Sunday, October 11, 2009

Stoner by John Williams



If you're like me, you probably spend more time browsing at Borders than you do actually shopping there. Because books are so readily available cheaply it's much easier to treat a visit to Borders as research - find out what books are out and then go to your nearest secondhand store or library book sale and get them for a fraction of the cost.

One day many months ago I was browsing the fiction/literature section of my local mall's Borders when I came across a title that caught my eye. I saw the title Stoner and had a good laugh. Huhuhu, "Stoner." Like a pothead. Someone who gets high recreationally. I then picked up the book and was surprised to see that the cover was not, in fact, a white guy with dreadlocks and a bong, but a painting of a stoic, dignified-looking man set against a drab tan background. Intrigued further, I read the description on the back of the book and found it was first published in 1965, before the word "stoner" became popular vernacular for marijuana user. In fact, "Stoner" is the title character's last name!

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when my town library has their annual book sale. Books are dirt cheap ($1 for trade paperbacks? hell yes!) and in large amounts. I had the great fortune of finding a copy of Stoner there and quickly dug into it.

The book focuses on one William Stoner, the son of poor farmers who in 1910 at the age of nineteen goes off to Columbia University to study soil chemistry, hopefully to one day return home and allow the family farm to prosper. He lives with distant cousins, doing farm work to pay for his room and board. Stoner quickly discovers that he is not destined to till the earth like his father - rather he takes a sophomore year literature course that changes his life and begins a life-long love affair with the written word. From there Stoner graduates, becoming a student teacher and eventually pursuing a doctorate.

Set against the backdrop of the first half of the twentieth century, the perpetual late bloomer finds himself falling in and out of love, fathering a child, having a late-in-life affair and discovering that the two constants in his life - literature and the love of his daughter are the two things that keep life worth living. Although he endures many tragedies throughout the novel, Williams does not paint Stoner as a tragic character. Instead, Stoner endures and perseveres almost heroically, turning what would be an otherwise mediocre existence into an inspiring one.

Williams takes a character whose life should be by all accounts boring and transforms him into someone fascinating and lifelike through the simplicity and emotive qualities of his writing. The way he describes Stoner's blooming love of literature is evocative of a first love. He describes the hero's lone walks through the library as

"...he wandered through the stacks, among the thousands of books, inhaling the musty odor of leather, cloth and drying page as if it were an exotic incense. Sometimes he would pause, remove a volume from the shelves, and hold it for a moment in his large hands, which tingled at the still unfamiliar feel of the spine and board and unresisting page. Then he would leaf through the book, reading a paragraph here and there, his stiff fingers careful as they turned the pages, as if in their clumsiness they might tear and destroy what they took such pains to uncover."

Stoner displays a similar awkwardness when he first meets Edith, his future wife. Her character is fascinating. She is a proper lady, brought up to play piano delicately and keep house in a moderately wealthy family. Initially their relationship plays out in a "love at first sight" manner where the two are clearly enamored of one another, but as the relationship progresses both find they have very little in common.

Much of the couple's relationship deals with the large amount of sexual repression and inexperience both have, which ends up being one of the key ingredients that makes their marriage so damning. Nowhere is this summed up as best as it is on their honeymoon night, where Stoner is consumed with desire but finds

"...Edith was in bed with the covers pulled to her chin, her face turned upward, her eyes closed, a thin frown creasing her forehead. ...Stoner undressed and got into bed beside her. For several moments he lay with his desire, which had become an impersonal thing, belonging to himself alone. He spoke to Edith, as if to find a haven for what he felt; she did not answer. He put his hand upon her and felt beneath the thin cloth of her nightgown the flesh he had longed for. He moved his hand upon her; she did not stir; her frown deepened. Again he spoke, saying her name to silence; then he moved his body upon her, gentle in his clumsiness. When he touched the softness of her thighs she turned her head sharply away and lifted her arm to cover her eyes. She made no sound."

In fact, the only time her character shows any sort of sexual desire is when she finally decides she wants to conceive, during which time she spends the day at home in the dark, awaiting her husband's return so they can have lustful, animalistic sex. Their relationship is incredibly unhealthy - it exists in extremes without any sort of love or communication to balance them out.

I feel as if I could go on all day about this book. I actually stayed up until 5 AM the other night finishing it because I couldn't put it down. The subtle and moving qualities of Williams' writing, the sharpness of his characterizations and the almost existential tone of Stoner's life wove a spell over me from which I had no escape. This criminally overlooked novel was reprinted in 2007 by the New York Review of Books, hopefully giving countless other readers the opportunity to discover it for the first time as I have. It paints a picture of a man who stands like a sturdy redwood tree in the middle of a tornado: alone against the forces that would otherwise tear him down.