Stoner is a 1965 novel by the American writer John Williams. Published on by Viking Press, [1] the novel received little attention on first release, but saw a surge of popularity and critical praise since its republication in the 2000s. It has been championed by authors such as Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Bret Easton Ellis, and John McGahern. [2][3] Stoner has been categorized ...
William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper ...
Stoner’s colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the ...
Amazon.com: Stoner (New York Review Books Classics): 9781590171998: John Williams, John McGahern: Books “A beautiful, sad, utterly convincing account of an entire life…I’m amazed a novel this good escaped general attention for so long.” —Ian McEwan “One of the great unheralded 20th-century American novels …Almost perfect.” —Bret Easton Ellis “Stoner is a novel of an ...
Get all the key plot points of John Williams's Stoner on one page. From the creators of SparkNotes.
This Stoner book review offers a deeply critical interpretation of Stoner by John Williams—challenging the popular notion of its protagonist as a tragic hero. By examining Stoner’s relationships with his wife, daughter, colleagues, and students, this review explores how emotional cowardice and moral silence are repeatedly reframed as wisdom.