Stoner by John Williams

Stoner by John Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is wonderful and the character of William Stoner is so delicately and lovingly written. I have some reservations about the character and possibly the author, but I can't let that stand in the way of how much I loved this book. The character lets himself off entirely too easily, especially for the fate of his daughter Grace. He fought Lomax tooth and nail over pure principal, but he couldn't fight his wife for his daughter's soul and future? Complete cop-out.

Possibly some spoilers here, but it's not really that kind of book: My husband read this book too, and he argued that Edith's character isn't well-written because she exists purely to foil her husband, but I don't especially agree with that. Edith is obviously really excited to go to Europe and is disappointed that even this small life ambition is obstructed by a proposal she feels obligated to accept, possibly due to her desire to escape her home. She obviously has some serious issue with her father, as shown when he dies later. And for whatever reason, possibly the typical Christian upbringing of equating any non-procreative sex with sin and duty to one's husband, or the era's not-so-feminist views of consent and female pleasure, or even maybe stemming from whatever her issue with her father is, she deeply despises sexual contact. She doesn't take care of her baby and we're not told why there seem to be at least two possibilities: she might suffer postpartum depression, or she is just a deeply controlling person- which might also stem from her more general lack of control of her life in that era. She is happiest when she able to live her life as much like a single European artist and is even sometimes pleasant towards her husband when he is most emotionally independent of her and even physically missing. Alternatively, she is kindest when she thinks she risks losing her husband whm she depends on economically. And finally, she takes care of him at the end. Yeah, she sucks, but I think there are a lot of clues in the text as to why she sucks, and those clues make her sufficiently interesting to me.

The ending is maybe a bit too existentialist for my taste, or maybe not existentialist enough, I can't decide. I think that if you're going the existentialist route, you should at least commit. Possibly Stoner is somewhat existentialist precisely because he's failed to live his life with courage. He's definitely not alone in that. If I should die tomorrow, I don't think I would be pleased with my lifetime level of courage or lack thereof, but I'm aware that I'm not the center of the universe. I would hope that a professor of literature would see beyond himself to decide what does and doesn't matter.

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