Book Review: Stoner by, John Williams

Stoner by John Williams is not a novel I would typically gravitate towards. The only reason I was intrigued by it was because some of my favorite YouTube vloggers mentioned the book (if you don’t watch essiebuttonvlogs you need to get on it. Estée, her boyfriend Aslan and their dog Reggie are addicting). They have such unique taste and Aslan was reading it and said that it was extremely interesting.

I like how I’m talking about Aslan and Estée like I know them. Wishful thinking…

So, I looked the book up on Amazon and read the reviews and it had high ratings. I was curious as to how a novel about a man named William Stoner, from a poor Missouri farming family, and his life at university could be so fascinating. So I bought it. And I liked it.

Upon entering the University of Missouri, William Stoner lives the rest of his life there. He enters as a student and then becomes a professor in English. The story follows his life as a member of the university, his unhappy marriage, strained relationship with his daughter and his brief romantic escapade.

From my point of view, there is something existential about this novel. When William Stoner discovers his love for English literature, the reader watches him grow into an independent person. Yet at the same time, there is this irony of his increasing independence. He doesn’t know how to define himself outside of the image and culture of the university. The reader is constantly aware of this tension as William Stoner struggles his way through life.

This novel has quite a melancholy tone. By no means is this a happy story and when I finished it I felt slightly exhausted, but not in a bad way. In the way that one feels exhausted after finally coming to the end of a difficult time. It is a novel of a mediocre life and how life can beat one down. There is nothing exceptional about William Stoner. He is an average man with average abilities. It is amazing to me how John Williams took the story of such a simple man and made it compelling.

In a way, this book reminded me not to get complacent. Life is too short to stay comfortable. I definitely think this book is worth a read, even if it’s not something you would initially be drawn to. It’s also a book I plan to re-read because there are always things that stick out more the second time around.

Noteworthy Quotes:

·      “It [love] was a passion neither of the mind nor of the heart, it was a force that comprehended them both, as if they were but the matter of love, its specific substance.”

·      “A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back. And if a people go through enough wars, pretty soon all that’s left is the brute, the creature that we – you and I and others like us – have brought up from the slime.”

Have you read this book or any others by John Williams? What did you think?

-Alana