Can we talk about Stoner
By draft_ribbon
It kind of feels like a bunch of people miss what this book is doing, or maybe I’m overthinking it, but to me it came off as this bleak warning about what happens when someone has basically no real say in their own life. William Stoner just goes along with whatever gets handed to him—parents, Edith, Lomax, Katherine… even his whole career feels like it’s decided for him. He doesn’t really fight for anything. Like he’s just trying to get through each day the same way. And even with Katherine, I feel like he only ends up there because it starts with her. Sure, he gives in when she pulls him in, but the affair is kinda shown like it was already in motion from her side too and she just leaves like she planned to. Edith isn’t a good wife, yeah, but there are also early hints that Stoner doesn’t even really understand why he’s doing what he’s doing—he doesn’t seem all that attached to her. He just lets it happen, and when it’s time for things with Grace, he lets Edith’s whole upbringing/carrying-on run the show until they’re basically estranged. And he knows he’s a bad husband, but he doesn’t fix anything. The only real “backbone” he has is when it comes to Walker going after a masters. That’s not because Stoner suddenly becomes this moral hero—it’s more about him caring about literature and history and teaching it the right way. Still, he straight up admits he’s not even a great teacher most of the time. He just loves the subject, more than he has principles driving him. I don’t really find anything admirable in him. He feels like a coward, and the whole time it’s like his life keeps shrinking until he’s barely standing. It gets to the point where it’s honestly hard not to feel like everything just keeps weighing him down, chapter after chapter. And the ending was haunting in a weird way, too. That last page bothered me because it feels like he opens up his own “book” afterward and it’s nothing, like he just loses control of it and disappears. I’m not even fully sure what it’s meant to show, but it comes off as him having nothing even after death. Brutally bleak. His funeral is basically only attended by Finch, and he’s barely remembered. Even in the afterlife, it’s like he gets nothing. It’s really thought-provoking, but I didn’t enjoy it at all—and still, I guess it did get me wanting to read more fiction again, so… I don’t know. Mixed feelings, but it definitely stayed with me.