The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel: John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life

by Charles J. Shields

An “engrossing” biography of a brilliant novelist underappreciated in his own time who became a twenty-first-century bestseller, from the New York Times–bestselling author (The New Yorker). When Stoner was published in 1965, the novel sold only a couple of thousand copies before disappearing with hardly a trace. Yet the quietly powerful tale of Midwestern college professor William Stoner, whose life becomes a parable of solitude and anguish, eventually found an admiring audience in America and especially in Europe. The New York Times called Stoner “a perfect novel,” and a host of writers and critics, including Colum McCann, Julian Barnes, Bret Easton Ellis, Ian McEwan, Emma Straub, Ruth Rendell, C.P. Snow, and Irving Howe, praised its artistry. The New Yorker deemed it “a masterly portrait of a truly virtuous and dedicated man.” This biography traces the life of Stoner’s author, John Williams. Charles J. Shields follows the whole arc of Williams’s life, which in many ways paralleled that of his titular character, from their shared working-class backgrounds to their undistinguished careers in academia. Shields vividly recounts Williams’s development as an author, whose other works include the novels Butcher’s Crossing and Augustus (for the latter, Williams shared the 1972 National Book Award). Shields also reveals the astonishing afterlife of Stoner, which garnered new fans with each American reissue, and then became a bestseller all over Europe after a Dutch publisher brought out a translation in 2013. Since then, Stoner has been published in twenty-one countries and sold over a million copies.   “Like Williams, Shields know how to tell a good story, one that will appeal especially to those interested in the ins and outs of the publishing industry and the ups and downs of a writer’s life.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, American, 20th Century, Literary Criticism, Books About Books

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Charles J. Shields is the author of And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life (Henry Holt & Co.), Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee (Holt), the highly acclaimed, bestselling biography of Harper Lee,I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers), and The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel: John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life (University of Texas Press).

In January 2022, Henry Holt will release Shields' new book, Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind 'A Raisin in the Sun,' the most comprehensive biography of, in James Baldwin’s words, this “very young woman, with an overpowering vision.”

Reviews

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

“And though I may seem to take something away from Stoner in the end at his death, I don’t really; I give him more than he has had before, and more than any of us ever gain—his own identity.” — JOHN WILLIAMS, 1966

The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel: John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life by Charles J Shields was a perfect biography about the novelist John Williams. John Williams captured my heart as a writer when I read Stoner, a novel thought of now as a literary masterpiece about an obscure midwestern university professor whose life and career are steeped in disappointment and failure. We learn that Stoner’s colleagues held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now. As a boy Stoner grew up on a hardscrabble farm in Missouri that his father assumed that he would take over after he obtained an agrarian degree at the University of Columbia. However, it was here that he was introduced to English literature and the course of his life changed in an instant while listening to a sonnet by William Shakespeare. Writing in the New York Times in 2007, Morris Dickstein called Stoner “something rarer than a great novel—it is a perfect novel, so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving, that it takes your breath away.”

Acclaimed biographer Charles Shields explores the life of John Williams, the author of Stoner throughout the entire arc of Williams’ life in which the author points out that in many ways paralleled the life of William Stoner. Both shared working-class backgrounds and undistinguished careers in the halls of academia. Shields follows the development of John Williams as an author when he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Denver and, it should be noted, largely responsible for making that department one of the leading literary departments across the nation.

John Williams’ other works were Butcher’s Crossing, and Augustus, winner of the National Book Award. Butcher’s Crossing was one of the first serious literary novels about the West. In writing it, he pondered how to convey the authentic experience of the harsh frontier and the terrifying vastness of the American West. It is about a young man who drops out of Harvard in the 1870s heading West while he is brimming with the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ultimately bankrolling what promises to be one of the last great buffalo hunts. Every aspect of young Will Andrews’ ordeal is presented in vivid and stunning detail. John Williams was ahead of his time, paving the way for authors like Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry. Williams fiercely resisted the characterization that Butcher’s Crossing was a western, and in so doing it initially was not a commercial literary success.

His last novel was Augustus when he decided to return to Rome and a key moment in ancient history being that of the assassination of Julius Caesar and the rise of his nephew Octavius to power amid intrigues involving Cleopatra, Brutus, Cicero, and Mark Antony among others. But Williams wanted to focus on the rise of Octavius becoming emperor while sacrificing friendship, youthful ideals and his own daughter, Julia. He had breathed new life into the epistolary novel winning the National Book Award in 1973.

John Williams retired from the University of Denver in 1985. He and his wife relocated to Key West and later, because of his health, to Fayetteville, Arkansas. After the move to Fayetteville, the University of Arkansas Press reissued all of his published fiction and the university library acquired his manuscripts and papers. John Williams died of respiratory failure in March 1994 at the age of seventy-one years. Unfortunately, much of the resurgence in the popularity of his works has been after his death but I would like to believe that this extraordinary man realized his talent, it just took us time to catch up.

“He was short and dapper, with a neat beard and ‘a face like a five-day rain,’ she recalls.” — JOANNE GREENBERG

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fascinated by the life of author John Williams as told by Charles J. Shields in The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel. Learning about William's life and influences helps me to better understand and appreciate his work.

I discovered William's book Stoner after purchasing a Kindle when I received an email of ebooks on sale. I was drawn to the novel by the cover, a detail of Thomas Eakins's painting The Thinker, Portrait of Louis H. Kenton. And I was drawn by the description of the novel.

It became one of my all-time favorite novels. It was about this time in 2013 that Stoner was labeled "The Greatest American Novel You've Never Heard Of" by Tim Krieder in the New York Times.

On December 23, 2013, I reviewed Stoner on my blog and this past winter I reread the book with my local library book club. I raved about Stoner so much that my son bought me Augustus as a Christmas gift, the book for which Williams won the National Book Award in conjunction with John Barth's Chimera.

Who was this man, this John-Williams-not-the-composer, this writer who I never heard about? I read Barth in an undergraduate college class, including his Chimera. Why had I not heard of Williams before?



I was very pleased to read the e-galley of The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel by Charles J. Shields, which answered my questions, how Williams was overlooked and later rediscovered, and how readers and book clubs have brought Stoner to its proper place in the canon.

Williams shared attributes with his protagonist Stoner; they both came from humble roots and grew up poor and worked in academia. Both were smitten with language and poetry. Both had unhappy marriages and an affair (or more, for Williams). Both stayed true to their ideals. Both died without the recognition they deserved.

But in other ways, Williams was very different from his character. Stoner stuck with his one, failed, unhappy marriage; Williams married multiple times. Williams thrived in an academic network based on alcohol and drinking. Williams's father abandoned his family and his stepfather was a drinker who was lucky to snag a New Deal job. And whereas Stoner never completed his thesis, Williams published three novels after several failed attempts.

The literary influences on Williams were diverse, from pulp magazines filled with adventure and romance to Thomas Wolfe. Williams was inspired by Eugene Gant in Look Homeward, Angel. (Wolfe was my favorite as well when I first read him at age 16.)

Seeing the movie A Tale of Two Cities starring Ronald Coleman impacted Williams also, and he tried to channel Coleman's style and panache, down to the thin mustache.

Williams became involved with theater (as did Wolfe before he turned to novels). He then discovered Conrad Aiken and psychological fiction, and then Proust, altering his writing style.

Dropping out of college, Williams became a radio announcer and jack of all trades in radio broadcasting. A whirlwind romance sped into marriage. Then, in 1942, faced with the draft, Williams enlisted in the air corps and became a radio technician. He ended up on planes flying over the Himalayas to bring supplies to General Chaing Kai-shek. He received a 'Dear John' letter.

In 1945 Wiliams returned to the States and found work at a radio station in Key West, Florida. Here he wrote his first novel, Nothing But the Night, "steeped in psychological realism" and filled with pathologies. He sent the manuscript to Wolfe's last editor Edward Aswell of Harper and Brothers, who rejected it.

Alan Swallow of Swallow Press in Denver, CO also found much to critique in the novel but also saw in Williams a spark of genius. Swallow was part of the New Criticism movement. He suggested that Williams come to the University of Denver. Williams was admitted and then was married a second time. His writing still suffered from "a lag between thought and emotion." Marriage No. 2 also ended and soon after Williams married a third time.

The work and philosophy of Yvor Winters, who held to a classical style of writing over the modern tendency of self-expression and obscurity, influenced Williams and he declared himself a 'Winterarian." Williams realized his writing was "overwrought" and embellished.

Williams turned his attention to the myth of the West and began researching for a novel about a young Romantic who experiences the real West. The book was promoted as a Western, a dismal and fatal choice that upset Williams. It never found its proper audience.

John had several affairs, including a woman who became his next, and last, wife. Meanwhile, he was working on the novel that became Stoner. The literary world was going in other directions, but Williams stuck to his ideals. Bestsellers included The Moon-Spinners by Mary Stewart and Daphne du Maurier's The Glass Blowers. Up and comers included Saul Bellow, Ken Kesey, and Thomas Pynchon. Stoner was "unfashionable." It lacked emotion, was too understated. Williams's agent warned his book would never sell well. That wasn't his goal. The novel was quite overlooked for a year when a review finally hailed it.

Williams began thinking about "the paradoxes of power" and about Cesar Augustus. By this time, in the late 60s, the counterculture was making its mark on academia. In 1971 Stoner was republished. In 1972 Augustus was finally published and won the National Book Award in 1973. Williams' drinking was becoming a problem but he started on a new novel set during the Nixon years. A lifelong smoker, he was on oxygen. He won awards and his books were brought back into print. In 1986 at a farewell dinner Williams read from his manuscript, a book he couldn't finish. In 1994 Williams died of respiratory failure.

But his novels kept popping up as new readers discovered them. In 2006 the New York Review of Books Classics reprinted Stoner and "Stonermania" took the literary world. The novel was first popular in Europe, Waterson named it Book of the Year in 2013. In America, readers began sharing the book with each other.

Williams was a complicated man with a complicated personal life. Like his protagonist, he stuck to his ideals. He learned to write the hard way, by writing unsellable novels before writing the novel that would sell a million copies worldwide.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[M. Sarki · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://msarki.tumblr.com/post/174461...

It was easy to be drawn to a book about a man who supposedly wrote the perfect novel. Stoner generally receives no small measure of praise. This biography regarding that work is well-written and instructive. A fairly interesting read, especially as it illuminates the difficulties of getting into print with the mainstream press. But this story of John Williams provides too much detail into the negative aspects of his character. But perhaps that is a good thing for an intuitive reader already given to not wanting to indulge in this author’s writing.

I write of human experience so that I may understand it and thereby force myself into some kind of honesty.___John Williams

There are countless examples in print and on the internet of praise for the novel Stoner by John Williams. Having perused the book previously, and not finding a good reason to read it, I nonetheless decided to read this biography in order to discover perhaps an error in my rejection of it. The problem that arose for me was the author himself. He is not a person I would want to meet or spend time with. I do not respect the way he treats people and the ones he supposedly loves. A writer’s personality matters to me. I do respect Williams’ desire to treat his life as philosophy, to make his emotions an architecture on the page. But this is still not enough to win me over. I simply do not like the man, and therefore, I refuse to allow him to write all over me.

“Find what gave you emotion,” Hemingway exhorts, “what the action was that gave you excitement. Then write it down making it clear so that the reader can see it too. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.”

[Scott Bielinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stoner by John Williams hit me like . . . well, a stone. An unremarkable man of restraint and devotion, William Stoner exemplifies perseverance and fortitude, virtues as hard to come by as they are attractive. I was utterly taken in by Stoner. Coming across this biography, I knew I had to read about the man who wrote the (almost) perfect novel. Well, Shields’ book introduced me, and I squirmed for the majority of the book, reading about a man who could not be more opposite his unremarkable protagonist. Shields himself makes this very point: “At times it seemed inconceivable that John Williams, the man getting insensible with bourbon in the corner, could also be the author of Stoner or Augustus, novels of almost magisterial restraint and control” (230).

As far as biographies go, Shields does admirably, following the whole arc of Williams’ life and development as a writer. Shields constantly shows us how Williams' love for language, poetry, and the Medieval literary tradition suffused his thinking, writing, and teaching. In this, Williams was unified with the New Criticism and Imagism movements of his day, purposefully breaking with the Romantic tradition, prioritizing that which is “real," clear, and direct in his writings. Shields details this nicely in Williams’ own fascination with Yvor Winters (a bad name amongst a few of the teachers in the English program in which I majored!). However, I expected a bit more interest in the books Williams wrote. Unfortunately, I was met with hastily summed-up synopses -- so hastily that important details in Stoner were left out or entirely glossed over (Edith and Stoner’s quasi-reconciliation at the end). Moreover, though Williams himself eschewed literary theory, I thought there’d be more analysis and close readings of the text than Shield provides. I was a bit disappointed.

I felt closer and more endeared to Williams as I read about his failures. Perhaps the one thing William Stoner inherited from his creator was his perseverance. Williams never gave up, convinced of his vocation and calling as a writer. When Shields contrasts Williams with his protagonist in Stoner, he concludes that it’s likely that Williams’ insensate behavior was a deflection tactic, and his writing indicated who/what he wanted to be: a man with a capacity to endure. But the drinking was his only means to endure -- which is, of course, no endurance at all, and, as Shields points out, a sad forgetfulness that neglects Nancy, the woman who stood by him through it all. Williams' excessive pride and arrogance, no doubt inflated by a misogynistic and patriarchal 20th-century English department, were sad to read about (This is to say nothing about his utter failure as a husband and father). In the end, I simply did not like the man. He was a stereotypical, 20th-century male author.

They tell you not to meet your heroes. Williams was not one of mine -- I simply fell in love with his protagonist. Perhaps I am more like Williams in some ways than I want to admit. It seems that both of us love William Stoner because we admire his capacity and acknowledge our own relative lack thereof. Stoner remains for me one of the greatest books of the 20th century, certainly one of the best written in the English language.

[Lorraine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a trippy book to read, as it involved my mother's first husband, John Williams, and included my mom. Kind of a personal read. Not all the information on my mom was correct, which was frustrating; but interesting to read about John's life which I never knew much of anything about.

[Bakunin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stoner and Butchers Crossing are two of my favorite books. I was therefore eager to learn more about their author - John Williams. I thoroughly enjoyed this biography! Williams had a tough upbringing (his father died when he was a child and he was raised by his stepfather) and his experiences during World War II gave him much material for his novel Butchers Crossing.

The reason I take a liking to Williams writing is precisely because he writes in a clear and lucid style which shies away from modern experimental prose. Williams lauded reason above all else and the writers craft was all about providing a powerful story where characters integrity is challenged by their environment. Writing should be difficult and should not be improvised (as was fashionable in the 60's). This view was taken from the west coast poet and critic Yvor Winters whose literary taste stemmed from 16th century poetry (with its minimalistic directness of emotion). The personality doesn't stand in the center of a literary work; the work does. Its about craft and reason, not about arbitrary emotions. For a work to truly be placed in a literary canon it has to be experience distilled by reason and enlivened by powerful language.

Stoner is a case in point. It is because its language is so simple that one has to read between the lines to find its meaning and this is why I find the work all the more appealing. Language doesn't get in the way of the story; it enhances it.

Williams also worked as a university teacher and started one of the first creative writing workshops. It was interesting to learn about how he would take young writers to his cabin in the woods, discuss literature and drink alcohol. I sometimes wish I had such a teacher! I was sad to read about his problems with alcohol and his inability to finish his last novel. Writers back then thought that they drink in order to cope with life's difficulties.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upon encountering this book title, the casual bookshop browsers might consider it to be a somewhat pretentious claim. They will be the ones who have not yet read the novel Stoner by John Williams. Biographer Charles Shields has once again written a touching and comprehensive account of a gifted and talented writer (his previous book was about another iconic American writer, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee).

Shields presents John Williams as a true homme de lettres. He was certainly scholarly: consider his English Renaissance Poetry; or his editorial work on Twentieth Century Literature: a Scholarly and Critical Journal; or his numerous essays on everything from “The Western: Definition of Myth,” to “Fulke Greville: the World and God,” the Elizabethan poet who was the subject of Williams’s doctoral dissertation.

Shields tells us further that over the course of twenty years, John Williams taught as a full professor at the University of Denver, edited the University of Denver Quarterly: A Journal of Modern Culture from 1966-70, directed a creative writing program, and published literary criticism. While perhaps not a prolific poet, Williams’s verse appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies, and he also published two books of poetry, The Broken Landscape and The Necessary Lie.

Of course, to cap all his literary endeavors he published four novels: Nothing but the Night, Butcher’s Crossing, Stoner, and Augustus. To some degree, each of Williams’s novels was experimental. The first is “an ambitious novel, steeped in psychological realism,” and the last depicts “Rome and the life of the emperor [Augustus] through imagined letters and journal entries.” And though it was Augustus that won the 1973 National Book Award, it is the extraordinary novel Stoner for which Williams is most remembered, even though it had an uneven and belated climb to eventual and posthumous recognition.

While brimming over with legitimate credentials as a man of letters, one thing Williams did not appear to be good at was marriage. In his time, he had four wives, three divorces, and three children to whom he was a loving but inconsistent father. Nevertheless, Shields has painted a sympathetic portrait of a warm and likeable man whose only ambition was to write. The book is cleverly structured around Williams’s novels, authentically depicting the challenging struggles with both his writing and his life.

For those who have read Stoner, Shields’s brilliant biography will be an enormously satisfying, personal, behind-the-scenes revelation of a writer at work. For readers who have yet to sample Williams’s novels, The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel: John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life will provide the gentle but firm push to do so.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ Why would anyone want to read the biography of a novelist who was largely ignored in his lifetime, whose name draws blank stares today, and who only published four novel in his fifty year career?
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ My answer is that if you have read a novel by John Edward Williams, you'll need to know more about him. What I found in Charles J. Shields's The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel (2018) were answers to the "mystery" of John Edward Williams, often called "the best novelist you've never heard of." The title of Shields's book refers to Williams's 1965 novel Stoner, of which CUNY professor and literary critic Morris Dickstein said,

it is something rarer than a great novel—it is a perfect novel, so well told , so beautifully written, and so deeply moving, it takes your breath away."

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ There are a variety of reasons for neglect of Williams's novels during his lifetime. In part it was because his work defied classification in a time when "genre" was an important element in book sales. Partly it was because each of his four novels was entirely different so he was never able to be classified. Partly it was because his writing was devilishly subtle and difficult to define. And partly because his books were poorly timed, coming out when the world's attention was drawn away from novels: 1960, 1965, and 1972.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ We should be grateful to Shields for giving definition to John Edward Williams in this short and clear biography. ‎‎‎ Shields has provided us with clues to Williams's intentions as a novelist, clues that led me to understand of how autobiographical were Williams's novels, and insights into the subtlety of Williams's writing, insights easily lost under the weight of the actual text.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ Every novel has a hero or antihero. ‎Perhaps the most significant insight into John Edward Williams is his concept of the "hero." To Williams, a hero is not one who battles against overwhelming odds and wins; he or she is one who battles against overwhelming odds and loses—but only to come back to fight again. A hero is not a winner, a hero is a fighter.
In this respect Williams was like Hemingway, as he was like Hemingway in his spare language. Williams was also a remarkably subtle writer, far more than most of his reviewers and certainly most of his readers. His "hints" were so low-key as to be invisible to many readers, myself included.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ Perhaps Williams's low readership during his life was because he never stayed with one genre; his four books were all entirely different. Edwards was devilishly difficult to define, and we should be grateful to Shield's for his contribution Williams's definition in this short and very clear biography. I now understand better why I am a long-time fan of Williams,
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ In 1922, ‎John Edward Williams was born in Clarksville, Texas as John Edward Jewell. His father, John Edward Jewell, was a ne'er-do-well who disappeared one night and was never seen again—his disappearance was attributed to either simple abandonment of wife and son, or to his murder by an unknown miscreant who took both the father's car and his never-found body as he fled. Take your pick.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎John Edward Jewell was re-surnamed Williams in 1924 when his mother moved to Wichita Falls and married a postal department janitor named George Williams. ‎While growing up in Wichita Falls, John Edward Williams was known as an avid reader and a flamboyant, perhaps pretentious, character who gave off a sense of high expectations. His impressive deep voice belied a short stature and lent authenticity to his theatrical tendencies. In his later teens he was involved in school plays and in radio advertisements. But a war intervened.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎In 1942, at age 20, Williams enlisted in the U. S. Army Air Forces, rising to sergeant as a radio operator on C-47s carrying cargo "Over the Hump" in the CBI Theater—from India to Burma and China. Williams began writing his first novel—Nothing But the Night (1948)— during his recovery after his plane was shot down and crashed. That first novel is widely ignored; even Williams trivialized it. But even it has recently been reprinted
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎Williams's "real" writing began with his second novel, Butcher's Crossing (1960). Butcher's Crossing was labelled a "western" because it was set in the early 1870's American West. This was a great disservice to the book because it was not a "western" as the term was normally understood, and " westerns" were a fading genre when Butcher's Crossinghit the bookstores. His third novel, Stoner (1965) is about an academic named William Stoner in the English Department at the University of Missouri. It was published just as the Viet Nam War began tearing society apart, poor timing to get the public interested in a back-country professor.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ As an additional strike against it, Stoner is far from a happy novel—it's protagonist has done nothing of note and, in the end, is drummed out of his job in a spate of intradepartmental discord. To add to his failure, Stoner has a miserable marriage. He dies holding in his hand the only lasting product of his life—his single and totally ignored book on English literature.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎Williams's fourth and last novel, Augustus (1972), is the gem on the back of the toad. It was a faux-memoir of Caesar Augustus, Julius Caesar's nephew and adopted son, that focused not only on his many victories but also on his one great failure, perhaps weightier than his successes: Augustus was father to a very wayward daughter named Julia, a princess famous for out-screwing Rome's the most libidinous prostitute. This book co-shared the 1973 National Book Award in the first (and only) split of that prize. It was Williams's only book about a great person brought low by that all-too-common disorder—a family schism.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ Williams's academic career began when he received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri in 1954. In 1955 he joined the English Department at the University of Denver, where he rose to full professor. He retired from Denver in 1985.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ While his career was Stoner-like, his private life was chaotic. Married four times, he was a non-stop smoker and (as were many novelists in his day) a non-stop drinker. In his later academic career he would enter class with the handle of his rolling oxygen tank in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Williams died of respiratory failure in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 1994.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ Recently Williams's books have had a renaissance, and his reputation has improved greatly as America has matured and as reprints have steadily fanned the Williams flame. Today Williams is assessed much more favorably as his books are reinterpreted in the spirit of their birth rather than in broad genre-riddled stereotypes. Yes, Williams's themes are dark and his characters are unhappy—but they reflect a messy reality rather than the clear and misleading genres that classified them at their birth. Today readers, once stifled by the conventions of the 1950s and early 1960s, are accustomed to a messy reality
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ As an example, Butcher's Crossing was sold as a "western" because it was set in a 1870's buffalo hunt in the early exposure of the West to the East's rapacity. But its underlying theme was not a shoot-em-up, nor was it the rapacity of the Eastern advance—though that was certainly a component. Williams's central intent was a rejection of the Romantic notions of Emerson, Thoreau and Greeley that identified the early West as an Eden—a benign land of peace and of harmony with nature. Rather, Williams wrote Butcher's Crossing to illustrate the inherent brutality of life in the West, a brutality exposed when Nature confronts Man. Man might go West to find Eden, but he will discover—or create—the same heartless world he left,
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ In the same vein, Augustus was billed as the story of a great Roman Emperor when it was really a story of the most common experience of all—family discord and schism. And Stoner was not the tale of a minor professor who created little in life and died disappointed; it was the story of humanity—destined to leave little behind and to be less at death looking back than at birth looking forward.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ Obviously, Williams's life mimics the characters in his books, excluding Caesars: little accomplished, little notoriety, rather hum-drum. For those of us now, and in the future, who think highly of Williams's work, this biography is a great contribution. Thank you, Charles Shields!
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ And you! Get off your duff and go read Stoner! Hate it or love it, it'll stick to your ribs.

[All My Friends Are Fictional · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Williams once said that he tries never to repeat himself. "Why do it again, if you’ve done it once?" I do admire authors who are divers and experimental with their writing. Stoner is indeed a perfect book for me while I see Williams as a fascinating and a flawed person (this is stressed on multiple times in the biography). However, what this biography does and what I don't like, is that it makes many assumptions (for instance, how Williams felt on this or that occasion). Maybe it makes the avalanche of facts more readable, but it just doesn't feel genuine and seems very out of place (we have fiction for mythology).

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An “engrossing” biography of a brilliant novelist underappreciated in his own time who became a twenty-first-century bestseller, from the New York Times–bestselling author (The New Yorker).

When Stoner was published in 1965, the novel sold only a couple of thousand copies before disappearing with hardly a trace. Yet the quietly powerful tale of Midwestern college professor William Stoner, whose life becomes a parable of solitude and anguish, eventually found an admiring audience in America and especially in Europe. The New York Times called Stoner “a perfect novel,” and a host of writers and critics, including Colum McCann, Julian Barnes, Bret Easton Ellis, Ian McEwan, Emma Straub, Ruth Rendell, C.P. Snow, and Irving Howe, praised its artistry. The New Yorker deemed it “a masterly portrait of a truly virtuous and dedicated man.”

This biography traces the life of Stoner’s author, John Williams. Charles J. Shields follows the whole arc of Williams’s life, which in many ways paralleled that of his titular character, from their shared working-class backgrounds to their undistinguished careers in academia. Shields vividly recounts Williams’s development as an author, whose other works include the novels Butcher’s Crossing and Augustus (for the latter, Williams shared the 1972 National Book Award). Shields also reveals the astonishing afterlife of Stoner, which garnered new fans with each American reissue, and then became a bestseller all over Europe after a Dutch publisher brought out a translation in 2013. Since then, Stoner has been published in twenty-one countries and sold over a million copies.

“Like Williams, Shields know how to tell a good story, one that will appeal especially to those interested in the ins and outs of the publishing industry and the ups and downs of a writer’s life.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: My earlier reading of Author Shields' excellent And So it Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life made me eager to read this book about John Williams. My as-yet unbligged review of Stoner is below, to add the needed context to my ideas about this book and its subject.

I think the reason this book never got to pop-culture awareness, in spite of Stoner's tremendous success in the twenty-first century, is simple: John Williams is a shitty human being. I mean, men of his generation more often than not were shitty, and abusive, and sexist...homophobic...by our standards of acceptability, irredeemable in ways even Armie Hammer and Neil Gaiman don't approach. Tempus fugit; sic transit gloria mundi.

No one would get away with Vonnegut's misogyny and sexism today, yet here's a man who wrote one of the most horrendous, harridanly women in literature...Edith Stoner...irredeemable even in victim terms, as her malevolence is obvious long before her husband rapes her. What I could never figure out is why she hated Stoner so much, he was never any kind of promising except of failure and disappointment. She wasn't duped; she married the real him, looking down on him every step of the way.

And Williams' life? He insisted Stoner was fictional. I myownself, after reading this book, think otherwise. The litany of grievances against life, work, colleagues (he had no friends that I thought deserved the name), all of it: Stoner. So how does he, Williams, get a pass from the literati? Beats me all hollow, though I suspect it's merely a matter of time.

What made me enjoy this book so much was the factual reporting of his life story: The multiple infidelities and marriages; his early infatuation with theater; his early love for Look Homeward, Angel, that adolescent's dream book; his admiration for Ronald Colman as Sydney Carton in the film of A Tale of Two Cities (I shudder even typing that sentence fragment, go look at the link to see why; oleaginous much?). These facts and many more make as comprehensible and clear a picture of the man who could author Stoner as well as the proto-Blood Meridian Western-but-don't-tell-him-you're-calling-it-that Butcher's Crossing as one could ever hope to find.

Violence, in John Williams' œuvre, is less physiologically present than in McCarthy's. It's not dwelt on with loving, prurient, in my view pornographic lingering money shots of prose. It's, well, I guess my best match between vocabulary and feeling is clinical. John Williams was undoubtedly an acoholic, an abusive and distant man, and the way to be all those things is to be removed from one's emotional states, to devalue and deny empathy while, paradoxically, demanding that very feeling for one's characters as they enact worse and worse things on their victims.

Should one who has not read any Williams, but would like to, read this biography? Not with any expectation of still wanting to read his work. It's a good way to learn how you'll respond to the work itself thoguh. I don't know how knowing about the real person doing the writing of the books we know and love should make us feel. It varies, I suppose, from reader to reader, from writer to writer.

I'll go out on a limb and say that, for $2.99 on Kindle, the answer in this case is "absolutely do read it." Author Shields is enough of a talented storyteller to make time spent learning how nasty one person can get worth one's time.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of the greatest novel you have never read. I can be confident you have never read it because so few people have. In recent weeks, I have come across academics specializing in American literature who have never even heard of it. Yet it is, without question, one of the great novels in English of the twentieth century. – Brian Appleyard, Sunday Times

I shudder to think how close we were to losing the entire oeuvre of John Williams. Butcher's Crossing was dismissed as a “western”, Stoner was given short-shrift and allowed to go out of print, and Augustus, even after sharing a win of the National Book Award, was all but forgotten. The University of Denver, where Williams taught, published, and edited for most of his career, failed to want his papers when they were offered and made no flourish over his being the only National Book Award winner from Colorado.

John Williams was not William Stoner, but his life was, itself, like reading a novel. He was a man of his times, much like his contemporaries Hemingway and Faulkner. He drank too much. He came from poverty and a farming background, served his country in WWII, and then rose to a very successful level in the academic world. A stickler for perfection, he was able to deliver just that, but the work was everything to him and work of this nature tends to erode or elbow-out most other aspects of life. He was married four times, had children who felt they knew little of him, and often met with a mix of jealousy, admiration and disdain from both his students and his contemporaries.

I am grateful to those readers who were positioned to revive interest in these books: booksellers, who could not obtain copies and pushed for reprints; other authors who recognized the value and passed their copies about so that they could be read; academics who felt the injustice of not having these books to study; and small publishers who bought rights and made new covers and imprints.

I do not think the revived interest in these novels would surprise John Williams. He had great confidence in what he had written. He was unwilling to sell out Butcher's Crossing for money and have it languish on racks with third rate western romances. He protested to his agent that anyone who could not appreciate Stoner had simply not read it. In many ways these were his children; this was his life.

I have read all three of his major works. I am debating whether I will read his first novel, which he disavowed as a learning curve. I will, time and life permitting, read all the major three again someday. If I were making a list of important novels everyone should read, Stoner would definitely be on it.

Charles Shields has done a marvelous job of capturing on paper the enigmatic man that was John Williams. I closed the book feeling I had known him, wishing I had known him–warts and all–for it is always worthwhile to know a great mind.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having spent the bulk of my career as a university professor, I enjoyed reading Williams’ novel about Stoner, and Charles Shields’ comprehensive analysis of the author’s life in The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel. I read Stoner a couple years earlier, and I liked it so much that I nominated it for my book club. Many in the club liked the book, but some did not, especially after reading the introduction outlining the author’s concerns and results. Several thought Stoner was a loser and wondered why I would nominate such a book.

Ever since then I’ve tried to fortify my rationale for nominating a book that I truly identified with. After reading Shields’ research on the life of John Williams, I think I found ample information to justify my nomination, for his very readable book describes in detail the methodical, but often overlooked, behaviors of a university professor working in an academic department, where he dealt with the ups and downs of his literary concerns, creative output, and his personal life.

Having read Shields’ book it is obvious to me that Williams had a passion for his academic area, his teaching, and to a greater extent his more creative work. All the while he was not dissuaded by colleagues with big egos, and he felt like he could make a contribution to his students, discipline, and department with his novels. Unfortunately, his novels were almost overlooked by his colleagues, critics, and the public. During the course of his life, his teaching methods became a bit out of step, and he became increasingly ineffective as a result of his chain smoking and substance abuse. When outside recognition finally came, his health gave way.

I highly recommend The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel, especially for people who previously read Stoner.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles Shields' biography of the man who wrote the wonderful novel Stoner is almost as good as Stoner was. Alas, John Williams the man does not evoke the same sort of admiration as John Williams the novelist. As demonstrated in the book, Williams was deeply flawed, a difficult alcoholic who was neglectful of his wives and children. Still, he was tremendously accomplished, as an author (though not a successful one in his lifetime), as a professor and book editor.

One of the great strengths of this rather compact biography is Shields' analysis of Williams' approach to writing. He had strong opinions about the right way to write, never wanted to repeat himself and cared infinitely more about the art of writing than he did about book sales. Not that he didn't want the sales, he was simply incapable of compromising his approach in order to obtain them. And it was interesting to read about the real-life feud between professors (neither of which was Williams) that served as the inspiration for part of the plot of Stoner.

All in all, a quick-paced, very absorbing book. I've read all of Williams' novels and it was enlightening to learn so much about the man who wrote them.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just-the-facts-ma'am bio didn't do much to endear me to Williams. He managed to spend his whole life cheating on a ~30 year old wife by periodically cycling his current mistress to the altar; it's a surprise when we suddenly learn he has 3 children via one of the wives, he commented to a friend that he's basically a stranger to his kids; the subtitle about "the writer's life" is curious for the incredible luxury he enjoyed, totally out of scale with a novelist of very middling success (he seems constantly to be off for a month is his writing shack, or travelling through Europe to write, or boozing at a writers retreat, etc)

One thing of interest is to watch the evolution of his very naturalistic “plain style” as an acolyte of Yvor Winters' jihad against literature as self expression (eg transcendentalism and modernism).

[Frazt Des · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nachdem ich "Stoner" und "Augustus" gelesen habe, wollte ich nun als nächstes John Williams Biographie lesen.

Bei Autoren, welche solche "psychologisch realistischen" Bücher schreiben, habe ich immer das Vorurteil, dass sie im echten Leben eiskalte, ambitionierte Quasi-Übermenschen sind, die nie irgendwelche Fehler machten oder machen. John Williams war dies aber laut diesem Buch nicht - wenn auch sehr intelligent, doch nur ein ganz normaler Mensch mit Schwächen und Fehlern. Kein besonders ereignissreiches Leben ala Hemmingway, aber auch kein langweiliges, monotones so wie "Stoner", sondern etwas dazwischen. Es werden ständig Namen von amerikanischen Authoren aus dem 20. Jhdt. genannt, die ich aber aufgrund mangelnden Hintergrundwissen gar nicht zuordnen konnte. Ich war überrascht, dass er und Rossevelt zur gleichen Zeit gelebt haben, habe ich doch Roosevelt immer irgendow ons 19. Jhdt. eingeordnet.

Kein schlechtes Buch, aber auch kein Gutes, nur für absolute Fans empfehlenswert.

[Sophie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Das war so eine unerfreuliche Lektüre. Erstmal ist die deutsche Übersetzung unfassbar schlecht, manche Sätze sind so krumm, dass man sie nicht mal verstehen kann. Dann ist der Schreibstil des Autors grauenvoll, dauernd irgendwelche abrupten Brüche. Zwischendurch dachte ich mein ADHS hat Sätze übersprungen, aber nein, plötzlich ist der Erzählbogen einfach weg, gone, disparu. Und zu allem Übel scheint John Williams ein sehr unangenehmer Mensch gewesen zu sein. Als ich mich durch den letzten Teil des Buchs quälte, wollte ich ihn nur noch als kleinen Pisser bezeichnen. John Williams zeigt sich spätestens am Ende seines Lebens und dieser Biographie als misogyner Arsch (auf persönlicher und struktureller Ebene), als herablassender Egozentriker, der seine Vorstellung von Literatur und Kanon durchdrücken möchte und zum krönenden Abschluss auch als Alkoholiker, der besoffen antisemitisch wird (let's be honest, er ist einfach Antisemit, ob betrunken oder nüchtern).

[Ant]

Εξαιρετική βιογραφία από τον Shields, παρόλο που δεν καταφέρνει να δει τον Γουίλιαμς αντικειμενικά (ειδικά στο κεφάλαιο που περιγράφεται η κλοπή πνευματικής ιδιοκτησίας που διέπραξε ο Γουίλιαμς στην ανθολογία ποιησης Ελισαβετιανών που εξεδωσε). Περιέχει συναρπαστικες πληροφορίες για την εκδοτική διαδικασία στις ΕΠΑ, την λειτουργία των πρακτορείων και της προώθησης ενός εργου καθώς και της ακαδημαϊκής ζωής στα πρώτα δημιουργηθεντα προγράμματα συγγραφης μετά τον δεύτερο παγκόσμιο πόλεμο. Ο Γουίλιαμς υπήρξε, ανεξάρτητα από όλα τα αλλα, ένας αφοσιωμένος συγγραφέας, παρότι άκρως συντηρητικός, τόσο στις απόψεις του για τις γυναίκες όσο και στις απόψεις του για τη λογοτεχνία.

[J R · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned about Charles Shields after watching the beautiful movie, Raisin in the Sun. Author, Lorraine Hansberry wrote the book and screenplay for the movie and after reading about her, I saw that Shield’s had written a book about her life, which I was lucky to find and checkout at my library, Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind a Raisin in the Sun published recently in 2022.

But, I was even more surprised to obtain on Libby, The MAN WHO WROTE the PERFECT NOVEL John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life also by Shields.

Fascinating read about an award winning author who most haven’t heard about or read his books.

Good read indeed

[Christopher Renberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

When the NYRB published STONER, my father urged me to pick it up and read it. He was right to do that. I became a fan of the work. This biography of the author, John Williams, tells the tale of how this work and its writer were neglected but then, later on down the road, resurrected. Shields pulls no punches in recounting a life that was not always rosy. The epilogue dealt with the book's resurgence here and abroad and was interesting to read. Shields also helped me to add to my reading list with reference to other contemporary works. A good biography indeed.

[Grazia Palmisano · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'ho trovato particolarmente interessante soprattutto perché letto subito dopo Stoner. Ero curiosa di conoscere l'autore, di saperne di più su chi aveva scritto un libro tanto avvincente, volevo prolungare il piacere della lettura di Stoner. Ho deciso di leggerlo anche per capire come mai alla sua uscita non diventò il successo che è invece diventato in seguito. Mi sembrava inverosimile che un libro scritto così bene e così coinvolgente potesse aver avuto scarsa attenzione. Questo saggio mi ha fornito le risposte e un ritratto dell'autore un po' diverso da come lo avevo immaginato.

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The biography is excellent and we get to know John Williams as a flawed and brilliant man. The title of chapter 17 says it all: "How Can Such a Son of a Bitch Have Such Talent?"

My only complaint is that Shields did not engage more with how and why Stoner is considered a "perfect novel." He quotes Morris Dickstein's 2007 review that is the source of the quote but doesn't really engage the claim.

That said, anyone interested in Stoner and/or John Williams will really enjoy the book -- it's a must read for all "Stonerites."

[Michael Byron · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at the life of a writer. I’m not sure how well known John Williams is today but I read Stoner several years ago. It is a book that has stayed with me which I wouldn’t have expected as it’s about a man who lives a quiet, unhappy life. I don’t really know if John Williams had a happy life but it certainly wasn’t quiet, or boring. Unfortunately he seems to have fallen into the alcoholic womanizing stereotype.

[Clifford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book at a reading the author gave when it first came out and I've finally gotten around to reading it. I enjoyed it very much and learned an enormous amount about Williams and the publishing industry of an earlier time. While I've read STONER, I haven't read his other books, and I suppose I should, especially the NBA-winning AUGUSTUS, which I'd never even heard of until I read this book. This is a fascinating read, especially for writers and fans of STONER.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a massive fan of Stoner and am about to read it for the fifth time in as many years. This biography thus appealed to me.

Nevertheless, I found it quite a tedious read. A huge amount of detail on Williams' life and his influences can be found in here but the book itself never engrossed me.

As a historical record of the life of a brilliant author I am glad it exists but I simply did not enjoy it.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shields nimmt sich an John Williams' Romanen ein Vorbild und schreibt prägnant und ohne viel Deutung, insbesondere ohne irgendwelche Mutmaßungen über Williams' Innenleben (mit einer Ausnahme gleich am Anfang, wenn es darum geht, wie und wann JW erfährt, dass sein Vater nicht sein biologischer Vater ist). Ansonsten: JW war ein Mann seiner Zeit, der laufend die Frauen wechselte und nicht über seine Kriegserlebnisse reden konnte. Dennoch: Das ist alles sehr faszinierend und man kommt nicht darum herum, seine Lektüreeindrücke zu hinterfragen.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book to be a very useful source following my recent reading of all of John Williams's excellent novels. One could not help but be curious about the author, and Charles Shields added to my appreciation for Williams's accomplishment and also to my understanding of why certain themes were important to him, and how women were portrayed in his books.

[Jennifer Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited to read this because I love Stoner so much--both the book and the character. Of course, I made the mistake of thinking Williams would be like his most famous character. Unfortunately, Williams comes across in the biography as the cliché of the postwar white male academic/author: alcoholic, adulterous, and narcissistic. It's probably accurate, but I didn't enjoy reading it.

[Manuel Posada · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times it felt I was reading a parallel storyline for Stoner. John Williams spent his whole life looking for success and recognition and it never came to him, even with winning a National Books Award. I enjoyed the insights into literary and academic gossip and how it frames his academic and creative work in his life long allegiance to the new criticism movement.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some silly niggly errors (Williams’ mother’s age at his birth, labeling Wallace Stegner a poet) hopefully don’t indicate more serious errors because this is a compelling biography of a fine writer and an interesting life.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

If indeed "Stoner" deserves being called the "perfect" novel, like so many other great (and it is great) novels, this biography shows that it was certainly written by - like all humans - an imperfect man. A fascinating look at an American writer that too few people have heard of.