William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.

John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world. A beautiful novel.

Very moving and beautifully written.

In transit.

Un livre apprécié des lecteurs strasbourgeois, il fait partie du TRESOR offert aux participants du MBC.

Part of my precious treasure



photo: main door

Nodame: would it be possible to change the category of this book from Entertainment to Literature and Fiction?

Bare bones of the story, which is just a bit of a spoiler so scroll down at your own risk:








William Stoner is the son of a farmer and spends his formative years working on the farm, then is sent to study agriculture at Columbia University. There, he has a quiet epiphany in an English class and thenceforth switches subjects, studies English literature, and devotes his whole life in teaching it in the same hallowed portals.
Just when I was wondering if he had any interest in women, he meets the beautiful Edith at a party and falls in love. After a very reserved and awkward courtship, she agrees to marry him. Sadly, Edith is absolutely ghastly. Stoner finds refuge in the battlefield of Academia. When he finds happiness with a student, Katherine, he finds himself trapped by his decency and instead of throwing caution to the winds and running off with her into an unknown future (or strangling Edith with his bare hands), he sinks back into his books and papers, rebelling only against his nemesis Hollis Lomax.

It is a sad story but also stirred my anger against that manipulative woman.

pour le thème Saint des Saints, je le laisse à la belle église Saint-Jean, avenue de Cour, avec sa belle fresque et vitraux de Jacques Rivier.

Quelques informations sur l'église ici
https://notrehistoire.ch/entries/EdaWEnmPYzo


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