NYRB Classics discussion

Stoner



Publication Date: June 20, 2006
Pages: 304
Introduction by John McGahern.
Originally published in 1965.

William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.

John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.

I'll keep seeding this discussion folder, but I figured I'd start with Stoner since my brother and I just posted an episode devoted to this book on our most recent NYRB Classics-centric podcast. You can find it here.

One thing I'd like to ask: do you find this book misogynistic? Over the summer, as more and more people read the book for the first time, I kept hearing more and more people saying it was misogynistic. I don't think it is. Yes, Stoner's wife, Edith, is a terrible person, but such wives exist, and I didn't find that John Williams was portraying her in an unfair light. A half light, yes, but not an unfair one. I think if the reader doesn't suffer from Stoner's own inability to comprehend Edith, then we can actually find a sympathetic character. I feel sorry they married. If you feel the book is misogynistic, then I'd love to get a fuller explanation than the surface-level take-away that Edith does terrible things to persecute Stoner.

I haven't read this yet, Trevor, but I'm intrigued. It would take a lot more than one negative portrayal of a woman to make me think a book is misogynistic--after all, as you say 'such wives exist.' I'd have to read the book, though to have a full impression.

Did anyone else see this?

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/sto...

Thought it was kind of interesting that this book is taking the world by storm so late in the day...

I read - and loved - this novel over the Summer. I didn't find it misogynistic, and I tend to be sensitive to that kind of problem. A friend called this the ultimate existentialist novel, and I agree. Stoner is defined by his choices. But he's also defined by his inabilities. With his wife, it seemed to me that there were mistakes and missed opportunities in their relationship, so that Stoner can be blamed for some of what goes wrong in their relationship. True, he's the main character so we're made to feel a bit more sympathetic to him, but he obviously is capable of having positive relationships with women, not just negative ones. They were too young when he married Edith to see their own incompatibility.

I haven't finished it yet, but I do not see misogyny in it...

What I see, so far, is a 5 star exploration of folks with emotional aphasia (pun intended in all senses). This book is causing me to hunger for a potboiler.

This book is the January 2014 NYRB Classics Goodreads Book Club Discussion here.

Regarding the misogyny question, a key quote is this one:

'Her moral training, both at the schools she attended and at home, was negative in nature, prohibitive in intent, and almost entirely sexual. The sexuality, however, was indirect and unacknowledged; therefore it suffused every other part of her education, which received most of its energy from that recessive and unspoken moral force.'

I take this along with other aspects of William's writing (the equal and non objectifying relationship between Stoner and his lover, the clear persistence of the cold marriage of Edith's parents through her own as well as her daughter's, portrayals of women through well developed and understanding character traits) as evidence that the author was well aware of how relationships were supposed to be conducted in early 20th century USA, and how badly they can turn out if both man and woman unconsciously adhere to the sociocultural indoctrination of society. Stoner definitely had more freedom and could have tried harder to reach Edith and understand why she was acting so horribly, but that's a reality, not the author propagating a double standard of men treated as selves and women treated as objects.

I didn't remember that passage, Aubrey, but I agree. That's a great insight and analysis. Thanks!

Stoner is getting a 50th Anniversary Edition, due to be published on November 3.