Ms. Hen reviews Stoner

Stoner

John Williams

The New York Review of Books

1965

Ms. Hen decided to read this novel on a recommendation from one of her acquaintances, whose opinion she respects. She had read a similar novel recently, BLUE ANGEL, and this novel is also about an English professor. This novel is different because it is about the entire character’s life.

William Stoner grows up on a farm in the Midwest, and when he gets older, his parents decide to send him to college to study agriculture to assist with the operations of the farm. But when he goes to college, he becomes enchanted by his English literature class, and he changes his major, unbeknownst to his parents, and studies English in order to become a teacher.

Stoner meets a beautiful young woman, Edith, and falls in love with her, and they get married. Their marriage is unhappy because Edith suffers from depression and nerves. They have a child, and at first Stoner takes care of the child, because Edith isn’t interested in being a mother or taking care of her daughter. Stoner teaches at the college where he was a student, and grows into teaching. He has an affair with a student, and they fall in love, but they realize they could never run away together. He gets into a dispute with the director of the department, which becomes a long-term battle.

STONER is exquisitely written. The writing is simple, but the reader gets drawn into it. It’s about an ordinary man’s life, who never does anything amazing, and is unhappy in his world, but Ms. Hen couldn’t help but be fascinated by this story of a man who keeps plodding along. Some people might think this is depressing, but Ms. Hen thinks it is realistic. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” is what Thoreau said about this subject of normal people leading their lives without questioning, and simply keep going on and on until we die. Ms. Hen thinks about this when she is on the subway going to work; she sees people sitting on the train, staring at their phones, and wonders if they are troubled by their lives and ever imagine there could be more than this.

STONER reminds Ms. Hen of a lot of other books she has read. The setting and the time period remind her of  a lot of Steinbeck’s work. The part about Edith when she was troubled and alone in her room reminds Ms. Hen of a short story called, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” because it’s about a woman in almost the same era who goes crazy and peels the wallpaper off the walls in the house where she is staying. Parts of the novel are also reminiscent of Albert Camus’ THE STRANGER, in the way that at times the character didn’t seem to know or care what he was doing, similar to the existential outlook of Camus' character.

Ms. Hen thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It’s sad, but it’s realistic. Life can be terrible, and all we can do is keep going day by day. Ms. Hen admires a book that tells the truth about life, that it can truly suck sometimes, maybe all the time. Ms. Hen thinks the best thing to do is to pretend life doesn’t suck, and bury ourselves in art that portrays other people’s problems, which can be worse than ours.