Book Review: Stoner by, John Williams

“…he thought he could feel the blood flowing invisibly through the tiny veins and arteries, throbbing delicately and precariously from his fingertips through his body.”

Stoner by, John Williams has claimed one of the covetous slots as one of my favorite novels. Reading this story is like drifting in and out of dream; Stoner’s introverted and sad life is evocative and relatable, yet elusive. Williams’ prose is ethereal; direct and descriptive, but somehow languid. 

This is a novel about loneliness, introversion, depression, existentialism, and hope deferred. We’ve all experienced having a dream and then that hard, sinking feeling when life doesn’t measure up to our expectations.

“He had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a purity that was entire; he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality. He had conceived wisdom, and at the end of the long years he had found ignorance. And what else? he thought. What else? What did you expect? he asked himself.”

This is a novel about how one becomes jaded, as life progresses; it’s inevitable. The more life one experiences, the more one has to face the grotesque. 

“But William Stoner knew of the world in a way that few of his younger colleagues could understand. Deep in him, beneath his memory, was the knowledge of hardship and hunger and endurance and pain.”

Stoner comes across vaguely to the reader, which is interesting, seeing how the reader is entirely engrossed in his life. This is deliberate. Stoner is elusive and vague to himself; he can’t seem to grasp who he is and achieve his full potential. At times, he’s at the brink of brilliance and then it fades. 

“He looked down at the table and saw between his arms the image of his face reflected in the high polish of the walnut top. The image was dark, and he could not make out its features; it was as if he saw a ghost glimmering unsubstantially out of the hardness, coming to meet him.” 

I cannot rave about Stoner enough and I can’t stop thinking about it. This is a novel about the average life; the seemingly unexceptional life that doesn’t leave a mark on the world, once it leaves. However, these nondescript souls are important; they tell the tale of the common threads of life we can all relate to: love, grief, death, hope, and feeling insignificant in a world that is out of our control. Stoner exemplifies the human condition.  This is a novel that should be read and then re-read through one’s life. It ages like fine wine. 

Rating: 5/5. 

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