Stoner by John Edward Williams

Ever wonder why the most eccentric teachers were precisely the ones who inspired you the most?

I have to admit that when a friend first recommended this "novel from the sixties about a teacher in a university English department," with the title "Stoner," I had an image of Elliot Gould in sideburns and army camo jacket lighting up a joint with dazed, anti-war students and/or hippies.

Originally published in 1965, this novel was a sleeper classic. Not as well publicized as books by contemporary writers (Salinger, Mailer, Heller, Roth, Bellow, et. al.), Williams' novel is rather a calm, but emotionally powerful, finely detailed portrait of a gentle academic soul from an earlier generation.

Writing in the clean, spare, down-to-earth voice of the Midwest, Williams gives us what he calls "an escape into reality," that reality being the teaching career and complete adult life of Professor William Stoner: his overarching love of literature and teaching, a loveless marriage, and his struggles in not-so-benign Academia. Portraits of the novel's minor characters are also sharply drawn, like Stoner's emotionally frigid wife, Edith, or his nemesis, Hollis Lomax, the hunchback head of the English department with matinee idol face.

Besides Stoner and scholarly writings on Renaissance poetry, John Williams published two volumes of his own poetry and three other novels, each in a totally different setting and genre: the 1973 National Book Award-winning Augustus, Nothing But the Night, and even a western called Butcher's Crossing.

Personally, after reading Stoner, I am eager to "discover" his other novels. Williams' use of language is superb in its clarity and not to be missed.

Warning: Skip the novel's "Introduction" by John McGahern until after reading the novel. It's a plot-spoiler, totally misplaced and near-superfluous.