Born
in 1981, John Williams, the author, tells us, William Stoner was brought up on
a Missouri farm and then went to college to study agriculture at the age of
nineteen. A Damascus moment in a literature class soon provoked a change of
course and thus Stoner left agriculture behind to plough a literary furrow. A
true mid-West lad, Stoner stayed local for his studies. He completed his degree
and then a doctorate before academe beckoned, and he began a career in the same
University of Missouri where he had himself studied.
Thus
Stoner became a teacher. He also became a husband, a husband of sorts to Edith,
who tried to persuade herself from the start that she knew what she wanted from
life. He also became a father, despite the ever present difficulties in the
marriage. Problems mounted elsewhere as well, and relations with students were
sometimes tense, while colleagues also often became sites of conflict. Grace,
his daughter, grew up whatever way she could, given her father’s apparently
limitless devotion to his work and her mother’s undeniable dedication to
herself. Stoner’s interactions with fellow teachers, departmental chairs and
deans went this way and that, and varied relations with students happened both
inside and outside the classroom.
Great
events of twentieth century history passed by William Stoner. A First World War
was fought. Friends went and did not return. One loss in particular remained at
the forefront of Stoner’s thoughts. Denied his own life, the memory of this
lost friend regularly returns to Stoner’s thoughts whenever he needs a reminder
that life could have dealt him a worse hand. And then the great crash came
along to ruin lives and opportunity, especially for the family of Edith,
Stoner’s wife. And then, just when you might least expect it, another war comes
along. Conveniently for Stoner, this new conflict begins when he is already too
old to participate. But rest assured, he knew some of the casualties.
The
core of Stoner the novel is the portrayal of a life, the professional and the
less so, in a university department. This is mister ordinary writ small. There
are feuds, friendships, words of advice whispered towards ears, and simple,
blazing rows that bow people apart. No-one, we must hasten to add, is ever
killed in these battles, no guns are drawn, let alone fired, and there is no
blood letting, except figuratively. But it can be seen that the injured are
legion.
If
all this sounds rather glib, then it might just be possible that this highly
credible scenario does not quite live up to its celebrity backdrop. Yes, Stoner
is born at the start and dies at the end. The life in between ought to be the
meat, the real guts of this story. But strangely, it isn’t. For all Stoner’s
obvious commitment, patience and integrity, he rarely seems to be a participant
even in his own life. Things happen to him, and around him, but yet he seems
strangely passive, unwilling to express opinion, commit himself or take sides.
By the tale’s end, history has come and gone, characters have impinged upon
this life, left their mark and gone their own way, and students have grown up
to live lives of their own. And throughout William Stoner seems curiously
inert, lacking in opinion, unable to influence the impressions that others make
on his life. As a character, he seems to be little more than a vehicle through
which others’ foibles can be experienced. In the same way that Forrest Gump in
film enacts history apparently without reflection, William Stoner sees his
friends and colleagues take what the twentieth century can throw at them, but
without really participating himself.
Perhaps
this is John Williams’s point. In film, Forrest Gump is the embodiment of
Middle America, the faithful, uncritical, trusting majority that suffers the
consequences, picks up the pieces, makes the best of things, and always puts
the wheel back on the wagon. Perhaps William Stoner is similarly an allegory to
depict the respectability and value of the suffering Job. There are surely many
others who have lived out such plots, such as anyone invented by Anne Tyler, or
Saul Bellow’s Herzog. But William Stoner’s determination to remain the third
person recipient of his author’s God-like view on his life is truly worthy
since, if William Stoner really did have control over his own voice, he would
surely have demanded just a little more of the action.
