William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life: Bookmarked

by Steve Almond

Stoner is a 1965 novel by the American writer John Williams. It tells the story of William Stoner, who attends the state university to study agronomy, but instead falls in love with English literature and becomes an academic. The novel narrates the many disappointments and struggles in Stoner's academic and personal life, including his estrangement from his wife and daughter, set against the backdrop of the first half of the twentieth century.

In his entry in the Bookmarked series, author Steve Almond writes about why Stoner has endured, and the manner in which it speaks to the impoverishment of the inner life in America. Almond will also use the book as a launching pad for an investigation of America’s soul, in the process, writing about his own struggles as a student of writing, as a father and husband, and as a man grappling with his own mortality.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Biography, Writing, Memoir, Literature

161 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 14, 2019

About the author

Steve Almond is the author of two story collections, My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B.B. Chow, the non-fiction book Candyfreak, and the novel Which Brings Me to You, co-written with Julianna Baggott. He lives outside Boston with his wife and baby daughter Josephine.

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Literature exists to help people know themselves," Steve Almond tells us early in his new book William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life. Almond delves into John William's novel Stoner and explores how he connected to the character of William Stoner and how the novel impacted his life.

Steve Almond has read Stoner a dozen times, grappling with its messages and why it brings him back time after time. He offers us a Stoner who shows the "devotion to the inner life," a lost art in a culture fixated on wealth and consumerism and entertainment.

I have read Stoner twice. I picked up an ebook on sale because I liked the cover art, a painting by John Singer Sargent. I got the 'Stoner' bug and was soon touting it, part of its rediscovery by readers.

Stoner is the story of a man whose hardscrabble farmer father sends him to university to study agriculture. Stoner is baffled by literature and is moved to understand. His professor understands that Stoner has fallen in love and is destined to become a teacher. The story follows his career, his unhappy marriage, alienation from his daughter, his love affair, and departmental battles. And then--he dies of cancer. In the end, Stoner forgives his wife and himself and accepts that his choices were the only ones he could have made.

The novel breaks the rules for a best-seller, and Williams knew it when he wrote it. From the old-fashioned narration and the lack of page-turning action to the focus on a sad character whose choices bring him pain. And yet...we are carried away by the story. It is about the choices we make and don't make, how we marry for lust and are ruined by lovelessness, how sticking to our values can ruin our careers.

Almond becomes deeply personal, sharing his own decisions and failures and history and how William Stoner reflected his life back to him, helping him to understand himself and better himself.

Almond probes Stoner's wife, making her a more fully realized character for readers--Almond's wife would like to hear Edith's side of the story, how sexual abuse and the lack of choice for women in 1928 caged her into a life she did not want. First Edith gives up their daughter to Stoner's care; later, jealous, she reclaims the child and alienates her from her father. The child suffers but Stoner cannot see any choice but to allow it. The girl is broken by this and it destroys her.

Stoner's squabbles with the English department head, Lomax, shows "the difficulty of standing up for yourself in the world, the price you pay when you fail to do so, and the price you pay when you succeed." Stoner wants to uphold the "intellectual purity of the academy" but feuding with the powerful can't result in victory.

Was Stoner a masochist? Growing up on a farm, was he so used to being the victim of uncontrollable forces that he sought out failure? On his death bed, Stoner's daughter remarks, "things haven't been easy for you, have they?" to which he replies, "I suppose I didn't want them to be."

Almond looks at the theme of class in Stoner. Marrying Edith, a pampered girl from the upper classes and embracing a career as a teacher brings Stoner far up the ladder from the manual labor and subsistence life on his family farm. Almond writes that Stoner "show us what happens when the poor farm boy actually gets the rich girl, which is that he winds up in hell."

During WWI, Stoner's two best friends at university go to war while he is talked out of it by his professor. Stoner is perfectly happy in his cell, searching literature for truth and beauty.

There are a few months of joy in Stoner's life, mostly when he falls in love with Katherine, a young instructor. Sharing the intellectual life leads to carnal love until Lomax holds the affair over Stoner's head to threaten his career. The interlude allows reflections on love--Stoner needing to choose between human love and the love of teaching. And it is teaching that Stoner loves the most, the idealized vision of preserving and passing on the heritage of literature. Over and over he chooses teaching--instead of enlisting, instead of divorcing, instead of a good relationship with his boss. Literature is his first love and Stoner never abandons her.

On his death bed, Stoner asks if his life had value or if he was a failure. Williams wrote that Stoner "had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire; he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality." In a flash of insight, Stoner realizes that failure didn't matter. "He was himself, and he knew what he had been." And that is the beauty of the novel. It is enough to be oneself. To stay true to who one is. Nothing else matters in the end. In the battle for the inner life, Stoner had won.

Throughout the book, Almond connects his subject to contemporary American politics, concluding that "Americans are conflict junkies" and when politicians don't fight back we lose interest. "Going high" as Stoner did may win the battle but it loses the fight.

Almond's book was enjoyable for the insights into John William's "perfect novel" and also for a deep understanding of how a novel can impact a reader.

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

[Gail Shepherd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part brilliant literary analysis, part memoir, part writing manual, part philosophical treatise, this is a beautifully written book that investigates the meaning of life via m John William’s masterpiece, Stoner. Almond looks at writing, marriage, teaching, parenting, reading, and death through his nearly lifelong relationship with one novel. This book has turned me into a huge fan of Steve Almond, and I now want to read everything he has written.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A link: https://www.the-american-interest.com...


John Williams’s third novel Stoner was first published in 1965 and, perhaps fittingly for its famously mild-mannered protagonist, received only small pockets of attention before sinking almost completely out of sight. One review began by plaintively asking “why isn’t this book famous?” That question has finally been definitively answered. Stoner’s reputation steadily revived decades after, with several reissues, the passionate word-of-mouth evangelism of a small but growing number of fans, eventually selling in the millions first in Europe and later in America. Stoner’s rescue from oblivion provides another example of how underrated products of American culture sometimes must migrate across the pond to get their due. Stoner is now widely considered a beloved modern classic and a movie version is apparently in the works, which could be either luminously beautiful or an utter disaster, depending on the direction.

Why a painstakingly unsentimental but deeply evocative tale of a midwestern farmer’s son who becomes a minor academic is so moving is the subject of William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life, a new book-length study by the essayist and short story writer Steve Almond. Stoner is the kind of book that makes instant fanatics of its readers; Almond approvingly references the old saying about The Velvet Underground’s first record-- only a few people bought it when it came out, but everyone who did started a band. No doubt that Stoner, a novel very much preoccupied with the pursuit of literature for its own sake, converted plenty of its readers into writers. Part of the pleasure of reading Almond’s deeply personal approach to investigating Stoner’s subtle power is how nakedly honest he is about the ways in which the book speaks to his own ambitions, flaws, and fears as a writer and man.

Almond admits that he has lost count of the number of times he’s reread Stoner after first having it pressed on him as an MFA student and pouring through it in one ecstatic night’s reading, where he “wept a good deal, inexplicably though not unhappily.” Ever since, Stoner has been a consistent source of wisdom and insight throughout the cycle of his life, as a professional teacher and writer, husband, father, a son mourning the death of his beloved mother, and as a middle-aged man pondering mortality. Kafka once said that we should read only the books that take an axe to the frozen seas inside of us, and Almond’s sometimes anguished account of his perpetual rereading Stoner is in keeping with this sage advice: “the central reason I keep circling back to Stoner isn’t aesthetic or moral…what I’m after is personal reckoning. Each time I’ve read the book, it has illuminated some new aspect of my own inner life.”

To its credit, Stoner isn’t the kind of book that plays many formal or linguistic games. It doesn’t play any games at all. The bleakness of the narrative provides much of its honesty and also much of its beauty. We follow the very naturalistically portrayed story of the rather plain and unassuming life of William Stoner, a son of the Missouri soil who is suddenly converted to the life of the mind by a classroom encounter with one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Stoner eventually becomes a Medievalist scholar and assistant professor at a small Missouri University who marries badly and suffers a generally dismal home life because of it, has a brief and doomed affair, deals with a colleague’s attempted career sabotage, and dies. That’s essentially it.

And yet, of course, even within that short outline of a fairly ordinary life there are multitudes. Part of Stoner’s ability to move countless readers lies in how the minutiae of this nondescript man’s life is so delicately and surely rendered that it is alchemized into art. You feel for poor Bill Stoner, bask in the quiet pathos of his humdrum existence and all-too-human series of poor choices, and yet as years and pages pass Stoner’s devotion to his calling as a professor and scholar starts to feel heroic precisely because of, and perhaps despite, the innumerable existential odds stacked against him. It helps you to see that there are plenty of Stoner types around, plugging away at their humble passions (maybe it’s fixing cars, gardening, hiking, collecting stamps, or reading and writing) while time and chance take their inexorable toll.

Almond’s willingness to look afresh at this subtle tale illuminates some of the character’s easily overlooked motivations. For example, Stoner’s wealthy, beautiful, and coldly cruel wife Edith initially seems like little more than a monster who relentlessly tramples on Stoner’s emotions during their dreary marriage. Almond’s wife, a novelist herself, insightfully pointed out to him that the horror of Edith’s gilded upbringing is hidden in plain sight. As the narrator puts it: “her moral training both at the schools she attended and at home, was negative in nature, prohibitive in intent, and almost entirely sexual.” Something awful must have happened to Edith in her youth that caused her to be entirely unmoved at her own father’s funeral and for her to smash up her childhood collection of porcelain dolls into powder in a blind rage and flush them down the toilet shortly thereafter. It’s far too easy, especially for male readers, to simply assume the worst when female characters act up. Almond argues convincingly that there’s an interesting novel waiting to be written from Edith’s perspective “examining the world from her perspective, as a woman passed ruthlessly from one man to another and made ruthless in the process.”

Almond also finds quite a bit of social critique in Stoner. Almond usefully points out that Stoner lives through quite a lot of social upheaval in his time. Stoner grows up poor during the Depression, seeing men beg door to door for the bread that will allow them to beg some more. Class anxiety runs rampant; fact that Stoner comes from stoic farming stock is a source of crippling self-doubt throughout his life, especially given the fancy-pants career choice that alienates him from both his disappointed family and his uncomprehending peers. His small group of college buddies is ravaged by conscription into WWI, and the personal toll he suffers speaks eloquently against wartime jingoism. Sometimes Almond’s extrapolations get a little carried away. The 2016 election seems to be lodged like a splinter in too many people’s minds years after the fact, and it does cause to Almond veer off into rant mode at times.

Genre-wise, Stoner is a campus novel, which is to say it offers an implicit critique of academia. Stoner’s work as professor isn’t described in depth, but his monkish devotion to his calling as a reader and scholar is made absolutely clear. Williams wrote to his agent that part of the point of the novel is that “Stoner will be some kind of saint.” Almond approves of Stoner’s colleague’s encouragement of his bookish ambition: “don’t you see? It’s love!” In some ways, Stoner’s biggest problem isn’t just his unassertiveness; it’s his vulnerability to the cutthroat vagaries of the academic life. Stoner suffers this with a conniving colleague who tries to undermine him and abuse his position in order to promote his own agenda. Stoner’s great moment of self-assertion comes when he argues that the university should be a place devoted to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, like a monastery in the Middle Ages, offering a contemplative respite from the heedless bustle of the outside world. It’s a fine sentiment, but it’s not enough to ward off the mendacity of his colleague.

For his part, Almond’s certainly got the love, but offers an amusingly self-deprecating account of his own frustrating years as an adjunct, referring to himself “a Professor of Bitterness” hustling from one gig to another in a beat-up car while trying and failing to model the love of literature to his mostly indifferent students. Almond knows what it takes to be a good teacher, and it’s not always in one’s control. Sometimes there are wonderful Stoner- like epiphanies to be had in a classroom, other times general indifference or power plays ruin it. Almond explains, with an endearingly self-deprecating candor, the jealousy and competitiveness inherent in the writing life and the Sisyphean task of trying to survive in the academic world. You’ve just got to love someone who, when a former student who has gone on to tremendous success sends a note of thanks to her former teacher for inspiring her, confesses that “I was proud beyond measure while also wanting to hang myself.”

But ultimately, all the hassle is worthwhile, and Almond knows this perfectly well. Because in the end, the passionate pursuits that might seem like madness or folly to the outside world are precisely what are the most necessary. The book ends with a pair of emotionally complex and analytically heartfelt meditations on both sides of the family experience, both as a father struggling to be the man his wife and children need him to be, and a moving account of the death of his beloved, talented, and overworked mother. Almond is able to convey these deeply honest, and at times embarrassing, accounts of how he navigates this fraught emotional terrain because of his engagement with Stoner’s own struggles.

Stoner wins hearts and minds worldwide because it quietly makes a virtue, sentence by carefully modulated sentence, of the lost art of paying attention. Almond explains that he loves Stoner because “to focus on the inner life today-- to read books, to think deeply, to imagine with no ulterior agenda, to reflect on painful or confusing experiences-- is to defy the clamoring edicts of our age, the buy messages, the ingrained habits of passive consumption and complaint.” Giving one’s time and attention over to a quiet, subtly observed tale like Stoner might be more attractive than ever nowadays, since the world’s only gotten much quicker, louder, and brasher with each decade. Reading in general provides a welcome relief from all that pressure, but that goes double for a story in a minor key like Stoner.

Criticism—particularly literary criticism—at its best ought to be seasoned with a robust element of the personal, of the inescapably human, or else it runs the risk of drying up completely and becoming brittle with polemic. We should read in order to live more fully, to engage with the complexities of the human condition more deeply, and criticism that passionately responds to texts with both a judicious eye and a beating heart honors that sacred imperative. As Almond’s book demonstrates, the heartening number of readers who are moved by Stoner, either because of or despite the portrayal of Stoner’s rather ordinary life, offers proof that despite our ADD-afflicted age, the passionate study of literature, the kind that Stoner dedicates his otherwise unremarkable life to, is not dead.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book about a great book. I’m looking forward to revisiting Stoner soon with a new perspective.

[Joe Imwalle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memoir meets literary criticism. Yes I want to read Stoner now. But I also feel as though I just did. I’m sure I did not. Seeing the movie version of a book is not reading the book either.

Steve Almond explores his own life and shares what is discovered in his deep dives into the pain of the details as they are brought up through the filter of the novel he loves to read and reread. This book inspires me to think about what books I would reread. I don’t do that. I’m always in search of the next book to save me. I have reread Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday for the sheer pleasure of it. What else? What other works of fiction have moved me even a small bit as much as Almond’s Stoner? Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson May be that book. It’s the book I’ve read most recently but also the one I felt profoundly moved me more than any other in years. Time to look through my goodreads read shelf for more.

[Bob Schueler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Stoner, the novel by John Williams on which this book is based, immediately before reading this book. Almond uses the combination of essay and autobiography that he used in Bad Stories to very good effect here. This is a kind of literary critique in which Almond describes the influence the book, to which he has returned again and again, on his life at various stages. As a result, he is able to focus on different aspects of the story as they resonated with the challenges at different stages of his life.
This wouldn't have worked if Stoner weren't an excellent and influential book, despite the obvious flaws that Almond is happy to discuss. I found his weaving in his own life experiences more natural and effective here than in Bad Stories, whose subject matter was more clearly political. In both books, he has a lot to say that is interesting and insightful about our social system and the way it impacts us. Here he pays special attention to the institution of marriage, and as an old guy who's been married 50 years, I could quarrel with some of it, he has lots of very interesting things to say, and lots of insights that were new to me, and forced me to think deeply about my own life and marriage.
This is a gift that has made Steve Almond a treasure to his fans. He thinks deeply about things--marriage, life, death, capitalism, teaching and writing in this book. Even when you end up disagreeing with him, he challenges you, like the excellent teacher he is.
The novel Stoner is, after all, about a teacher, a professor of early literature. I think Williams is hard on his protagonist as a teacher, as is Almond. Stoner describes himself as a mostly "indifferent" teacher, but you get the sense he is far more than that. Coming from a family of teachers, and not a teacher myself, I think it unfair to expect every teacher to be exceptional and inspirational. Competence is often dismissed as mediocrity, when teaching capably requires dedication, skill and intelligence, and deserves a better label than indifferent.
Anyway, this book was very hard to find on GoodReads, but it's well worth seeking out.

[Christopher Renberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was excited to discover this series. I have read three books by the author and was delighted he chose STONER to discuss. For the most part it was very informative and revealing. I treated the book like a very specific class lecture and the author certainly knows the book and was able to capture my attention and elicit feelings and emotions similar to his own.
What I could have done without is the incessant tangents on former President Trump. I realize the author was checking boxes to stay in the cool kids club but it was just too much, particularly when his glimpses into his personal life show the author may be more Trumpian in attitude and behavior than he cares to admit.
If you wish to read an enlightened and thorough take on a great book, dive in. But be aware of the political potholes that may bar your journey.

[Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know that there's another writer I look forward to reading as much as I do Steve Almond. His insights into Stoner, its cult following, and the lessons the novel offers us are all cutting and true. It's half close-read of the novel and half mapping of the novel against the trajectory of Almond's own life, and how different parts of Stoner have spoken to him in different stages of life.

The Bookmarked series seems really cool, I'll definitely be diving into a few more of them.

[Christopher Farnsworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steve Almond is an extraordinary writer. In this very slim volume, he turns his personal experience and love of a single novel into something like an instruction manual for being a better human being.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love letter to “The velvet underground of novels” from within the creative-writing industrial complex. It’s essentially a series of lit crit essays (feminist view of Edith, class view of their marriage, etc) with a lot of personal essay stuff as well, as is Almond’s wont. My favorite bits were about the mechanics of Stoner (“tell-don’t-show,” the narrator’s position, the hermetic fantasy of perfect victimhood, no subplots, etc) which gave me an appreciate for the “writer’s writer” thing

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

I LOVED the original William Stoner book and was so curious about this - there was some really great and insightful commentary on Stoner (both as character and as a book), and an amazing quote from the authors wife about how Mrs. Stoner also probably had an amazing story to tell (which reminded me of the Mrs. Bridge/Mr. Bridge stories which I also LOVED). There is a way (increasingly as the book goes on) that the author is reflecting on himself in a way that is too specific and dense, which is a turn-off, but overall this was a good companion book to read after Stoner.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a long-standing member of the “cult of Stoner,” and like Steve Almond, I’ve long admired the novel for its generosity of attention. Almond’s critical study - which weaves in and out of poignant memoir - gives the same generous attention to this work of art. Who doesn’t want to read about the qualities of love an artist has for a work of art?

The greatest artists, I’ve always found, are the most intense fans. Almond’s critical study is smart, sweet and readable in al the right ways. Read it, but read Stoner first!

[Brad Wojak · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was beautiful. If you love Stoner, Steve Almond, or books on books, then this is the volume for you. As a rabid fanatic of all three, this was almost a perfect volume.

What really caught me was the honesty with which Almond spoke of his wife, children, and mother, amongst others.

This truly blew me away. Much like others, I cannot wait to go back to Stoner again, but first I will have to re-read The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories...

[Davy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A surprisingly poignant companion to the novel itself (which everyone should read). Almond takes deep dives into his personal history (and his own inner life) while never neglecting the text in question, always firmly grounding his diversions in the pages of Williams' masterpiece. The result is a highly readable volume that illuminates the novel without ever once dropping to the level of dry literary analysis. Recommended for readers of the novel and fans of Steve Almond.

[Mike Crowley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almond shines brightest when he sticks to analyzing Stoner. By the end of this, I wanted nothing more than to read the book again immediately. Some of the sections detailing Almond's personal life seemed...not quite 'insincere', but certainly 'why are you telling me this in this way.' It's a little hard to explain. If you're part of the Stoner cult, this is worth a read for being quick and erudite.

[James Geary · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compelling combination of explication and introspection, a beguiling mix of fierce political critique, poignant personal reflection, and astute close reading of Williams' novel. Clearly a labor of love and a candid interrogation of the relationship between literature and the inner lives of readers and writers.

[Suzanne Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of our recent book club selections. I read the book "Stoner" about 3 years ago and the author discusses it at length, including insights I didn't have when I read it and speaking frankly of its impact on his own life. I so enjoyed this book, so much depth in his discussion. I will be interested to hear if people who did not read "Stoner" were able to appreciate this book.

[Lytton Bell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool idea

I liked how we followed this guy's chaotic thoughts around as a reader rather than some high fallutin critical literary analysis crap. He just threw it all in the pot and lets the reader sort through it. The author seems very intelligent, but maybe not such a nice person. At least he seems to know it and to be willing to try to change.

[Kerry Booth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almond can write the shit out of a sentence. There were so many descriptions and so many sentences I wanted to steal from, I lost count. A very good book about a very good book, a devotional treatise on the healing power of words.

[Alison]

I am a fan of Steve Almond's nonfiction. This is another interesting addition to his ever expanding body of work.

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[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, heck. The year is still less than halfway through, so it won't sound too overwrought if I say this is the best book I've read this year. But it is.

Awhile back the science fiction writer Joe Haldeman quipped words to the effect that the maxim "Write what you know" explains why there are so many bad novels about despairing English professors having romantic affairs with their undergrads." For me, even the "good" books in this sub-genre are bad, because I find the campus novel tedious even when done well.

That's why when my father sent me "Stoner," a book about an English professor at a small Missouri college, I was ready to chuck the thing into the wastebasket before even reading the dedication page. I tried to keep an open mind, and I'm glad I did. The book, for whatever reason, quietly defied all expectations and preconceived notions I had. It was a fiercely interior look at a man who was not brave by any standard we're taught to measure by, but it presented this man, it seems, specifically to show how illusory those standards are.

Not only will I usually not read a book about a writer. I will rarely ever read a book about a book (I'd rather just read the source material again). But "Stoner" knocked me on my rear once and redefined my own understanding of what a novel could do, so I took the plunge and gave "William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life" a go.

The author, Steve Almond, is a novelist whom I've never heard of, and frankly I probably will not be seeking out his fiction. That said, his book is a beautiful and sustained paean to the transformative power of literature, as well the uncanny ability of the best books to only deepen in meaning as time passes. The author writes about the effect that the book has had not just him, but how he perceived having children, the death of his mother, his relationship with his wife, and what he sees as the valuation of all the wrong things in our culture (brashness, martial glory, outward displays of bravery, et. al.).

I don't share his politics, which sometimes I think veer toward neuroses, but the author so relentlessly interrogates his own motives and actions that I frankly don't care about what sort of differences I might have with him. We all have biases and blind spots but he is more unstinting and gimlet-eyed than most of us when it comes to that moment of truth when we must gaze deep into the mirror to see what's really lurking there. His book is, in toto, an incredibly insightful, humorous work, a real rara avis: a great book about a great book. And how many of those are floating around? Highest recommendation.

[Alex Goodall · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like that the author of this book loved _Stoner_, which is truly a wonderful book and shows he has good taste! Almond writes well, too, and clearly. At some points he gives a bit of insight into the book and how it works. I think for a high school reader of the novel it'd be helpful to follow up with this one.

But I have to say I found the book disappointing, not hugely insightful, and at points a bit irritating (sorry to say.) I don't know whether it's the author or the expected style of the "Bookmarked" series, but Almond approaches his analysis of _Stoner_ using a kind of confessional style that's supposed to be relatable but ends up sounding self-centered. "This bit reminded me of me when I'm sad... This bit reminded me of me when I'm angry... This bit reminded me of me having rows with my wife ... This bit reminded me of me being a dad ... This bit reminded me of how much I hate Donald Trump... This bit reminded me of my mum..." etc. etc.

Ironically, William Stoner is presented in the original as an inscrutable figure, written in a subtle, understated traditional style, his interiority obscured from the reader (except in rare moments of grace). Hence the surname 'Stoner'! This restriction of the free indirect voice makes space for readers to project their own neuroses onto him, even if they slightly miss the point, which is I think what has occasionally happened here.

On the plus side, this is quite a quick read. But for deeper insights into the book I'd recommend reading Leo Robson's New Yorker article from 2019 first, 'John Williams and the Canon that Might Have Been.'

[Tom Bentley · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and often moving hybrid of literary criticism and memoir by Almond, explaining his admiration, frustration and love for a novel whose central character is a sometimes passive though observant visitor to his own life, which builds soft walls that are almost a psychic prison. I loved Stoner for its unnervingly understated power, for giving us a character who suffers a lot of humiliation and insult, sometimes self-prompted, but retains a gravity that is somehow pure. What I just wrote sounds too abstract for the wellspring of feeling this work evokes—it's powerful.

Almond mingles some astute observations of how the novel works, both on the circumstances of its character, and its somewhat old-school structure. He adds in his own struggles in reaching teachers and students in academia, reaching his kids, reaching his wife, reaching his country—all struggles that Stoner shoulders, often to the same degrees. Read Stoner, and then read this book—they are both worth the ride. (And now I must read Stoner again, as fearful as I am about the hardships—compelling as they are—in his considered life.)

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is part memoir and part literary criticism. Almond provides some thought-provoking insights; the three below are especially powerful.

“To pursue his future, Stoner must cut ties with his past. He becomes both orphan and traitor and spends the rest of his days haunted by a secret sense of his own wrongdoing. This is why he engineers situations designed to punish himself” (Almond 100).

“But I’ve always thought of Stoner as a book that manages to fuse the themes of The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath. It shows us what happens when the poor farm boy actually gets the rich girl . . .” (Almond 106).

“. . . the helplessness Grace exhibits throughout her life is learned directly from her father, who insists that this helplessness intensifies his love” (Almond 146).

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

[2019] Highly recommend for any fan of John Williams' Stoner. The author does a nice job hitting the key points of the novel and giving his interpretation, some of which I had also thought about but much that I hadn't. He makes it personal, relating parts of the book to his own life and his own role as a professor, husband, and parent, which is a nice touch and makes it more than just a really long book review. His love of this book comes through and it was nice to spend this time sharing an appreciation of a pretty special novel.

[Ant]

Στέκεται ως προσωπική εξομολόγηση για τη σχέση που ανέπτυξε ο συγγραφέας με το βιβλιο του Γουίλιαμς, αλλά δεν επαρκεί σε καμία περιπτωση ως λογοτεχνική ανάλυση/φιλολογικη κριτική. Είχε κάποια ενδιαφέροντα σημεία βέβαια, σε κάποιες από τις προσεγγισεις του Στόουνερ που επιχειρήθηκαν.

[Lucia St Leon · Rating 5 out of 5]

the most incredible and thought provoking analysis of Stoner (and Almonds interactions with it). Almond really managed to articulate how I interacted with the book, in a way that I couldn't myself. A truly original novel-length essay.

[Brennan Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75 rounded up

sure

[Kathryn Valdivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almond on Stoner

Almond persuaded me to read Stoner and his exposition of it made me love the novel (and Almond) all the more. Thank you.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

We're Steve fans in this house.