An Analysis of John Edward Williams’s Authorial Craft
Stoner, John Edward Williams’s third novel, is, in essence, a eulogy: an ode to one man’s quiet life. The titular character of the novel is an academic whose familial origins stem from a ‘small farm in central Missouri near the village of Booneville, some forty miles from Colombia, the home of the University’[1]; from this, William Stoner’s life is seemingly destined to be tethered to the post of the rural homestead, bound to his descendancy as a farmer. However, the undergraduate’s future is drastically altered from his predetermined route in life following an awkward class experience with Archer Sloane, an influential, yet tempestuous, instructor (8)[2] who would later become a ‘distant friend’ (91), and the class’s subject of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 as Stoner is unable to respond to the professor’s enquiry of ‘What does he [Shakespeare] say to you, Mr Stoner? What does the sonnet mean?’ (12). It is a question which remains unanswered by the silentious undergraduate.
It is from this encounter on his ‘sophomore survey of English literature’ (18)[3] that Stoner, and while initially commencing his Bachelor studies at the University in Agriculture, in 1910 (1)[4], ‘drops’ and interrupts (13) his ‘Ag’ modules in order to take up his interest in the humanities: beginning introductory courses in ‘philosophy and ancient history’ and, more significantly, ‘two courses in English literature’ (13). In addition to this, it is ‘the home of the University’ (emphasis added) that Stoner is drawn to and his ultimate separation from his kin is finalised at the age of twenty-four, within ‘a matter of five minutes or so at the register’s office’ (17)[5], following a prospective meeting with Archer Sloane, and is subsequently tied to the University for the majority of the next thirty-eight years (276), until his death, in 1956.
In his introduction to Vintage’s 2012 publication of Stoner, John McGahern identifies two principle subjects that permeate the novel: the theme of work, and its variety of forms, and the enduring strength of love. In addition to these themes, I wish to add the subject of communication, and the dichotomy for the individual when electing to either internalise or reveal one’s thoughts, specifically in the wake of the feeling of loss. At points throughout the text, the theme is presented in light of instances of war and conflict, with Stoner subsequently haunted by a sense of despair and grief. The novel is populated by spectres, both principal and peripheral figures within Stoner’s life. Over the course of the novel’s narrative William Stoner survives his close friend Dave Masters, killed at ‘Château-Thierry’ (38), in 1918; his mentor and ‘distant friend’ (91), Professor Archer Sloane; his stoic father and then his stalwart mother; his father-in-law, Horace Bostwick, committing suicide in the wake of ‘financial ruin’ (113), in 1929; and his daughter’s husband, Edward Frye, the father to Stoner’s seldom-seen grandchild, Edward, whose death in 1942 reflects that of Dave Masters, as both men are killed within months of commencing their seemingly futile active service in war. The theme of communication is most evident, however, when Stoner’s private thoughts remain unvoiced to those around him. Subsequently, it is due to this that an ‘identity’ of Stoner is formed by others, appearing outwardly passive and apathetic to both personal and national events alike, despite contemplating and evaluating these issues thoroughly throughout the novel.
In assessing the subject of communication, and how Williams imbues the theme through his narration, it is important to analyse the novel’s prose from a lexical level. Williams’s proficient ability at constructing a narrative is categorised by John McGahern in his Introduction, as he notes Williams’s prose as ‘plain’[6], defined by its ‘clarity (xv): indeed, this essay, in part, will focus upon how this on how this outlined ‘clarity’ is achieved. However, in analysing the Williams’s prose and the subject of communication the essay will centre specifically upon the author’s use of subjective, both limited and omniscient perspectives, and objective narration, with a focus upon the characterisation of Stoner himself. Williams’s intermittent use of subjective and objective narration centres the novel upon the discord between the individual’s thoughts, opinions and attitudes with that of the collective’s interpretations and assumed understanding, respectively, of the said individual: a perspective from Stoner and a perspective of Stoner. From the frequent alternation between the two forms of narration, Stoner’s developing understanding of his place within the University, both personally and professionally, and within society as a whole is gradually eked out.
Chapters two, fourteen and sixteen of the novel are, to an extent, a mirrored triptych; at these points, Williams draws the narrative to what Stoner ’saw’, and in chapter two what he ‘thought’, at three stages of his life: the first stage, within chapter two, follows on from Stoner’s decision to abandon his duties at his family’s homestead and remain at the University, viewing his post-graduate studies with ebullience and elation; later within the chapter, the mounting pressure felt by Stoner to enlist alongside his friends, Gordon Finch and David Masters, brings the subject of the War, and his place at the University, to the forefront of his thoughts. The chapter maps Stoner’s developing awareness of the conflict. The second and third stages, within chapter fourteen and sixteen, respectively, do not feature a prospective assessment but rather an immediate reality for Stoner; itself, a reality that he reflects upon and critiques himself by. In the years of 1936 and 1949, Stoner is defined by a lapidary, carapace-like countenance which belies his senses of loss and grief. Within the latter two chapters, he is now a witness to the changes shaping the ‘men’ (226) and ‘his country’ (260) during the years preceding the Second World War and during the onset of the Korean War, respectively. Within chapter two, William’s repeated use of the pronoun ‘He’, serving as the noun phrase and the subject of a string of succinct sentences, alongside the lexical verb ‘saw’ produces a series of prospective thoughts from Stoner; as for chapter sixteen, this grammatical approach produces a broader assessment of the prejudicial undercurrents and societal shifts affecting Stoner, the University and the nation as a whole. Indeed, the bracketing of the chapters as a triptych serves as a means to highlight one of Stoner’s most attuned skills: his ability of and reliance upon self-reflection. While in chapter two Williams notes that Stoner had ‘never got in the habit of introspection’ (37), as though the process is a skill that must be practised and honed, by chapter sixteen the act of reflective thought is frequently enacted by Stoner as a crutch, a means of support, and is, in some instances, a revelatory process for the academic himself. From this, the three chapters chart the development of Stoner’s ‘habit’ of self-reflection and, subsequently, his own self-awareness in light of a ‘public view’ (227) from those around him.
Chapter Two
Throughout the novel, Williams’s third-person narration entwines a subjective perspective from that of the laconic Stoner with an objective narration akin to that of a eulogist or an historian: concise and taciturn. Indeed, McGahern’s note that Williams’s prose is ‘plain’ is evident in the opening of chapter two, as, following a brief reference to Stoner’s graduation, Williams outlines the escalation of the tensions permeating throughout Europe, as it is stated that ‘Two weeks after Stoner received his Bachelor of Arts degree, Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist; and before autumn war was general all over Europe’ (24). Williams is unbiased, egalitarian, in his documenting of the conflict, as Stoner’s perspective, and assessment, is omitted. While Williams’s reference to Stoner’s graduation serves as a time-mark, contextualising the narrative’s events, Williams’s objective narration highlights, to an extent, Stoner’s passivity at the time to both the completion of his degree and the outbreak of the war: the personal and the historical, respectively, are referenced at this point in mere passing. By opening the chapter through an objective narration, and therefore eliding Stoner’s perspective, Williams conveys Stoner’s disinterest with the onset of the war within Europe: he has simple not given the matter much thought. In truth, however, as is shown previously within the first chapter through Williams’s limited-subjectivity, Stoner’s graduation is dwarfed by his guilt, his ‘grief’ (21), owing to his severance from his family’s livelihood. Towards the end of the first chapter, Stoner, despite his success as a student, receiving A classifications in his English courses, with the exception of Sloane’s sophomore survey, and ‘nothing below a B elsewhere’ (18), is imbued with a sense of ‘loss’, and serves as Stoner’s first experience of regret: a penchant that Stoner is frequently drawn to throughout the following forty-two years.
Ultimately, the graduation ceremony itself is, by comparison to his decision to commence an MA in English and eventual instructorship at the University of Missouri, meaningless to him. In the wake of the onset of war, while Stoner is assessing his ‘future’ prospects at the University, his new home, Williams’s returns to a subjective perspective, noting that ‘He [Stoner] saw the future in the institution to which he had committed himself’ (24). While the ‘older’ students’ were ‘pleasantly unsure of their own futures’ (24) due to the war, the subjective narration highlights Stoner’s indifference towards the conflict. Further to this, Williams’s narration, at points, utilises a coordination between a limited perspective, with Stoner’s outlook brought to the forefront of the novel, and that of an omniscient perspective in order to convey Stoner’s position in a stance of either discord or unison with the collective[7].Here, Stoner’s separation from his peers is established through Williams’s alternate use of an objective and a subjective, both limited and, on occasion, omniscient, narration. Within the chapter’s opening, the attitudes of the ‘older students’ (24), while not extrapolated, are alluded to, with their ‘futures’ (24) undetermined in the wake of the war’s commencement. Williams’s use of the stative verb ‘wondered’ is non-descript, and is deliberately so in order to establish the uncertainty surrounding their positions at the University and their lack of understanding on the events within Europe. In contrast, and once having returned to a limited perspective, Stoner is singled out and isolated from the rest of the University’s denizens, with Williams implying that recently graduated Stoner is apart from the consensus of the students now questioning their own positions at the University. While not determined, Stoner looks to the future with a rigidity of thought: to him, his life is not in a state of ‘flux’ (24), but is rather ‘unchanging’ (24) in the light of the mumblings of war pervading the campus. Indeed, with his own future tied to the University, the outbreak of the conflicts within Europe, like his graduation ‘two weeks’ earlier, simply does not interest him: his ‘future’ at the University takes precedent, and, as Williams outlines, Stoner is the ‘instrument of [its] change’ (24) as opposed to its ‘object’ (24) or, unlike Dave Masters, its victim.
Williams’s narrator is principally subjective, with the novel written predominantly from a limited perspective. Instances of omniscience, however, are fleetingly evident within the text. With these infrequent intervals, Williams’s narration loosens its subjective mooring with Stoner for a brief interlude of omniscience: the perspectives of Stoner’s students, faculty members, and lover, Katherine, in her furtive flight from the University, are sparingly disclosed. Edith Stoner’s perspective, William’s aggrieved wife, is, however, documented within chapter five at a greater length. Edith’s listlessness and subsequent brooding is told from her viewpoint, as Williams writes:
It [her desire] began at once to grow again within her, so that they both lived in the tense expectation of its presence […] the need came so strongly upon Edith that she could not remain still […] Nearly at the moment she became pregnant, even before the fact was confirmed by her calendar and her physician, the hunger for William that had raged within her for the better part of two months ceased [86-87]
This instance of alternation between William and Edith provides a brief overview from both sides of the marriage, with the latter’s thoughts divulged for the first time within the novel. The narrator’s omniscience here presents two principle points: the first being that of Edith’s anxious and frantic nature, once applied to her project of renovating their apartment, is now attributed to her desire to be a mother, and the second, that her lusting for her husband ceases once she is with child. In regards to the former, Williams’s use of the abstract nouns ‘tense’ and ‘need’, alongside the stative verb ‘raged’, conveys a desperation within Edith that has, up to this point within the novel, been revealed through Stoner’s own interpretation of her mien, particularly her frenetic movements, alone. Edith’s withdrawn nature, with her physical responses to Stoner’s attempts at initiating intimacy and love conveying her interpretation of their intercourse as more a ‘violation’ (75), during which her body becomes ‘tensed’ (75), is narrated from both a subjective and objective perspective, with her opinion of her husband’s advances left to be undisclosed, but evidently inferred. In contrast, her ‘tensed’ body has now given way to a new tension (86): that of desire. However, by revealing her lust its cessation serves as a means to once again compound Stoner’s eventual isolation within his marriage, with Williams utilising the narrator’s omniscience in order to briefly convey the sporadic and unpredictable nature of Edith and establish the impact of her flippancy upon the couple’s marriage.
Returning to chapter two, and as I have previously noted that Stoner’s ‘future’ at the University takes precedent over the events within Europe, in 1914, Williams, while presenting Stoner’s disconnect through the alternate use of both a limited and a brief instance of omniscient narration, furthers the character’s ‘indifference’ by the inclusion of the third-person pronoun ’it’ (24). The following quotation is taken from the opening two paragraphs of chapter two:
Two weeks after Stoner received his Bachelor of Arts degree, Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist; and before autumn war was general all over Europe. It was a topic of continuing interest among the older students; they wondered about the part America would eventually play, and they were pleasantly unsure of their own futures.
But before William Stoner the future lay bright and certain and unchanging. He saw it, not as a flux of event and change and potentiality, but as a territory ahead that awaited his exploration. He saw it as the great University library. [24] (emphasis added)
While to ‘the older students’ (24) the pronoun is in reference to the conflict ‘all over Europe’ (24), to Stoner ‘it’ is an anaphoric reference to his own ‘future’ (24). Once again, his attitude toward the conflict is furthered as an anomaly within the general consensus. Conversely, throughout the remainder of the chapter, Williams charts the ‘silent’ (37) conflict within Stoner and his changing attitude towards the subject of the War, from an initial passive ambivalence to a desperate, and isolated, two day contemplation of his own future; for instance, Williams notes Stoner’s response to Gordon Finch’s insistence for his friend to enlist with ‘I hadn’t thought about it’ (34) and then later, during his discussion with a haunted Archer Sloane, Stoner states ‘somehow it had never occurred to me, until I talked to Finch and Masters. It still doesn’t seem quite real’ (36) (emphasis added). Here, the pronoun is no longer in reference to the University, itself, but towards two topical points facing Stoner: enlistment and war, respectively. This slight alteration of the use of the third-person pronoun ‘it’, with the antecedent of the pronoun either the topic of enlistment or the War, itself, highlights Stoner’s perception of the society around him; despite ultimately remaining at the University, Stoner is no longer passive, or myopic, to the conflict overseas. At this point, his thoughts have become centred upon the issue facing his fellow students, and shows an awareness to events outside of the University, a point which will later, as a tenured assistant professor, be misinterpreted by the members of his faculty.
Initially, Stoner’s assessment of the War ‘during those first days after the declaration’ (33) is permeated by his ‘indifference’ (33), his lack of patriotism (33), and his inability to ‘hate’ (33) the Germans; indeed, the only strong feeling he holds against the war is that it leads to a ‘disruption’ (33) at the University. While Williams’s subjective narration later reveals a tortured individual, with Stoner, following his discussions with the enraged Finch, the laconic Masters and the exhausted Archer Sloane, enduring a two-day ‘introspection’ (37) of his place either alongside his friends in war or remaining at the University, it also conveys Stoner’s inability to voice this struggle:
Stoner did not speak for a moment. He thought of the of the last two days, of the silent struggle that seemed towards no end and no meaning; he thought of his life at the University for the past seven years; he thought of the years before, the distant years with his parents on the farm, and of the deadness from which he had been miraculously revived. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Everything, I guess. I can’t say”’ (37).
From this, it is evident that Stoner is a novel of contemplation: at the text’s centre Williams portrays a man who is devoted to the subject of English Literature, to the study of lexis, and the profession of teaching and yet the skill to disclose his thoughts in discourse, specifically when thinking about the world that surrounds him, often eludes him. It is partly due to this, to Stoner’s silences, that the reading of the novel as ‘sad’, as termed by Williams himself, has become an adjectival soundbite for the text. There is a frustration within William Stoner that simply cannot be voiced; his contemplations will forever remain his own. Williams’s penchant for repetition, in this instance of the stative verb ‘thought’, conveys the deliberation that Stoner has undertaken ‘over the past two days’ (37) and portrays the process as an utterly meaningless endeavour: his act of self-exiled ‘introspection’ (37) is not revealed to his friends, and the decision to remain in Missouri appears to Gordon Finch as an almost cowardly and traitorous act. The toll of Stoner’s assessment of his future, alongside his reflections of his life both prior to and during his studies at the University, is highlighted through the coordination of both partial asyndeton and the semi-colon. Within the brief silence following Masters’s query of ‘what made you finally decide?’ (37), Stoner’s thoughts are drawn to three points: the subject of enlistment, his time at the University and the preceding ‘distant years’ of his life at his family’s farm. Through his coordinated use of asyndetic listing and the semi-colon, the rapidity with which Stoner recalls each subject, immediate or distant, displays his confusion; his processing of Masters’s question reveals an amalgamation of reasons for him to remain at the University, and his resolve: he has built a ‘life’ away from the ‘deadness’ of his childhood and he does not wish to abandon the independence of his situation.
This conflict is surmised in the exhausted, and defeated, succinct declarative statements of ‘”I don’t know,” he said at last. “Everything, I guess. I can’t say”’. These vague, non-descriptive responses belie his tortured analysis; despite the point that ‘when at last he came to his decision, it seemed to him that he had known all along what it would be’ (37), with the outcome of his thoughts of enlistment, of leaving the University, seemingly resolved prior to his isolated contemplation. Here, the reiterated prepositional phrase ‘at last’ provides, for now, a conclusive end to Stoner’s deliberations, but the process by which he reaches this end is his experience alone. His inability to give an explanation, in effect his silence, is met with curiosity and ‘tentative contempt’ (38) to the unbeknownst Masters and Finch, respectively.
Chapter Fourteen
As McGahern notes in his introduction to the text, Stoner is ‘a novel about work‘(xiii), and, while the novel focuses heavily upon ‘the work of teaching literature’ (xiii) (emphasis added), Williams wishes to also present the voice of the students within the University, as is shown specifically through their lionised and superficial interpretations of their teacher, and oftentimes tutor, William Stoner. The formulation of this heightened assessment is alluded to by Williams, as McGahern quotes the author’s comments regarding Stoner’s position as a teacher, with the ‘job’ creating a ‘particular kind of identity’ for the tenured professor. This note upon ‘identity’ is presented through Williams’s attention towards Stoner’s response to his teaching schedule, in 1937, as is curated by the obdurate Hollis Lomax; narrated from an objective perspective, this point upon Stoner’s ‘identity’ as a teacher is furthered by the introduction of chapter fifteen, with Williams portraying the incident’s impact upon Stoner’s reputation, as the narrator states ‘And that was one of the legends that began to attach to his name, legends that grew more detailed and elaborate year by year, progressing like myth from personal fact to ritual truth’ (237). Williams’s narration, here, conveys this legend: the narrator’s objectivity omits the thoughts of Stoner himself for the perspectives, or consensus, from the faculty, the cohort of students and the University as a whole. This narration conceals Stoner’s assessment of the incident, prioritising instead an insight into the general opinions of these collectives towards Stoner’s actions, regardless of the accuracy of their understanding of the conflict between the two professors. As a result, Williams establishes the beginning of Stoner’s polarising legend as a professor, highlighting Williams’s portrayal of both the ‘work of teaching literature’ and the assessment of the teacher, themselves.
Indeed, prior to his reprimanding of Charles Walker’s, following a personal attack upon Katherine Driscoll’s dissertation — with Walker altering his outlined focus from ‘Hellenism and the Medieval Latin Tradition’ (144) to a disparaging critique of O’Driscoll’s thesis upon ‘Donatus and Renaissance Tragedy’ (142), and Stoner’s ensuing conflict with the obstinate professor Lomax, Walker’s advisor — Stoner is noted as having a somewhat esteemed reputation among the students, as Williams notes that ‘to his [Stoner’s] surprise he began to enjoy a modest popularity as a teacher’ (133). However, following the incident, Stoner’s relationships with the students are tarnished, with the pupils now ‘furtive’ (182) in their discourses with him. In addition to the lingering effect of the Walker-Lomax incident, and the assessments made towards Stoner’s professionalism, specifically his pedagogy, and his place within the University in light of the dispute, another critique is given of Stoner during chapter fourteen. Within the chapter, following Katherine Driscoll’s departure from the University, it is noted that the general opinion of Stoner from his colleagues and students centres upon his commitment as a teacher and his subsequent ignorance towards events outside of the University’s campus, as Williams states:
It was commonplace among his colleagues – especially the younger ones – that he was a ‘dedicated’ teacher, a term they used half in envy and half in contempt, one whose dedication blinded him to anything that went on outside the classroom or, at the most, outside the halls of the University’ (225-226)
This view of Stoner is an accurate profile of the naïve twenty-three year old graduate of the class of 1914, within chapter two; despite those surrounding Stoner believing that he is ignorant of the tidings of Franco’s dissidence (227), for instance, Williams shows Stoner to hold an awareness that surpasses that of his faculty’s youthful and senior members, alike, and displays an ironic ignorance to their perceived understanding of their supposedly ill-tempered (225) colleague. Indeed, while William’s highlights Stoner’s disinterest with the world outside of the University within the opening of chapter two, here, Williams is evidently referring to Stoner’s once youthful naivety in order to invert the character trait. Stoner is again viewing his immediate surroundings from a perspective of furtive isolation, but now his attention has moved away from his own future, as is shown in chapter two, and on to that of the impact of a conflict upon the country:
He saw good men go down into a slow decline of hopelessness, broken as their vision of a decent life was broken; he saw them walking aimlessly upon the streets, their eyes empty as shards of broken glass; he saw them walk up to back doors, with the bitter pride of men who go to their executions, and beg for the bread that would allow them to beg again; and he saw men, who had once walked erect in their own identities, look at him with envy and hatred for the poor security he enjoyed as a tenured employee of an institution that somehow could not fail. He did not give voice to this awareness; but the knowledge of common misery touched him and changed him in ways that were hidden deep from the public view, and a quiet sadness for the common plight was never far beneath any moment of his living (227)
This extract provides a definitive example of Stoner’s silent understanding, of the character’s penchant for self-reflection and his perceptive awareness of the world that surrounds him. Once again, as is noted within chapter two, Williams utilises the noun and verb phrasal paring of ‘He saw’ (226) within chapter fourteen only to now reference Stoner’s sightings of the ‘despair’ carried by others during the period: Stoner’s reflections are evidently no longer centred upon himself. However, like his exhaustive cogitation over enlistment nineteen years previous, Stoner’s musings are undisclosed. Here, and unlike his unwavering belief in his future at the University being ‘certain and unchanging’ (24) at the start of the First World War, Stoner, from the experiences of losing both Dave Masters, physically, and Archer Sloane, physiologically, to war, is now informed as to what loss is awaiting them all in the wake of the brewing conflict, as Williams states, ‘He [Stoner] foresaw the years that stretched ahead, and knew that the worst was to come’ (emphasis added) (227). While Stoner is again prospectively assessing the future, he is no longer formulating (24) a prediction, a vision, but is rather definite, knowing (227), in his understanding; it is only now when looking ahead from the onset of the Second World War that Stoner views the future with an assured awareness, void of naivety, of what is to come, as opposed to his perceived ignorance: the view held by the members of the department.
Further to the opening of chapter fourteen, and in contrast to chapters two and sixteen, it is within the chapter that Stoner’s perspective is, for the first time at length, omitted from the narrative, with his response to Lomax’s timetabling concealed from the reader. Here, it is evident that Williams’s tandem use of objective and subjective narration is, in part, a means to convey the perspectives of and the perspective from Stoner, respectively. While I have commented upon Williams’s narration in regards to Stoner’s anomalous attitude as a postgraduate towards the events occurring within Europe, it is important to note that Williams’s objectivity portrays Stoner as a subject for critique: one whose own perspective is withheld and silenced allowing for a reputation of indifference and tempestuousness. The intermittent transitions from Stoner’s perspective to that of an objective narrator allows Williams to both disclose and conceal, respectively, the inner-thoughts of the titular character himself. Williams’s approach of highlighting the discord between the widely held consensus of Stoner and Stoner’s own outlook is brought to the forefront of the novel when Stoner undertakes his instructorship and later his tenunreship as an assistant professor (95) at the University. As Stoner assumes his teaching post, Williams utilises an objective narration to further his portrayal of Stoner by detailing the collective attitudes of both the University’s faculty and student body towards the protagonist, serving as a means to convey the mythos that formulates around the character: a mythos that is established and exaggerated by Stoner’s mien alone.
In regards to Stoner’s appearance, as is noted within the chapter, prior to his counter to Lomax, it is made evident that William Stoner was his father’s son: his character, his mien and his appearance are all akin to that of his forefathers; they were men who endured lives that gave them a collective ‘knowledge of hardship and hunger and endurance and pain’ (226) and whose faces were ‘were expressionless and hard and bleak’ (226). It is from an objective perspective that Williams establishes the onset of Stoner’s reputation as a professor at the University, with Williams centring the narrative upon the passivity of Stoner’s visage and the interpretations of the faculty and his students. Following the commencement of the 1937-1938 academic year, Stoner’s somewhat trivial conflict with Hollis Lomax, who assumed the appointment of ‘chairman of the Department of English’ (177) six-years previous, is ignited once again following his reading and rejection of the chairman’s devised timetable: a ‘schedule that even the newest instructor would have accepted with bad grace’ (228). Williams begins with a limited subjectivity, outlining Stoner’s ‘early morning’ revitalisation, ‘his renewal of the old passion for study and learning’ (228), from a late night reading of a ‘new study of the survival of medieval tradition into the Renaissance’ (228) only to then note Stoner’s frustration following his first reading of his semester’s timetable. Having endured Lomax’s obduracy for six-years, Stoner’s response is outlined simply as a ‘dull anger’ that ‘rose within him’ (228). However, by returning to his objective narration, Williams masks Stoner’s plotting, or his long-awaited check-mate to Lomax: after staring ‘at the wall for several moments’, the schedule is discarded, ‘dropped’ with the ‘attached syllabus into a wastebasket’, before Stoner, looking ‘absently’, selects another syllabus from ‘his filing cabinet’, ‘whistling silently as he did so’, and leaves his office, setting off ‘across the campus to his first class’ ‘with the folder under one arm’(228). Within this brief paragraph, while establishing a staunch refusal to teach Lomax’s syllabus, Stoner’s overarching objectives are, at this point, unclear.
From here, and over the next few days and the subsequent weeks, Williams pieces Stoner’s plot together gradually: from the seminar, it is apparent that the ‘General English’ (emphasis added) freshman composition course is now, at the inconvenience and dismay of the students, an esoteric and advanced study of ‘medieval verse and prose’ (230). Following the introductory tutorial, Williams notes the reactions to Stoner’s ‘experimentation’ (233): firstly, Williams begins by highlighting the class’s struggle with the assignment, with ‘fewer than half the students’ (231) submitting the essay for the Monday deadline; from here, Williams then presents the faculty’s response, as is shown through Stoner’s subsequent meeting with the course-leader of the freshman English program, Joel Ehrhardt, a self-titled ‘messenger boy’ (233) for Lomax, in response to the students’ complaints; Williams then concludes with Stoner hearing of Lomax’s meeting with an amused Gordon Finch (235-236), with the latter stating his refusal to meddle (236) with the pedagogy of a senior professor.
During the weeks following the introductory class, and with the exception of the chapter’s closing sentence, Williams shifts to his protagonist’s thoughts for a single paragraph: here, Stoner spots the students waiting outside of Lomax’s office and is therefore certain that he will be contacted by the chairman’s secretary, as Williams states ‘On Tuesday he noticed […] outside of Lomax’s office, a group of students […] He smiled to himself and went to his office and waited for the telephone call that he knew would come’ (232) (emphasis added). The use of the two stative verbs, ‘noticed’ and ‘knew’, are the only references to Stoner’s perspective; it is from this point alone that it is clear that Williams, while establishing Stoner’s awareness of the ramifications of his ‘experiment’ (234), wishes to distances the reader from Stoner’s thoughts and to centre the narrative solely upon the onset of the legend (237), the mythology, that is ultimately entwined with Stoner’s reputation.
Initially, despite the reader later being a witness, or an observer, to Stoner’s response in its entirety, Williams’s limited, objective narration conveys a distance to Stoner akin to that of his bemused students of the General English, Section Four (230) class: to the reader, and as is noted of the students’ opinions toward Stoner, his ‘legend was defined, however, by his manner in class’ (238) (emphasis added). For the reader, Williams’s objective perspective outlines the formulation of Stoner’s ‘legend’, concealing the character’s own perspective in order for the reader, alongside the faculty and the students, to observe Stoner’s mien, his manner, and gradually piece together an interpretation of his counter to Lomax’s schedule. While Stoner’s motifs are inferred throughout his response to Hollis Lomax’s obstinacy, it is within chapter sixteen that Williams centres the narrative solely upon Stoner’s reflections: Williams anchors the reader once again to Stoner’s most personal recollections.
Chapter Sixteen
It is evident that the novel is a bildungsroman, with many publications bracketing Stoner within the genre of the ‘academic novel’[8]; moreover, the narrative is not centred solely upon the tutelage of William Stoner, as the aforementioned category may suggest, but rather encompasses the development of the character’s societal awareness. Despite the lives of his ascendants, lives of ‘hardship and hunger and endurance and pain’ (226), Stoner’s understanding of the world gradually extends beyond the parameters of the ‘some forty miles’ (2) between his father’s farm, outside of the village of Booneville, and the University of Missouri’s campus. Stoner acquires a knowledge that is formulated throughout his years as an observer to the societal changes from the onset, and the subsequent impact, of war upon both himself and those around him.
Within chapter sixteen, following Stoner and Grace’s conversation in light of his growing awareness to her alcoholism, and in contrast to chapter two, Stoner’s sense of, and penchant for, introspection, of internalised thought, is now a developed trait: a place to withdraw to. Once again, the narrative is rooted by Stoner’s subjective outlook. Here, at three separate time-marks, in a span of which exceeds a decade, Williams focuses the narrative upon Stoner’s principle desires, all of which can be attributed to an event or individual belonging to his past: beginning around 1942 with Stoner’s conflicted attitude towards the toll of yet another World War, he is drawn to his frustration and longing for ‘involvement’ (254) in amongst the violence of war, and is in stark contrast to his own deferment, in 1917; following this, Williams’s elision of time brings the narrative to 1949, with Stoner purchasing Driscoll’s book and, in light of reading the publication, contemplates his own capacity to love; finally, Williams concludes with Stoner’s feelings of ‘pity’ when witnessing the exodus of yet another generation of young men, emptying of the University of its younger faculty members and students, in the early 1950s, all of whom are bound for Korea, before then concluding fifteen years later, in 1955. Once again, in regards to the former and latter points, the pronoun ‘he’ is placed alongside the copular verb ‘saw’; it is now, rather conversely when compared to what he ‘saw’ when newly graduated, in reference to his awareness of the morose countenances of others, of those around him, and the collective sense of enduring the anticipation of loss, brought on by enlistment, with Williams noting:
Once again he saw the faculty depleted, he saw the classrooms emptied of their young men, he saw the haunted looks upon those who remained behind, and saw in those looks the bitter attrition of feeling and care [254] (emphasis added)
As opposed to Williams’s initial use of the phrasal coordination of ‘he saw’ in references to Stoner’s hopeful vision of his own future entwined with the University, Stoner, like his observations in the mid-1930s, is drawn to that of the suffering and toil of others. In contrast to the earlier instances of Finch’s patriotic scolding of Stoner’s deferment at the opportunity to fight within the First World War and the faculty’s consensus that Stoner is ‘blind’ (226) to events outside of the University’s halls, any reference to these judgements of Stoner are omitted within chapter sixteen. Instead, Williams centres these pages of the chapter upon Stoner’s introspections, of his subjective thoughts towards the previously listed points, and discards any brief interludes of omniscience. During the quiet pauses for reflection, a ‘habit’ (37) which Stoner has evidently perfected, Williams’s portrayal of Stoner’s loss, of his isolation, is once again brought to forefront of the novel: the reader is tethered to Stoner’s perspective throughout the years of the Second World War and the years of its wake.
Throughout the decade, and while concealed beneath his ‘stolid’ (254) appearance, Stoner is noted as an ‘intensely divided man’ (254). It is during chapter sixteen that Williams presents, once again, the dichotomy between Stoner’s passive mien and his astute awareness, and, in some instances, the surety of his thoughts. Here, at two stages, Williams references Stoner’s process of looking ‘within himself’ (254) and ‘beneath the numbness, the indifference, the removal’ (259) as though he himself is mining an embalmed surface in order to locate the boon of his beliefs, of his perspective and of his interpretation of events. Williams’s use of the prepositional phrase ‘beneath’ reiterates the portrayal of Stoner as an enigma to those around him, with his genuine sentiment reserved and withheld. In regards to the latter quotation, the use of asyndetic listing establishes the layered carapace of Stoner’s countenance, with the three abstract nouns of ‘numbness’, ‘indifference’ and ‘removal’, while all usually in reference to an emotional feeling or toll, taking on the form of a solidified coating. Due to this, these references are akin to Stoner’s earlier observations made during the stirrings of the Second World War, in 1936, as he identifies that the men (226) of the time assume the same ‘expression’ as him and his antecedents (226), one that is ‘as familiar as the air the he walked in’ (226), of ‘hardness and bleakness’ (226). Like Stoner, they too have also fallen into silent reflection. To him, their silences convey a ‘despair’ that he himself has not only borne witness to but has also experienced and endured, to an extent, since his early childhood (226). Their miens speak to him, while his perceived appearance of ‘impassivity’ is met with misunderstanding and, on occasion, contempt due to his ‘secure’ position as a tenured professor; despite sharing their perspective, he, in their collective silence, is yet still apart from them.
Further to Stoner’s sense of isolation in amongst the public, and as is akin to his feeling of loneliness when observing these other men, Williams’s centres the chapter upon Stoner’s relationship with the women of his life: his daughter, Grace, his lover, Katherine Driscoll, and his wife, Edith. Throughout the chapter, the theme of loss is interwoven within each relationship: beginning with a conversation with his reserved daughter, Grace, the pair discuss her gradual reliance upon alcohol and her descent into a quiet ‘despair’ (257), following the passing of her husband, Edward Frye, in 1942; towards the end of the decade, Stoner receives a ‘circular’ (258) about the passionate and youthful instructor Katherine Driscoll, whose loving relationship with Stoner is at the centre of his reflections, in 1949; Williams then concludes the chapter, in 1955, with Stoner’s embittered and volatile wife, Edith Bostwick, and her anger towards her husband at him having withheld his condition, an intestinal ‘obstruction’ (266), and his upcoming surgery from her. As is shown by the former and latter instances, bookends, of sorts, to the chapter, Stoner’s relationship with his daughter and his wife, respectively, have deteriorated before reaching a stagnant plateau: a point at which the family functions without ever completely divesting their feelings to one another.
This initially appears most evident during Stoner’s strained, yet open, dialogue with his daughter, as Williams litters the page with em dashes in order to convey their shared difficulty in articulating their thoughts. As for Edith’s discovery, her intermittent use of exclamative and imperative sentences demonstrates her overpowering position within the couple’s marriage, with Stoner apologising for his handling of his illness only to then, in his reduced physical state, plead for rest. At both points, however, with Grace, in her confessional and limpid state, revealing her perspective upon her marriage to Frye and her own perceived accountability in his death (257), and with Edith’s capitulation to her questioning of her husband, respecting his desire for sleep, there is a dialogue between the family that has indeed eluded them for ‘years’ (256). The family’s discourse, and despite the sense of loss permeating the chapter, is, rather briefly, progressive, and provides Stoner with two fleeting instances of resolution: the first for the knowledge that Grace is ‘almost happy’ (257) in her life and the second for his wish for ‘rest’ (272) — an abstract noun in reference to both his physical exhaustion from the symptoms of his tumour and, seemingly, the burgeoning and the renewal of the hostilities between the couple— being honoured by Edith.
In regards to Katherine O’Driscoll, however, here, within chapter sixteen, and in light of reading Driscoll’s completed dissertation, Stoner’s sense of loss is finally alleviated from beneath his reserved countenance. In ‘the early spring of 1949’ (260) the theme of communication intercedes with McGahern’s emphasis upon the novel’s ideas (xv) of ‘work’ (xiii) and ‘love’ (xv) as Williams draws Stoner’s skill of silent introspection to his ‘passion’ and ‘love’ (259) for Driscoll, for her work and for the subject that brought them together. From Driscoll’s prose, Stoner finally releases his feeling of loss as though it is itself a substance, as Williams details that ‘the sense of loss, that he had for so long dammed within him, flooded out, engulfed him, and he let himself be carried outward’ (emphasis added) (259). Williams’s successive use of the dynamic verbs ‘damned’, ‘flooded’ and ‘carried’ brings to light the force of Stoner’s sense of losing Driscoll, of how he has endured his suffering beneath his outward ‘numbness’ (259). This instance is an unmooring for Stoner; his stoicism is eased, with the first instance within the novel of Stoner drawing attention to himself through the imperative ‘Look! I am alive’ (259). Indeed, with the exception of his sadness at Professor Archer Sloane’s funeral (91), in 1924, it is only when looking at his relationship with Driscoll that Stoner — and despite having survived his mother and father; his peripheral in-laws, Horace Bostwick and Edward Frye; and his closest friend and mentor, Dave Masters and Sloane, respectively — acquiesces to his sense of ‘loss’ and subsequent ‘love’ and allows himself to be overtaken by his own mourning and his memory of Driscoll: a point which can be attributed to the coalescence of the novel’s principle themes of ‘work’ and ‘love’ and the communication of these subjects.
Indeed, Williams’s convergence of the three themes is central to chapters twelve and thirteen when charting the year-long love affair between Stoner and Driscoll, from her private request for him to proofread her thesis, in the ‘early spring’ (187) of 1932, to her silent resignation from the University, in the spring of 1933. Over the course of the two chapters, the pair’s relationship is noted for its moments of silence: despite their study of the written word, speech is frequently preceded by a quietness that is initially rooted in ‘awkwardness’ (193) before reaching a ‘habit of repose’ (204) that is imbued with a shared sense of complete comfort and ease with one another. Their parting is noted, rather cyclically, for its silence, and, once again, presents their shared inability to voice their sadness and loss. At three separate occasions, Williams’s states that ‘They said no more’, they ‘made love so they could not speak’, ‘they lay unspeaking’ and, following her departure, that ‘she left him no final note to say what could not be said’ (213). While neither Stoner nor Driscoll can truly articulate their sense of love and loss for one another, Driscoll, however, is able to bring closure to their affair through the work that brought them together: her publication. From the beginning of their affair, Driscoll’s thesis served as a catalyst for their love, with Stoner, while initially hesitant to further involve himself with Driscoll following the Lomax/Walker dispute, advocating his support for her direction with the dissertation and subsequently becoming, in part, her unofficial tutor for the work. Sixteen years later, in ‘the early spring of 1949’ (258), the dedication ‘To W.S.’ (258) brings to Stoner as sense of completion: here, a cyclical resolution, in which Driscoll is able to articulate their love, what was previously thought to be an impossibility, a feeling ‘that could not be said’ (213), through the work that united them in their shared passion and devotion. Through the dedication, Williams’s confluence of the novel’s principle themes of ‘work’, ‘love’ and communication establishes the underlying strength of Stoner’s love: in the silence of his office, his sense of ‘numbness’, of his ‘indifference’ and of his ‘removal’ (259) are all suppressed through the force of his passion and ebullience for his vitality, for his work, and his relationships. He feels, arguably, for the first time since Driscoll’s absconsion, truly ‘alive’ (259).
A Eulogy
The novel’s opening page is, rather inversely, an ending: serving as a eulogised account of Professor William Stoner’s career at the University of Missouri, Williams, from the first line of the text, entwines the life of the deceased professor with the institution that he devoted his life to, being both educated and an educator at the institution. Like the taciturn Stoner, the prose of the eulogy, or account, is restrained, ‘bluntly’ (ix) so, and void of any sense of praise or personal association with the professor; it is, itself, a report of the indifference held towards Stoner’s legacy and is therefore lacking in any reference to his enthusiasm for, his devotion to and, ultimately, his love of his profession. The summation of William Stoner’s career lacks any note achievement, esteem or significance, with neither his peers nor the upcoming generations of students affected by his position at their University.
Through this obituary, a prelude of sorts to the novel, Williams retrospectively outlines the trajectory of Stoner’s career, conveying to the reader that the vocational aspect of the life that they will be tethered to will be of little worth or merit; from this, the reader, prior Stoner’s commencement of study at the University, is aware that Stoner’s tutelage of his classes and his later foray into publication will be forgotten. We know that Stoner’s position at the University is inconsequential and we are aware of his failings even before he devotes himself, and his career, to their undertaking. Therefore, it is evident that the novel is imbued with a sense of sadness: there is a sense of inevitability that Stoner will to others achieve little in his forty-six years at the University, either as a student or as an assistant professor, as the author Julian Barnes states, writing for The Guardian, in 2013:
The sadness of Stoner is of its own particular kind. It is not, say, the operatic sadness of The Good Soldier, or the grindingly sociological sadness of New Grub Street. It feels a purer, less literary kind, closer to life’s true sadness. As a reader, you can see it coming in the way you can often see life’s sadness coming, knowing there is little you can do about it. Except – since you are a reader – you can at least defer it. I found that when reading Stoner for the first time, I would limit myself most days to 30 or 40 pages, preferring to put off until the morrow knowledge of what Stoner might next have to bear (emphasis added).[9]
Barnes’s notion of Stoner having to ‘bear’ the defeats and losses of life is central to the narrative, from the Lomax dispute to the deaths of his parents and close friends, as each challenge is met by Stoner with the same stoic silence. However, it is possible to identify the definitive sadness of the novel is retrospectively found within the disparity between the opening account of Stoner’s professional career, told through a distant, objective narration, and his final days, with the concluding chapter moored by the subjectivity of Stoner’s outlook upon his life from his weakened, bedbound state. Here, at both the beginning and the conclusion of the novel, his affection for and commitment to the subject of English and his profession are, once again, unknown by those around him.
As outlined previously through his relationships with Edith, Grace and Katherine, ‘the gulf’ between Stoner’s thoughts and his speech plague the perceptions of his character. Williams notes within chapter six that ‘those things that he held most deeply were most profoundly betrayed when he spoke of them […] what was most alive withered in his words’ (114), as though Stoner’s own language is inadequate for the purpose of communicating his beliefs. Williams, however, due to both Stoner’s passing and his illness, within the prelude and chapter seventeen, respectively, bookends the novel with Stoner silent. Subsequently, Stoner’s life, both professional and personal, is therefore defined by the subject of his career: the written word.
While the memorial manuscript in dedication to William Stoner reads as, and is, a perfunctory undertaking by the English department, Stoner’s final moments centre upon his own book. Indeed, while the theme of communication has been analysed through Williams’s use of objective and subjective narration, with Stoner’s preference to internalise his thoughts and therefore silence his voice, William’s use of print within the novel manifests itself as the purest form of discourse: a language that does not ‘betray’ (114) its user. By this, Stoner’s identity, while not clearly discernible to others through neither his speech nor his publication, is located by himself, however fleetingly, within his own writing. The book, reviewed as ‘a competent survey’ (104) at the time of publication, and whilst submitted to the publisher with the author somewhat disappointed with the work, accompanies its writer during his final moments. It is due to the presence of the book at the novel’s conclusion that Williams assess Stoner’s character, specifically his career, through the reception of two pieces of print: the first being the memorial dedication to William Stoner from his colleagues at the University and the second, his own publication furthering his thesis, ‘The Influence of the Classical Tradition upon the Medieval Lyric’ (40). The manuscript’s inscription outlines, seemingly, the two principle failings of Stoner’s career: he garnered little ‘esteem’ (1) in his post and his identity is now unidentifiable to the colleagues of the department; ultimately, he has been forgotten. However, in Stoner’s final assessment of his own work, a victory is found.
During the narrative, Williams’s emphasis upon the correlation between the teachers’ identity and their writings is made through both Hollis Lomax and Katherine Driscoll’s works: in regards to the former, Lomax’s essays are ‘dug out’ and read over, prior to his arrival at the University, by the English faculty with ‘judicious nods’ (92) of approval, while the prose of Driscoll’s book invokes a clear distillation of her character for Stoner, elevating his languid state through a renewed sense of underlying passion for his erstwhile love and the subject they shared. The print and the individual are united and, regardless of reception, are inseparable. Stoner’s book, however, lacks both the distinction afforded to Lomax’s writings and the sense of identity of Driscoll’s ‘graceful’ (259) prose, and serves, in part, as an explanation for the department’s eventual indifference towards his academic career. Despite this, and in direct contrast to the defined perceptions of Stoner’s inadequacy as an academic within the opening prelude, he finds something of notable value within the book’s pages: his identity, as Williams states:
It hardly mattered to him that the book was forgotten and that it served no use; and the question of its worth at any time seemed almost trivial. He did not have the illusion that he would find himself there, in that fading print; and yet, he knew, a small part of him that could not deny was there, and would be there (emphasis added).
He opened the book; and as he did so it became not his own. He let his fingers riffle through the pages and felt a tingling, as if those pages were alive.
Here, for Stoner, the failings that will posthumously be levelled at his career are knowingly addressed before being dismissed: it matters little to him that the text is forgotten and useless or that he, in his past readings, could not delineate himself from his own prose. Regardless, the pages to him do hold something of his character, his identity, either as an example of his youthful ‘temerity’, or ‘responsibility’ (104), for such an undertaking or at the ownership of the physical entity of his work. In his death, William Stoner is portrayed as a man at peace with his life, as his reflective assessment of his past dismisses the sense of sadness that has intermittently plagued him, and which has come to define the identity of Williams’s titular character. The notion of failure is belittled, as such thoughts are deemed ‘mean, unworthy of what his life had been’ (287), with an encroaching attitude of joy diminishing any ideas of failure. Like his sense of awe and passion for Driscoll when reading her book, the ‘tingling’ he felt in that moment of adoration for both the writer and her prose, in 1949, returns in his final assessment of his own writing, in 1956, as though the pages are, once again, imbued with vitality and are subsequently ‘alive’ to him. For Williams, the printed word is neither stagnant nor confined to the page, and is a point that is gradually realised by Stoner himself. Over the course of the novel, Stoner recognises his own sense of affinity for the written word at intermittent points throughout his career as both a lecturer and as a teacher, particularly in 1929, when he assess his position, and character, at the University:
The love of literature, of language, of the mystery of the mind and heart showing themselves in the minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words, in the blackest and coldest print — the love which he had hidden as if it were illicit and dangerous, he began to display, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then proudly
This ‘love’, once furtively hidden from others, gradually becomes evident through his practice as teacher, with his pedagogy, at points, infused with his passion for the study of language. Indeed, Maggie Doherty, writing for The New Republic, comments that ‘Stoner, tragic figure though he is, finds something much described and more rarely seen: teaching as a vocation’[10], a point which evidently originates from his affection for analysing the written word. This transition from a silent devotion to a vocal ‘display’ (115) of his love for literature serves as the point at which he ‘becomes’ (115) a teacher, casting aside his ‘mechanical’ (115) and rigid approach to educating his students for an ebullience that furthers his reputation at the University. In essence, it vitalises his pedagogy, giving life to his approach.
At the novel’s conclusion, in Stoner’s final moments, this love of literature, of the written form of language, surges through him in the manner that has so often perplexed him throughout his life: itself, a sense that is akin to his first encounter with Sloane over the meaning of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73, in 1911; his awareness, following Sloane’s guidance, of his future profession as a teacher, based entirely upon the grounds of his ‘love’ for the subject, in 1914 (19); his critical-assessment of his book in the wake of its publication (104), in 1925; his pride when divulging his love of literature to his students and his newfound sensibility as a teacher, in 1929; his initial stages of planning the direction of his new book’s prospective focus (122), in 1930; his first reading of Driscoll’s thesis and his ‘excitement’ in assuaging her doubts about her work, in 1934; his renewed ‘passion for study and learning’, in the wake of and counter to the reasons for Driscoll’s resignation from the University, in 1937; and his reading of Driscoll’s completed work, in 1949. At these points, Stoner is physically affected: he can ‘feel’ his blood ‘throbbing’ (19) through him; he speaks with more confidence and gaiety (115); he paces with ‘frustrated joy’ (124) at the onset of new studies; his fingers ‘trembled with excitement’ and he is ‘exhausted’ in the wake of his reading of Driscoll’s thesis (190); and, when holding her finished work, his ‘fingers seemed to come alive’ and he is palsied in his trembling (258). In Stoner’s death, these involuntary reactions, while reduced, return.
This physical response of ‘trembling’, his body ‘tingling’ (288), occurs at the commencement of an undertaking, from his career at the University (19) to a reading (259), and is an attribute which evidences his sense of devotion to his profession, to his course of study and to a text that he has placed before himself. In his death, this feeling enlivens Stoner when contemplating his own work:
He let his fingers riffle through the pages and felt a tingling, as if those pages were alive. The tingling came through his fingers and coursed through his flesh and bone; he was minutely aware of it, and he waited until it contained him, until the old excitement that was like terror fixed him where he lay. (288)
Due to Williams’s subjectivity, Stoner’s death is infused with life: his body is ‘coursed’ by the ‘tingling’ of anticipation which results in his body ‘contained’ within a familiar transfixion of passion. Here, the scene echoes his reaction following his reading of Driscoll’s text, in 1949, with his body ‘engulfed’ (259) within a feeling of ‘loss’ for his lover; Williams initially portrays Stoner’s regret of his loss for Driscoll as though it is a deluge, a body of water that will overpower and drown Stoner himself, as it is noted:
His hands tingled, as if they had touched her. And the sense of his loss, that he had so long dammed within him, flooded out, engulfed him, and he let himself be carried outward, beyond the control of his will; he did not wish to save himself. Then he smiled fondly, as if at a memory; it occurred to him that he was nearly sixty years old and that he ought to be beyond the force of such passion, of such love (259)
Despite Stoner’s remorse, his ‘sense of his loss’, being replaced with a resurging ‘old excitement’ for study, Williams returns to this metaphorical current during Stoner’s passing, with Stoner’s capitulation to the feelings of loss or excitement, respectively, conveying an introspective acceptance of his experiences, as opposed to a furtive repression. Again, Stoner acquiesces to the overpowering sense of ‘excitement’, allowing his body to be consumed by his feelings; as is clear in both instances, the association with the natural flow of a river, or stream, portrays the strength of Stoner’s sensibilities as a powerful, surging force unhampered by the prospect of either loneliness or death, and grants Stoner a vitality: in 1949, he is taken aback by his feelings of ‘passion’ and ‘love’ and in 1956 his body is again pervaded by such life-affirming sentiments.
Alongside the addition of Stoner’s meeting with Archer Sloane, in 1914, regarding his decision upon a postgraduate career as a teacher, a mirrored triptych is formed: in the wake of each instance of Stoner experiencing a sensation of ‘tingling’ he is bestowed with an immediate sensual awareness regarding either ‘his surroundings’, his ‘passion’ for another or, in the novel’s conclusion, the ‘feeling’ (288) itself. This awareness transfixes, engulfs and contains him, respectively, with a sense of exuberance and exultation rarely experienced throughout his life. In these ephemeral moments William Stoner, like the book that he is contained within, is ‘alive’. In essence, Stoner’s passing affirms Williams’s assertion that Stoner remained stalwart in his love for his subject, he kept ‘faith’ (xiv) with his profession and his devotion to his ‘job’ (xiv) and is rewarded in death by the ‘old excitement’ (288) which evidently never dissipated. This aspect of his life has remained steadfast throughout the collapse of his personal relationships and his experiences of departmental bureaucracy, and, while not revealed to others, accompanies him to his death, as he passes away at peace.
Further to Stoner’s final reading of his book, Williams returns to another piece of literature in the novel’s closing scene: Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73. Williams’s cyclical call to Sloane’s reading of the sonnet, almost forty-five years previous, answers, to an extent, the question posed by the professor to the unassuming student before him, ‘Mr Stoner, what does the sonnet mean?’ (10). While Stoner remains silent, the sonnet will come to define his character: the sonnet centres upon the speaker professing the strength of their love in the presence of an encroaching death; however, throughout the speaker’s address to an unnamed character, presumably their love, they outline that this individual recognises the passion and love within them, as though the speaker’s feelings are undisclosed and private:
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Like the speaker of the sonnet, Stoner’s ‘fire’ — his love and passion for study, for literature, and his sudden awareness of his own identity — is contained within him, internalised but effervescent in its ‘glowing’. Further to this, prone on his ‘death-bed’, he is ‘consum’d’ with that which he was ‘nourish’d by’: the old excitement of further study and interpretation returns to him; here, his past-reflection upon his ‘vocation’[11] leads to a burgeoning of his life’s passion which transfix him in their resurgence. However, it is the stative verb ‘nourish’d’ that highlights Stoner’s accord with the written word. Williams’s reference to the excitement ‘coursing through his [Stoner] flesh and bone’ returns to the metaphor of flowing water, and presents the feeling’s return to Stoner as a form of sustenance, as though his entire being is physically revitalised and he is ultimately nourished by its presence. The ‘coursing’ of his passion is portrayed as a reinvigoration, with the feeling itself serving, to an extent, as a remedy to his terminal-state. Indeed, the ‘tingling’ sensation marks the points of Stoner’s life, both personal and professional, at which the novel’s foremost themes of love, work and communication coalesce and intercede.
Like the speaker of Sonnet 73, Stoner contains his ‘fire’ within himself, but it is a ‘fire’ fuelled by his passion for the love of his work: the study and teaching of English. Through his position at the University of Missouri, Stoner explored his love of literature, but it is a love that he is unable to communicate to those around him, despite its ever-present ‘glowing’. Williams’s use of objective and subjective, limited and omniscient, narration permits the reader to see Stoner’s devotion and ‘faith’ with his profession and subject alike, but it is, through Williams’s fleeting use of omniscience, evidently unknown to those surrounding Stoner. As previously outlined, the disparity between the indifferent memory of Stoner’s career and his private final moments conveys the misconception of Stoner’s character as a passive and blind (226) scholar. Indeed, while Stoner’s book falls into the ‘silence of the room’ (288), akin to the silence of its reception, his passing, nevertheless, is not one of sadness. Williams’s belief that his protagonist ‘had a very good life’ due to, in part, the fact that Stoner kept ‘faith’ with his ‘job’ of teaching is evident within Stoner passing. ‘On his ‘death-bed’, Stoner’s perception, what he himself ‘perceiv’st’, is his sense of himself and his life, and he is nourished by both his awareness of his own identity and his life’s passion: the teaching of literature. In death, Stoner once again returns to his joy in life, and once again he is ‘alive!’ (259).
[1] John Williams, Stoner (London: Vintage, 2012), p. 2.
[2] Ibid, p. 8
[3] Ibid, p. 18
[4] Ibid, p. 1.
[5] Ibid, p. 17
[6] McGahern, John, Introduction, in Stoner (London: Vintage, 2012), p. ix
[7] Reading over notes on narration: http://www.scribophile.com/academy/using-third-person-multiple-pov, http://www.scribophile.com/academy/using-third-person-omniscient-pov
[8] https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-greatest-american-novel-youve-never-heard-of
[9] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/13/stoner-john-williams-julian-barnes
[10] https://newrepublic.com/article/123334/vanished-world-stoner
[11] https://newrepublic.com/article/123334/vanished-world-stoner
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