The art of fiction
Today: Lindsey Adler, writer of the Critical Thinking newsletter.
Issue No. 565
Stoner and Me
Lindsey Adler
Stoner and Me
by Lindsey Adler
In Stoner, John Williams’s once-forgotten masterpiece, the titular character’s life builds to nothing. He lives in a state of inertia until finally, mercifully, he finds peace as his limp hand slides off the book he was once proud to publish. Over the span of less than 65 years, William Stoner made only a few serious choices.
He left the farm he grew up on and became an English professor. He married a woman he’d known for only a few weeks. They had a child, and his relationship with his daughter was controlled, and suffocated, by his cruel, loveless wife. After the only vibrant period of his life, he quietly let go of a love affair. Stoner’s dissatisfied, quietly agonizing life glides by in the years spanning the two World Wars; he is a man who quietly bears the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Williams introduces Stoner as a man forgotten. He allows his subject to live what many would consider to be a failure: an ordinary life with no particular achievements for which he would be remembered.
“Stoner’s colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now,” Williams writes on page one of the novel. “To the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all.”
Stoner’s apathy breaks only a few times—most often in his work as a tenured professor of medieval literature. The politics of academia marginalize him and limit his influence in the institution where he spends his entire adult life. Yet his resistance to what we would now colloquially refer to as “a shitty boss” only goes so far as to reach a state of endurance. Stoner’s primary trait is that his quiet, stubborn pride keeps him from altering the broken aspects of his life.
Keep us breathing fire!
For $3/month you can read this whole post and get our weekdaily newsletter too!