Stoner

by John Williams | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: Global Overview for this book
Registered by wibaut of - Ergens in de provincie, Groningen Netherlands on 5/30/2020
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Journal Entry 1 by wibaut from - Ergens in de provincie, Groningen Netherlands on Saturday, May 30, 2020

William Stoner is born on a small farm in Mid-Missouri in 1891. After high school, Stoner expects to continue working on the farm, but the county agent advises that he go to agriculture school, instead. Stoner enters the University of Missouri, where all agriculture students must take a survey course in English literature during their sophomore year. The literature he encounters in this introductory course, such as Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, opens a gateway to a new world for Stoner, and he quickly falls in love with literary studies. Without telling his parents, Stoner quits the agriculture program and studies only the humanities. A professor suggests to Stoner that his love of knowledge means that he will be a teacher. When his parents come for his graduation, Stoner tells them he will not be returning to the farm. Stoner completes his MA in English and begins teaching. His teaching is uninspiring, but he still enjoys the classes he takes. In graduate school, he befriends fellow students Gordon Finch and Dave Masters. Masters suggests all three are using graduate school to avoid the real world. World War I begins, and Gordon and Dave enlist. After some soul-searching, Stoner decides to remain in school during the war. When the armistice is signed, a party is held for the returning veterans, where Stoner meets an attractive young woman named Edith. Stoner begins to call on Edith, who is visiting from out of town. When Stoner calls on her, Edith acts very distant and withdrawn. Stoner feels they are still strangers, but he has fallen in love with her. Very soon he proposes marriage. When her parents consent to the marriage, Edith insists that they marry soon. Edith tells Stoner she will try to be a good wife to him, and they marry a few weeks later.

Stoner’s marriage to Edith is bad from the start. It gradually becomes clear that Edith has profound emotional problems. She treats Stoner inconsiderately throughout their marriage. Within a year, Stoner loses all hope the marriage will ever improve. From the start, Edith appears uninterested in sex. Their first party at home ends in a sudden emotional outburst from Edith. For a while, Edith no longer wants to leave the house. Stoner begins to spend more time at work. He sleeps in a different room from Edith and their sex life is nearly nonexistent. After three years of marriage, Edith suddenly informs Stoner she wants a baby. For two months, she is absolutely voracious about sex with Stoner. When she becomes pregnant, she once again is uninterested in intimacy. When their daughter Grace is born, Edith remains inexplicably bed-ridden for nearly a year. By now, Stoner has reworked his dissertation into a published book and he is promoted to associate professor with tenure. Without consulting Stoner, Edith accepts a $6,000 loan from her father to buy a house, a loan which Stoner fears they cannot afford. Stoner also gradually realizes that Edith is waging a campaign to separate him and his daughter. For short periods, Edith throws herself into outside activities like community theater. She is alternately inattentive and oppressive in her relationship with their daughter. She periodically disrupts Stoner’s work space in the home. He is forced increasingly to spend his free time working at the university instead of at home. For the most part, Stoner accepts this poor treatment from Edith passively. The next few years are happy for Stoner despite the house debt and his poor relationship with Edith. Edith and he have reached a temporary stalemate. Stoner gradually realizes how centrally important Grace is to his life. He begins to teach with more enthusiasm, but still, year in and year out, his marriage with Edith remains perpetually unsatisfactory and fraught with problems.

Midway in his career, a situation arises in which Stoner is forced to offend a formidable colleague, Professor Hollis Lomax. Stoner feels compelled by circumstances to fail a student named Charles Walker, who was a close protégé of Lomax. Stoner fails Walker first in a graduate seminar and then soon afterward on Walker’s preliminary orals. Unlike Lomax, Stoner does not think that Walker’s verbal agility sufficiently compensates for his sparse knowledge of the literary canon. In addition, Stoner finds Walker to be lazy and dishonest, thus unsuited to the profession. Stoner does not wish to fail Walker, and Lomax pressures him not to do it, but Stoner believes it is the right thing to do. Thereafter, Lomax takes every opportunity to exact revenge upon Stoner for his intransigence on the Walker matter. Lomax begins only assigning Stoner to teach the least desirable introductory classes, though Stoner is actually by then one of the senior faculty members in the department. Around this time, a collaboration between Stoner and a younger instructor in the department, Katherine Driscoll, develops into a very romantic and passionate love affair. The relationship begins when Stoner agrees to help Katherine with her dissertation on the Roman grammarian Donatus. This romance between Katherine and him is the happiest period of Stoner’s life. Ironically, after the affair begins, Stoner’s relationships with Edith and Grace also improve. Knowledge of the “secret” affair somehow becomes general in the small university town. At some point, Edith finds out about the affair between Stoner and Driscoll, but she does not seem to mind it. When Lomax learns about it, however, he begins to bring pressure on Katherine, who also teaches in the English department. For the vindictive Lomax, this pressure on Driscoll is one more way to exact revenge on Stoner. Stoner and Driscoll agree it is best to end the affair so as not to derail the academic work they both feel called to follow. So, Katherine quietly slips away from town, never to be seen again by him. Katherine’s departure marks the end of the only extended period of unalloyed joy in Stoner’s life.

During the summer after Katherine leaves town, Stoner becomes ill and seems to age rapidly. As world events like the Great Depression and the Spanish Civil War proceed apace, Stoner rededicates himself to his work. Once more, Stoner sees students leaving the university to fight in war. For years, Lomax has assigned Stoner no advanced classes to teach. Finally, Stoner begins presenting advanced material to incoming first-year students. Lomax finally relents and begins to assign Stoner advanced classes again. Stoner, older now and harder of hearing, is beginning to become a legendary figure in the English department. Stoner begins to spend more time at home, ignoring Edith's signs of displeasure at his presence. Edith turns her attention to trying to change Grace. After about a month, Edith abandons her assault on Grace. Grace gains almost 50 pounds before her 13th birthday, but at 17, as a high school senior, loses weight and begins to socialize more. Stoner has been saving money for Grace to attend an Eastern college, but Edith will not hear of Grace going away to college. Instead, Grace enters the University of Missouri. The following year, Grace announces she is pregnant. Her mother takes Grace’s pregnancy very badly, but Stoner is supportive. Grace marries the father of her child five days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Grace’s husband enlists in the army, and dies before the baby is born. Grace goes to St. Louis with the baby to live with her husband's parents. She visits Stoner and Edith occasionally, and Stoner realizes that Grace has developed a serious drinking problem. Stoner’s mandatory retirement age is now approaching. Stoner wishes to continue teaching as long as possible, though Lomax offers him a promotion to retire sooner. Stoner soon learns he has cancer and must retire immediately. As Stoner’s life is slipping away, his daughter Grace comes to visit him. Gordon Finch visits Stoner almost daily, but Gordon withdraws internally from the dying Stoner. Stoner thinks back over his life. The pain medication he is taking sometimes makes it difficult to think clearly. He thinks about where he failed. He wonders if he could have been more loving to Edith, if he could have been stronger or if he could have helped her more. Later, he thinks he is wrong to think of himself as failing. Then, soon after the cancer is discovered, he dies while touching a copy of the book he published years earlier.



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