Stoner

NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

CLASSICS

STONER

JOHN WILLIAMS (1922-1994) was born and raised in Northeast Texas. Despite a talent for writing and acting, Williams flunked out of a local junior college after his first year. He reluctantly joined the war effort, enlisting in the Army Air Corps, and managing to write a draft of his first novel while there. Once home, Williams found a small publisher for the novel and enrolled at the University of Denver, where he was eventually to receive both his B.A. and M.A., and where he was to return as an instructor in 1954. Williams was to remain on the staff of the writing program at the University of Denver until his retirement in 1985. During these years, he was an active guest lecturer and writer, publishing two volumes of poetry and three novels, Butcher's Crossing (forthcoming from NYRB Classics), Stoner, and the National Book Award--winning Augustus.

JOHN McGAHERN (1934-2006) was one of the most acclaimed Irish writers of his generation. His work, including six novels and four collections of short stories, often centered on the Irish predicament, both political and temperamental. Amongst Women, his best-known book, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a popular miniseries. His last book, the memoir All Will Be Well, was published shortly before his death.

STONER

JOHN WILLIAMS

Introduction by JOHN McGAHERN

NYRB New York

THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

Copyright (c) 1965 by John Williams Introduction copyright (c) 2003 by John McGahern All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Williams, John Edward, 1922- Stoner / John Williams.

p. cm. -- (New York Review Books classics) ISBN 1-59017-199-3 (alk. paper)

1. Literature--Study and teaching--Fiction. 2. English teachers--Fiction. 3. College teachers--Fiction. 4. Marital conflict--Fiction. 5. Middle West Fiction.

6. Adultery--Fiction. I. Tide. II. Series. PS3545.I5286S7 2006 813'.54--dc22

2005022751

ISBN 978-1-59017-199-8

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. 10 9 8 7 6

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Introduction

On the opening page of this classic novel of university life, and the life of the heart and the mind, John Williams states bluntly the mark Stoner left behind: "Stoner's colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; 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." In plain prose, which seems able to reflect effortlessly every shade of thought and feeling, Williams proceeds to subvert that familiar worldly judgment by bringing Stoner, and everything linked to him--the time, the place, the people--vividly to life, the passion of the writing masked by coolness and clarity of intelligence.

Stoner's origins were as humble as the earth his parents worked. In the beginning they are shown as hardly more animate than their own clay, but in vivid scenes, such as their attendance at Stoner's wedding to a banker's daughter, their innate dignity and gentleness contradict that easy judgment, and towards the novel's end Stoner himself seems to acquire their mute, patient strength.

Stoner was an only child, and though good at school had no other expectation than to one day take over the fields he was already helping to work. One evening after the day's toil his father said, "Country agent came by last week... Says they have a new school at the University of Columbia. They call it a college of agriculture. Says he thinks you ought to go."

At the university he earns his bed and board by working on a nearby farm owned by a first cousin of his mother. This is bare board and hard, brutal work, but he gets through it stoically, in much the same way as he gets through the science courses at the university. "The course in soil chemistry caught his interest in a general way... But the required survey of English literature troubled and disquieted him in a way nothing had ever done before."

The instructor Archer Sloane changes his life. He abandons science to study literature. At the prompting of his mentor, he stays on at the university, laboring on the cousin's farm while obtaining his Master of Arts. At his graduation he tries to tell his parents that he will not be returning to their farm when they come to attend the degree ceremony. "If you think you ought to stay here and study your books, then that's what you ought to do," his father concludes towards the end of that moving scene.