think otherwise. The litany of grievances against life, work, colleagues (he had no friends that I thought deserved the name), all of it: Stoner. So how does he, Williams, get a pass from the literati? Beats me all hollow, though I suspect it's merely a matter of time.

What made me enjoy this book so much was the factual reporting of his life story: The multiple infidelities and marriages; his early infatuation with theater; his early love for Look Homeward, Angel, that adolescent's dream book; his admiration for Ronald Colman as Sydney Carton in (I shudder even typing that sentence fragment, go look at the link to see why; oleaginous much?). These facts and many more make as comprehensible and clear a picture of the man who could author Stoner as well as the proto-Blood Meridian Western-but-don't-tell-him-you're-calling-it-that Butcher's Crossing as one could ever hope to find.

Violence, in John Williams' Ĺ“uvre, is less physiologically present than in McCarthy's. It's not dwelt on with loving, prurient, in my view pornographic lingering money shots of prose. It's, well, I guess my best match between vocabulary and feeling is clinical. John Williams was undoubtedly an acoholic, an abusive and distant man, and the way to be all those things is to be removed from one's emotional states, to devalue and deny empathy while, paradoxically, demanding that very feeling for one's characters as they enact worse and worse things on their victims.

Should one who has not read any Williams, but would like to, read this biography? Not with any expectation of still wanting to read his work. It's a good way to learn how you'll respond to the work itself thoguh. I don't know how knowing about the real person doing the writing of the books we know and love should make us feel. It varies, I suppose, from reader to reader, from writer to writer.

I'll go out on a limb and say that, for $2.99 on Kindle, the answer in this case is "absolutely do read it." Author Shields is enough of a talented storyteller to make time spent learning how nasty one person can get worth one's time."

"Mythica by Emily Hauser is a well-researched reexamination of Homer’s mythological women from the late Bronze Age who have long stood under the shadows of Greek heroes, viewed through a feminist lens (or perhaps, more accurately, a non-misogynistic perspective). Through the blending of scientific research, literary references, archaeological findings, and anthropology, Hauser's inquisitive work suggests new connections and hypotheses about the “support� women of Greek mythology, returning their voices, lives, and history, and gifting the reader with astounding recent findings—as recent as 2023. In this intriguing book, she evokes Hittite and Greek queens, warriors, mothers, slaves, and goddesses whose stories were warped and fitted into male-centric narratives.

The narrative has an excellent balance between accessibility and academic rigor, making the complex subjects of genetics, archaeology, historical context, and literary critique engaging to a broad audience. Mythica is an outstanding book that reads like a documentary. Famous figures like Penthesilea, Circe, Penelope, Cassandra, and many other ancient women who were repeatedly brutalised by Homer’s great male heroes are now interestingly reframed. Hauser does an excellent job in stripping the text from the most technical language without hindering the narrative, and consistently enticing the reader with new insights referring to the history behind mythology. In her notes, she mentions using quotations from Emily Wilson's translation (the first woman to translate the Iliad and the Odyssey from the source material), alongside her own translations (she notes studying ancient Greek for over twenty years). This approach is important to avoid repeating the same analysis carried out previously. Her exploration of archaeology and modern technologies—like ancient DNA evidence and digital facial reconstructions (shout-out to the University of Manchester!)—is clear and accessible. It is fascinating what she managed to achieve in this book.

Modern tools like archaeology, literary critique, and DNA analysis can help uncover the truths about these women’s lives, offering us a more comprehensive and realistic view of these late Bronze Age women. The focus on characters like Briseis and Chryseis illustrates the harrowing reality of how these women’s stories have been sidelined, their pain and strength minimized, and used as devices to serve a hero’s purpose. Hauser articulates a reimagining of these women not as mythical figures but as real individuals with experiences that reflect the complexities of ancient Greek and Hittite societies; inviting the reader to reconsider the pre-conception of stories we’ve inherited and rethink them as complex, nuanced, and multifaceted stories.

Mythica is a necessary book for anyone interested in Greek mythology, history, and a non-misogynistic analysis of the Homeric women. ±á˛ąłÜ˛ő±đ°ů’s well-researched, fascinating and thought-provoking work challenges ingrained perceptions and re-signifies the experiences of the women who shaped the myths that have persisted for millennia.

Rating: 4.5/5
Highly Recommended

Thank you, Emily Hauser and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers | Doubleday, for this digital galley via NetGalley in exchange for my honest and personal opinion."

"I thought the Sacklers were evil personified. Turns out, they were just doing what everyone else in the pharmaceutical industry was/is/still are doing.

FDA is a sad, sad joke. If any agency should be gutted, it should probably be the FDA. They seem to be extremely ineffective and susceptible to corporate pressure in every book of this type that I read (ok, they did do a lot to bring down Perdue, but it took far too long and a horrendous amount of reluctance).

This book makes it impossible to trust my doctors or any prescription and over-the-counter med or consumer product out there. The irony, of course, is that trust was Johnson & Johnson's greatest asset - until it wasn't.

I was surprised mostly by the breadth of reach J&J has. For example, I had no idea that they also produced baby food or breast implants.

Speaking of reproductive body parts, I really wished the author would've found another word to use aside from "crotch." It just sounded so icky the way it was written.

I'm definitely a victim of socialized normalization of deviance - I'd gotten so busy that I stopped checking labels and researching every med and supplement I put into my body. Time to get diligent again, especially now that I'm retired. Will need to check multiple sources too, because numbers and testing are meaningless when they are generated by the pharmas themselves.

Caveat emptor!, and thank you Jay for this rec."