I finished reading Stoner by John Williams the other day. It’s been having a prolonged renaissance in publishing lately—it’s been reissued several times since its was first published in 1965, it’s been called a “perfect novel” by the New York Times, its author was made the subject of a book literally called The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel, it’s been blurbed by Tom Hanks for some reason. All of these things both attract and repel me, of course, because how could you not read a “perfect novel”? And a blurb from Tom Hanks is basically a blurb from the Goodyear blimp.
And it’s not a Goodyear blimp novel, I’m happy to report—whatever that would mean. It’s not in over its head, it’s not syrupy, it’s not inflated. It’s a strange little book that’s not really sitting with me the way I want it to sit with me and I can’t quite make my mind up about it.
On one hand, it’s a classic campus novel that illustrates a slice of post-war American life in the sort of quiet, effortless style of William Maxwell (one of my all time favorite writers). But then on the other hand, it’s a classic campus novel in the worst sense—it trips on its own sense of entitlement, narrow worldview, treatment of women, etc. It’s both a very modern, but also very 60s novel, cancelling itself out, making me just want to read William Maxwell instead. Still, it’s a moving book.
Stoner is about the life of the fictional William Stoner, a mediocre professor at the University of Missouri and that’s about it. His entire life spans the course of the novel and therein lies one of its biggest foibles. Near the end of the book and of his life I stopped recognizing the Stoner from earlier chapters, and I would be fine with that if Williams had somehow made note of that in the text, but he doesn’t. Stoner simply evolves—from quiet farmboy to quiet student to quiet teacher—without much introspection, and every time he’s given the chance to really come alive on the page, he comes off feeling like a completely different person from the last iteration.
The thing that makes this book stand out the most is its examination of a life in education. I’ve never read a book that so perfectly captures the feeling of the joy of learning—and a special kind of learning at that, not for the purposes of creating something, not for gain, but simply for the sake of learning. The first few chapters cover this brilliantly as they describe Stoner’s bleak family history, their eternal servitude in manual labor, and then the lucky break that whisks Stoner away to university and his position between those two worlds.
Perfect novel? Stoner has moments of perfection, sure, but I don’t think such a thing as a perfect novel exists—and I’m sure Stoner would be the first to agree.