Glenn Russell's Reviews > Stoner
Stoner
by
For the hardworking men and women living in the open, windswept farm country of the American Midwest during the late 19th and early 20th century, day-to-day existence was frequently harsh and occasionally downright hostile, a stark, demanding life chiseling character as can be seen above in artist Grant Wood’s American Gothic. If you take a good look at this painting and then envision a son, an only child, working the fields alongside his father, you will have a clear image of the starting point for Stoner, John Williams’ classic novel of quiet perfection.
The novel follows the life of William Stoner from his boyhood on a Missouri farm through his years as a faculty member of the English Department at the University of Missouri. William Stoner is a good man, a man of integrity, a man, as we eventually find out through his relationship with a fellow faculty member, Katherine Driscoll, capable of profound intimacy and tenderness of heart. William Stoner is also a lover of literature, accomplished scholar and dedicated teacher.
But all is not well in the life of Professor Stoner, particularly in his home life. As a beginning instructor right out of graduate school, he marries a woman barely twenty years of age from St. Louis, the daughter of a banker, a young woman by the name of Edith Elaine Bostwick. Turns out, young Edith has suffered emotional abuse. And right from the start of her marriage, Edith inflicts emotional abuse on her husband Stoner and eventually on their daughter Grace. Personally, I found reading those parts of the novel involving Edith particularly wrenching bordering on painful.
Indeed, as readers we live through the pain of Stoner dealing with Edith’s wall of emotional frigidness and coldness, which includes being relegated as a husband in his late twenties to sleeping on the parlor coach at night. Through all the years of isolation and alienation, including Edith’s wedging a wall of separation between Stoner and Grace, there is one particularly poignant scene where we read:
“Once, while Edith was upstairs, William and his daughter passed each other in the living room. Grace smiled shyly at him, and involuntarily he knelt on the floor and embraced her. He felt her body stiffen, and he saw her face go bewildered and afraid. He raised himself gently away from her, said something inconsequential, and retreated to his study.”
For a child to become bewildered and afraid when a parent expresses such tenderness and affection speaks volumes to the level of emotional abuse at home.
Rather than dwelling on the grimness of Stoner’s family life, I will conclude with a final observation: Grace gives birth to a baby boy but after one brief visit did not return to the home of her parents with her son since, as Stoner realizes on his own and Grace tells him in so many words at one point during her whiskey drinking (and, yes, a grim fact: she has turned to alcohol), she got herself pregnant in the first place to escape the prison of her mother’s presence. Well, my goodness – as readers we have a good idea what it would mean for a sensitive man like William Stoner to be deprived of a relationship with his grandson.
Turning to Stoner’s professional life, there are serious cracks within the halls of academe. He is a man of integrity and honesty and the political infighting within academic departments is famous for being vicious and nasty. I wouldn’t want to say any more so as to spoil for a reader, but I can assure you Dr. Stoner is on the receiving end of a large dose of viciousness. But through it all, our main character remains strong. One memorable paragraph from the novel:
“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. Though he seldom thought of his early years on the Booneville farm, there was always near his consciousness the blood knowledge of his inheritance, given him by forefathers whose lives were obscure and hard and stoical and whose common ethic was to present to an oppressive world faces that were expressionless and hard and bleak.”
Incidentally, when I was a 12-year old boy I joined me father, mother and sister as we took a trip in our car from the New Jersey shore across the American Midwestern heartland of farms to pay a visit to my grandmother. On the trip out and also in my grandmother’s town, I heard a number of harrowing tales of farm life, especially for the children of farmers. I reflected on those tales of physical hardship and unending toil and thus wrote this surreal micro-fiction some years ago:
DOWN ON THE FARM
Before he leaves the city they tell him how the country doctor drives a buggy made from the flesh and bones of his former patients.
“Nothing goes to waste,” is the way they put it when he finally arrives, “we’re all farmers around here.”
He joins the doctor on his first visit to a farmhouse to attend a sick woman. Instead of a thermometer, the doctor sticks his middle finger under the woman’s tongue and says, “I’ve done this enough times to know when someone has a fever.”
He looks over the doctor’s shoulder out the farmhouse window. Beyond a skeleton tied to a pole, he sees the farmer plowing his field using his younger son harnessed as a beast of burden.
“Doesn’t that take superhuman strength?” he asks the doctor.
The doctor answers, “His older son wasn’t quite as strong, but still makes a fine scarecrow.”
American author John William (1922-1994)
by
For the hardworking men and women living in the open, windswept farm country of the American Midwest during the late 19th and early 20th century, day-to-day existence was frequently harsh and occasionally downright hostile, a stark, demanding life chiseling character as can be seen above in artist Grant Wood’s American Gothic. If you take a good look at this painting and then envision a son, an only child, working the fields alongside his father, you will have a clear image of the starting point for Stoner, John Williams’ classic novel of quiet perfection.
The novel follows the life of William Stoner from his boyhood on a Missouri farm through his years as a faculty member of the English Department at the University of Missouri. William Stoner is a good man, a man of integrity, a man, as we eventually find out through his relationship with a fellow faculty member, Katherine Driscoll, capable of profound intimacy and tenderness of heart. William Stoner is also a lover of literature, accomplished scholar and dedicated teacher.
But all is not well in the life of Professor Stoner, particularly in his home life. As a beginning instructor right out of graduate school, he marries a woman barely twenty years of age from St. Louis, the daughter of a banker, a young woman by the name of Edith Elaine Bostwick. Turns out, young Edith has suffered emotional abuse. And right from the start of her marriage, Edith inflicts emotional abuse on her husband Stoner and eventually on their daughter Grace. Personally, I found reading those parts of the novel involving Edith particularly wrenching bordering on painful.
Indeed, as readers we live through the pain of Stoner dealing with Edith’s wall of emotional frigidness and coldness, which includes being relegated as a husband in his late twenties to sleeping on the parlor coach at night. Through all the years of isolation and alienation, including Edith’s wedging a wall of separation between Stoner and Grace, there is one particularly poignant scene where we read:
“Once, while Edith was upstairs, William and his daughter passed each other in the living room. Grace smiled shyly at him, and involuntarily he knelt on the floor and embraced her. He felt her body stiffen, and he saw her face go bewildered and afraid. He raised himself gently away from her, said something inconsequential, and retreated to his study.”
For a child to become bewildered and afraid when a parent expresses such tenderness and affection speaks volumes to the level of emotional abuse at home.
Rather than dwelling on the grimness of Stoner’s family life, I will conclude with a final observation: Grace gives birth to a baby boy but after one brief visit did not return to the home of her parents with her son since, as Stoner realizes on his own and Grace tells him in so many words at one point during her whiskey drinking (and, yes, a grim fact: she has turned to alcohol), she got herself pregnant in the first place to escape the prison of her mother’s presence. Well, my goodness – as readers we have a good idea what it would mean for a sensitive man like William Stoner to be deprived of a relationship with his grandson.
Turning to Stoner’s professional life, there are serious cracks within the halls of academe. He is a man of integrity and honesty and the political infighting within academic departments is famous for being vicious and nasty. I wouldn’t want to say any more so as to spoil for a reader, but I can assure you Dr. Stoner is on the receiving end of a large dose of viciousness. But through it all, our main character remains strong. One memorable paragraph from the novel:
“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. Though he seldom thought of his early years on the Booneville farm, there was always near his consciousness the blood knowledge of his inheritance, given him by forefathers whose lives were obscure and hard and stoical and whose common ethic was to present to an oppressive world faces that were expressionless and hard and bleak.”
Incidentally, when I was a 12-year old boy I joined me father, mother and sister as we took a trip in our car from the New Jersey shore across the American Midwestern heartland of farms to pay a visit to my grandmother. On the trip out and also in my grandmother’s town, I heard a number of harrowing tales of farm life, especially for the children of farmers. I reflected on those tales of physical hardship and unending toil and thus wrote this surreal micro-fiction some years ago:
DOWN ON THE FARM
Before he leaves the city they tell him how the country doctor drives a buggy made from the flesh and bones of his former patients.
“Nothing goes to waste,” is the way they put it when he finally arrives, “we’re all farmers around here.”
He joins the doctor on his first visit to a farmhouse to attend a sick woman. Instead of a thermometer, the doctor sticks his middle finger under the woman’s tongue and says, “I’ve done this enough times to know when someone has a fever.”
He looks over the doctor’s shoulder out the farmhouse window. Beyond a skeleton tied to a pole, he sees the farmer plowing his field using his younger son harnessed as a beast of burden.
“Doesn’t that take superhuman strength?” he asks the doctor.
The doctor answers, “His older son wasn’t quite as strong, but still makes a fine scarecrow.”
American author John William (1922-1994)
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This is now the second time in a month that this novel appeared on my horizon. I will need to read it soon.
Henry wrote: "I have to revisit this soon, Glenn. One of the few books that stayed on my mind since I reviewed it a couple of years ago."
Enjoy, Henry. The story has stuck with me also.
Enjoy, Henry. The story has stuck with me also.
Mark Hebwood wrote: "This is now the second time in a month that this novel appeared on my horizon. I will need to read it soon."
Not one of my favorite books but many readers have been deeply moved by the story. It is a uniquely Midwestern American novel.
Not one of my favorite books but many readers have been deeply moved by the story. It is a uniquely Midwestern American novel.
Mark Hebwood wrote: "This is now the second time in a month that this novel appeared on my horizon. I will need to read it soon."
I hadn't noticed that you hadn't, but you really should. That said, you might prefer Butcher's Crossing even more. Personally, I think Augustus is the best of his three, but Stoner remains the one I love the most.
I hadn't noticed that you hadn't, but you really should. That said, you might prefer Butcher's Crossing even more. Personally, I think Augustus is the best of his three, but Stoner remains the one I love the most.
Cecily, I thought Augustus was terrific too but, like you, I loved Stoner the most. Stoner really touched me deeply.
Very nice review.
"Stoner" is so quietly powerful that it kind of sneaks up on you. It presents a type of heroism that in our culture of flash and celebrity we ought to think about more deeply -- and more frequently.
"Stoner" is so quietly powerful that it kind of sneaks up on you. It presents a type of heroism that in our culture of flash and celebrity we ought to think about more deeply -- and more frequently.
Charlie wrote: "Very nice review.
"Stoner" is so quietly powerful that it kind of sneaks up on you. It presents a type of heroism that in our culture of flash and celebrity we ought to think about more deeply -- ..."
Thanks, Charlie. My own observation is human experience in the late 19th century/early 20th century was among the toughest in the long span of human history. For many millions, life was nothing short of brutal.
"Stoner" is so quietly powerful that it kind of sneaks up on you. It presents a type of heroism that in our culture of flash and celebrity we ought to think about more deeply -- ..."
Thanks, Charlie. My own observation is human experience in the late 19th century/early 20th century was among the toughest in the long span of human history. For many millions, life was nothing short of brutal.
Wonderful review as usual!
I'm actually very elated I stumbled upon such wondrous writing from you about this book in particular since it really holds a dear place in my heart (I actually cried whilst reading it). Thank you.
I'm actually very elated I stumbled upon such wondrous writing from you about this book in particular since it really holds a dear place in my heart (I actually cried whilst reading it). Thank you.
Hind wrote: "Wonderful review as usual!
I'm actually very elated I stumbled upon such wondrous writing from you about this book in particular since it really holds a dear place in my heart (I actually cried wh..."
So sweet of you to mention your deep emotional connection with Stoner, Hind. I feel honored that my review of the novel spoke to you.
I'm actually very elated I stumbled upon such wondrous writing from you about this book in particular since it really holds a dear place in my heart (I actually cried wh..."
So sweet of you to mention your deep emotional connection with Stoner, Hind. I feel honored that my review of the novel spoke to you.
I feel I related to Stoner a lot since we do share, in a way, some similarities.
I rue not writing anything to give the book just, but your review actually made me yearn to scribble out my heart about it.
I rue not writing anything to give the book just, but your review actually made me yearn to scribble out my heart about it.
Hind wrote: "I feel I related to Stoner a lot since we do share, in a way, some similarities.
I rue not writing anything to give the book just, but your review actually made me yearn to scribble out my heart a..."
Wonderful, Hind! I'm confident many fans of the novel here on Goodreads would LOVE to read a review of Stoner where you open your heart and share your feelings.
I rue not writing anything to give the book just, but your review actually made me yearn to scribble out my heart a..."
Wonderful, Hind! I'm confident many fans of the novel here on Goodreads would LOVE to read a review of Stoner where you open your heart and share your feelings.
I loved this book. Then my daughter loved it too. I did tell her I wanted it back in case I read it again. Usually we just pass and keep. But she cried her eyes out at the end so I let her keep. When she went for her masters in translation (French to English), she translated some of it for her literary translation requirement. It is a very giving book.
Donna wrote: "I loved this book. Then my daughter loved it too. I did tell her I wanted it back in case I read it again. Usually we just pass and keep. But she cried her eyes out at the end so I let her keep. Wh..."
That's wonderful, Donna. Good for you to have a daughter who is such a dedicated and sensitive reader! Best wishes.
That's wonderful, Donna. Good for you to have a daughter who is such a dedicated and sensitive reader! Best wishes.
Gorgeous review, Glen! Thank you for reposting. And that micro-fiction- wow - I love it! Kafkaesque, and Russellesque. Thanks again!
Brian wrote: "Gorgeous review, Glen! Thank you for reposting. And that micro-fiction- wow - I love it! Kafkaesque, and Russellesque. Thanks again!"
Hey, Brian. Thrilled you enjoyed! Yea, man, me and Franz :)).
Hey, Brian. Thrilled you enjoyed! Yea, man, me and Franz :)).
I revisited this book but this time as audio experience. I felt more deeply the relationship with Katherine and understood more fully his renunciation.
Sylvie wrote: "I revisited this book but this time as audio experience. I felt more deeply the relationship with Katherine and understood more fully his renunciation."
Wonderful, Sylvie. I'm a huge audio fan myself - I listened to Stoner as well as read the novel. Although I know myself well enough to recognize my response to Stoner's home life would be much different, even if I was living back then, I can appreciate what he must have endured.
Wonderful, Sylvie. I'm a huge audio fan myself - I listened to Stoner as well as read the novel. Although I know myself well enough to recognize my response to Stoner's home life would be much different, even if I was living back then, I can appreciate what he must have endured.
Sylvie wrote: "Your review says it all and Hopper painting is a wonderful illustration."
Thanks, Sylvie! I enjoyed writing my review and choosing the art.
Thanks, Sylvie! I enjoyed writing my review and choosing the art.
Yousuf Rehan wrote: "Perfect review of a perfect book. Loved the micro-fiction"
Thanks, Yousuf. Apologies for late acknowledgement of your kind words - I just did see for the first time now.
Thanks, Yousuf. Apologies for late acknowledgement of your kind words - I just did see for the first time now.
Greta wrote: "Glen your review is just perfect! Also I really liked your idea to start the review with the picture you chose to bring the reader into the right mindset to start from! I love to read each and ever..."
Thanks so much, Greta, for your kind words. Just did see your post. Apologies for late acknowledgement.
Thanks so much, Greta, for your kind words. Just did see your post. Apologies for late acknowledgement.
Lorna wrote: "Beautiful review, Glenn. I am reading the book now and loving it."
Thanks so much, Lorna. Most appreciated. Enjoy this novel!
Thanks so much, Lorna. Most appreciated. Enjoy this novel!
I have a first edition of this novel. It was inexpensive. I got it after reading a review saying this was a great novel and it was sad that it was neglected. That must have been 15-20 years ago. When I read it, I gave it an A in my rating system. I agreed with the reviewer: why was this novel so neglected? Not anymore...
JimZ wrote: "I have a first edition of this novel. It was inexpensive. I got it after reading a review saying this was a great novel and it was sad that it was neglected. That must have been 15-20 years ago. Wh..."
Lucky you, Jim, to be the proud owner of a first edition Stoner. Oh, yes, many reviews here of Stoner, a classic beloved by scores of dedicated readers of literature. NYRB counts Stoner as their most popular among their hundreds of republished "overlooked" classics.
Lucky you, Jim, to be the proud owner of a first edition Stoner. Oh, yes, many reviews here of Stoner, a classic beloved by scores of dedicated readers of literature. NYRB counts Stoner as their most popular among their hundreds of republished "overlooked" classics.
Dronestar wrote: "so good!"
Thanks, D!! Those two words fit Stoner down to the pebble. What an unforgettable classic. As a reviewer, I always want to give outstanding books my best shot.
Thanks, D!! Those two words fit Stoner down to the pebble. What an unforgettable classic. As a reviewer, I always want to give outstanding books my best shot.
"Lust and learning. That's really all there is, isn't it?"
Just finished reading it a few days ago, tears swimming in my eyes. Looking forward to his other books!
Just finished reading it a few days ago, tears swimming in my eyes. Looking forward to his other books!
Just finished Stoner today and my god, what a book. Can’t wait to read his other novels. Good read your thoughts and fiction, Glenn.
I read this 17 years ago Glenn to this very day (July 28, 2004). I just realized this after re-reading it today. How is that for coincidence??!!
JimZ wrote: "I read this 17 years ago Glenn to this very day (July 28, 2004). I just realized this after re-reading it today. How is that for coincidence??!!"
That's quite something, Jim! Congrats. Just did see your message here today.
That's quite something, Jim! Congrats. Just did see your message here today.
Fergus wrote: "Says it all, Glenn. Endurance is the bottom line! And with Grace we can undo some of the harm done."
Thanks, Fergus. I listened to the audio book some years ago but I recall many chapters were painful to listen to. And you're right - perhaps Grace will seek psychiatric help since at the time she would be living as an adult a good amount of the negativity about seeing a doctor has fallen away. But it was not a good sign Grace turned to the bottle.
Thanks, Fergus. I listened to the audio book some years ago but I recall many chapters were painful to listen to. And you're right - perhaps Grace will seek psychiatric help since at the time she would be living as an adult a good amount of the negativity about seeing a doctor has fallen away. But it was not a good sign Grace turned to the bottle.
Millie wrote: "I want you to develop Down on the Farm into a full novel. I will read it in a heartbeat."
HaHa! Thanks, Millie. I'm hard at work at it!
HaHa! Thanks, Millie. I'm hard at work at it!
Thanks so much, Peter. Apologies for the late 'thank you' - I just did see your message. And that's right - nobody could argue the point - this is most certainlyly a well-written novel that has touched and moved thousands of sensitive readers.