Stoner

William Stoner is born into a poor agricultural family in Missouri during the end of the 1800s. After being sent to a state institution to study agronomy, he instead develops a passion for English literature and embraces a life as a scholar, which is quite different from the difficult life he has lived. But as the years go by, Stoner has a string of setbacks: he gets married into a “proper” household, which causes him to become estranged from his parents; his career is halted; his wife and daughter become distant from him; and a life-changing experience of new love ends in scandal. Drowned more and more, Stoner finds himself facing an essential loneliness and the stoic stillness of his ancestors.

The brilliant and profoundly poignant book by John Williams is a piece of quiet brilliance. Not only does William Stoner come out of it as the quintessential American, but he also emerges as an unusual existential hero, standing, like to a figure in an Edward Hopper picture, in sharp contrast to a cruel world.