REVALUATION: A SADNESS UNTO THE BONE JOHN WILLIAMS'S STONER

Author(s): MEL LIVATINO

Source: The Sewanee Review, Vol. 118, No. 3 (Summer 2010), pp. 417-422
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40801305
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 THE STATE OF LETTERS 417

REVALUATION

A SADNESS UNTO THE BONE

JOHN WILLIAMS'S STONER

MEL LIVATINO

I read John Williams s novel Stoner (1965) thirty-three years after i

published, having come to it in a singular way - through the tears of
ous literary critic. In 1998 I looked up the man under whom I had
romantic poetry a quarter-century earlier. I remembered him as an i
and demanding literary critic. The second time we met over dinner h
if I had read Williams s novel Stoner. I hadn't, so he began laying
story.
The protagonist, William Stoner, has grown up at the turn of the twentieth
century on a hardscrabble Missouri farm. Only by the chance suggestion
of a county agent does he find himself in a pinched existence majoring in
agricultural science at the university. In his sophomore year, he is required
to take a semester survey of English literature. One day, while discussing
Shakespeare s sonnet 73, "That Time of Year Thou Mayest in Me Behold,"
the professor asks the class what the sonnet means. Professor Sloan calls on
several students, but gets no answer. Finally, he calls on S toner. "Mr. Shake-
speare speaks to you across three hundred years, Mr. S toner. Do you hear
him?" "It means . . ." Stoner says, but he cannot finish. He tries again and
then falls into silence. At this point my former professor s eyes welled up with
tears, and he could say nothing more. When he spoke again, this man, whom
I had known as a rigorous critic, could only bring himself to say, "I hope you'll
read this novel."
In nearly fifty years of reading fiction, I have never encountered a more
powerful novel - and not a syllable of it sentimental. Williams performs this
feat by attending carefully to the soul of William Stoner and the tragic cir-
cumstances of his life.
That day in Sloan s classroom is pivotal. As a boy and young man S toner
had never before considered what something meant, including his own life.
He had taken the land, his lessons, his chores, even his life, merely as blunt
facts of existence, and stood dumb before them. The bewilderment he feels
that day in the classroom leads him to switch his major to English. And so
Stoner breaks into consciousness: "He had no friends, and for the first time
in his life he became aware of loneliness. Sometimes, in his attic room at
night, he would look up from a book he was reading and gaze in the dark
corners of his room, where the lamplight flickered against the shadows. If

2010 by Mel Livatino

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418 THE STATE OF LETTERS

he stared long and intently, the darkness gathered

the insubstantial shape of what he had been readin
he was out of time, as he had felt that day in clas
spoken to him."
One day near the end of his undergraduate studi
the hall to ask him about his plans. S toner has no
to go back to the farm. "But don't you know, Mr.
you understand about yourself yet? You're going t
Mr. Stoner. . . .You are in love. It's as simple as th
Only on the day of his graduation does Stoner te
in his major and his decision to go on with his stu
counted on his returning to the farm and are struc
by his decision. The father stoically says, "Your m
when Stoner looks at his mother, he sees "her fac
her closed fists were pressed against her cheeks. W
ized that she was crying deeply and silently, with
of one who seldom weeps. He watched her for a m
heavily to his feet and walked out of the parlor. H
narrow stairs that led to his attic room; for a long
stared with open eyes into the darkness above him
Under this cloud Stoner begins his graduate w
a professor at the same school. Through it all he i
wonder and respect for the literature he studies an
that at some profound depth he is incapable of ar
either as a scholar or as a teacher.
One of Stoner's young colleagues, Dave Master
nature of the university: "a rest home, for the in
tent, and the otherwise incompetent . . . for the
not for the students, not for the selfless pursuit of
the reasons that you hear." They are "just protect
Masters sees, is not of this ilk; he is the real thing.
infirmity," Masters tells him. "You think there's
to find. Well, in the world you'd learn soon enough
failure." The truth of this conversation haunts the
At a party one afternoon soon after he has begun
entranced with a young woman in town to visit he
unadorned prose Williams depicts an awkward t
more silence than affection, a crippled wedding n
cold marriage. Stoner is inexperienced, but his lov
ine. His wife Edith, however, is frigid and schizoid
decency. "Within a month he knew that his marr
year he stopped hoping it would improve. He le
insist upon his love. If he spoke to her or touch
turned away from him within herself and became

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 THE STATE OF LETTERS 419

William S toner will endure this marriage for the re

reader will observe this marriage with aching sadnes
couple's daughter, Grace, whom Edith uses as a pawn
war upon her husband, is one of the two central con
The other is William Stoner's life as a teacher an
early years the things "he held most deeply were mo
when he spoke of them to his classes; what was most
words; and what moved him most became cold in its
into his career, however, Stoner "suspected that
discover who he was; and the figure he saw was both
had once imagined it to be. He felt himself at last beg
Anyone who has made his life as a teacher will follow
with recognition, understanding, and gratitude. M
farces and satires, comedies of academic manners, bu
these: it is as heartfelt a probe into academic life an
and teacher as one is ever likely to read.
The defining moment of Stoner's academic life
named Charles Walker begs late entrance into Stoner
seminar. Stoner grants permission to learn too late t
hollow fraud moving through the department only
professor has taken him under his wing. Stoner sees
gives him an F, and then in a department oral examin
to fail the student when he can't answer even basic q
the man who has taken this student under his wing,
department chairman, and intends to prevent Stoner
upper-level course again.
Stoner's wife manages their days so that Stoner sel
their daughter. He settles into the hard work and te
man composition. At forty-two "he could see noth
wished to enjoy and little behind that he cared to
does William Stoner discover love. Katherine D riscol
instructor who had sat in on Stoner's last seminar. Th
it is about the melding of two souls who belong toget
stretch in the novel, and it lasts a year before Loma
campus's whispering voices are the world - Hemingw
away the only bliss these individuals know, breaks
broken. Stoner leaves Katherine's apartment in the m
by two the next afternoon she has tendered her resig
never sees her again.
Thus passes from his life the only joy that gave it
make do with what's left, as his family and he once h
difficult land: crops grew but did not thrive, and the
an existence. Stoner will have to do the same. He will have to make a life out
of almost nothing. And he does. From the ashes of his existence he sculpts a

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420 THE STATE OF LETTERS

life as a conscientious teacher who becomes a silent,

and colleagues alike. Several years after Katherine s d
brilliant it will have you pumping your fist, he forc
upper-level courses. Through silence and deep contem
ages at least a draw with Edith.
And now I will say no more, for the last chapters of
they cannot properly be summarized: they must be re
life to a conclusion. You are aware from the opening
will be the life of a humble sensitive man you will nev
you will mourn as you would for the dearest of your
see what his life has been and what it has meant, an
involuntarily weigh your own life. Those who have l
these pages through tears.
Over the course of ten years I have read this novel
the plot, which I have revealed to you, has not dimini
opposite. Each successive reading has affected me mo
fourth may be my last, for I am not sure I can endur
Ever since the affective fallacy, critics have been afra
tions in reading a work of art. That option is not open
I can only give you my assurance, based upon nearly
teacher, and critic, and one who despises sentimenta
free of emotional manipulation.
Technically the novel is remarkable in four ways. F
graphs it is clear this will be a life story from birth
especially contemporary ones, attempt such a large s
manage it in a mere 278 pages, less than ten thous
narrative arc runs counter to modernism s dictum to
tells much of the story, and for this the reader sho
third, few novels are written in such jeweled, pitch-
prose. Williams was also a poet, and he never wrote be
prose of these pages. But the poetry is always plain a
same time it is affecting; it is never ostentatious. La
the depth of understanding and sympathy Williams
of this novel, even the minor ones. Morris Dickstein
he says, in the New York Times Book Review (June 1
"something rarer than a great novel - it is a perfect
beautifully written, so deeply moving it takes your b
After my first reading ten years ago, I had a strong u
Unfortunately John Williams had died four years ea
locate his widow, Nancy. In an hour-long phone co
1998, she told me Williams had worked on the novel
It was not an autobiographical novel but was based on
the University of Missouri. Williams, she said, was wo
to be a teacher.

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 THE STATE OF LETTERS 421

To do so he needed to depict the university wh

the world, a place where students were afforded f
they were the right sort, a lifetime of contemplatio
"economic, social, and other kinds of pressures of t
it in an interview with Bryan Wooley in 1985, "a
ize that there are things more important than hac
a university becomes what universities often say t
the will of the community . . . well, its dead." Writ
sixties, Williams saw that the university was alrea
mouthpiece of political correctness.
William Stoner can exist only in a university that
plation. He does not love his students in a Mr. Chi
he loves the subject he teaches, literature, for how
life from dumbness to consciousness. His teaching
brilliant, creative, or flashy - none of which he is
because he is witness to such a consciousness and is dedicated to the litera-
ture that has brought it into being, and because he demands much of his
students.
At the opening of the novel we are told that Stoner never rose above the
rank of assistant professor and that few students remembered him with any
sharpness after they had taken his courses. The occasional student who hears
his name in the years after he is gone is uninterested in who he was. His
colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, rarely
speak of him after his death. To the older ones, "his name is a reminder of
the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound
that evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate
themselves or their careers."
Stoner s life and accomplishments are erased. But for the reader who
comes to know him he is a hero. He is a hero because against all odds he
has overcome his parents' mute existence and against all obstacles nurtured
a lifelong passion for matters of the mind and heart. He is a hero because
he has prevailed in making himself into a superb teacher despite bored stu-
dents, a repressive department chairman, and his own innate muteness. He
is a hero because he endures with decency and patience an impossible wife
who is set against him from the outset and a daughter whose life turns tragic.
Witnessing this job and marriage, the reader wants to scream into pages of
the novel, "Get out! For Gods sake, get out! You'll be destroyed if you don't."
And Stoner is destroyed - but he is not defeated. Which is why he is not a
"loser," as one reader of my acquaintance described him, but is a quiet Job-
like hero of the soul.
The novel is unspeakably sad, but it is also happy in the sense the Stoics
would have understood that word, for, against all the harm that comes his
way, Stoner prevails in his integrity as a man, a teacher, a scholar, a hus-
band, and finally as a human being of noble dimensions. S toner s name and

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 422 THE STATE OF LETTERS

accomplishments may be erased, but we who ha

forever moved and inspired by it.
I hope I haven't sounded too unhinged in my appr
this novel can do to its readers. Most of the apprec
years after its initial publication, when it picked
ing. Critics as astute as Dickstein and Irving Howe
as John McGahern, Dan Wakefield, Richard Russo
praised the novel in terms so personal it suggests
more than a novel to them. The most famous a
from C. P. Snow upon the novels debut in Great B
the May 24 issue of the Financial Times, "Very fe
erary productions of any kind, have come anywher
wisdom or as a work of art." He then asked, "Why
His answer was that "we live in a peculiarly silly ag
"doesn't fit the triviality of the day."

RICHARD YATES IN IOWA

ROBERT LACY

Richard Yates came out to Iowa in the fall of 1964 soon after the great
cal success of his first novel, Revolutionary Road. The book had rec
resounding, near universal praise just three years earlier: everyone
Dorothy Parker to William Styron to Tennessee Williams hailed it as a m
ern American masterpiece. But, by the time Yates showed up in Iowa C
that fall, the roar had begun to subside and a slightly harrowed look had
into the eyes of the young author. It was the look of a man who knew h
to come up with a good encore, and at the time the effort, a new nove
progress called "A Special Providence," wasn't going well. Moreover, des
all the critical acclaim, Revolutionary Road had sold poorly; and, with b
to pay back East, Yates would probably need money beyond his acad
salary.
None of this kept him from being a star of the first magnitude in the eyes
of his students at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, however. I was one of those,
having come up from south Texas that fall with my wife and two small chil-
dren in a Hillman Minx and a U-Haul truck. I'd been working for the Cor-
pus Christi Caller-Times and living in nearby Kingsville. There I had met a
young college instructor named William Harrison, who had recently been
at the Iowa workshop and soon would have his first short story published in
the Saturday Evening Post. It was Harrison who got me into Iowa. When he

2010 by Robert Lacy

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