Quiet Can be Good: Stoner by John Williams

First off, let's get some things straight: this is not a novel about a Sean Penn-like character from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" smoking weed in the bathroom. Nor is the author a baton-toting movie-theme composer. A friend of mine at work told me about the book and suggested I read it. I'm glad I did.

I had never heard of this John Williams nor this novel, written in 1965 (his Augustus won the National Book Award--not that I'd heard of that either). But I was intrigued. The novel is quietly satiric about college life in a way that so few more modern, heavy-handed, slap-you-in-the-face-and-wink-at-all-the-in-jokes universitry novels aren't. I'm thinking of Jane Smiley's Moo, or Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, or Richard Russo's Straight Man. I haven't set foot on a college campus in a long time--except as a visitor and an alum--so references to the most current theories and fish-in-a-barrel easy targets are lost on me. Further, Williams's writing is so simple and clear yet his characters are haunting and poignant.

The title refers to William Stoner, the only son of Missouri farmers at the turn of the 20th century. We are told at the very beginning that Stoner was an unremarkable man, quickly forgotten by his peers and his students, and an accidental academic. Yet his life was marked by infrequent passion, first for his career, then for the women he marked as his love, and later for his daughter.One crucial decision becomes the defining moment of his life and, though stoic and silent until the end of his life, we see how it haunts him.

This is not a deep book, but it's more complex the more you peel away at the layers. Perhaps some characters are drawn too one-dimensionally, Stoner's wife is too evil and his one academic rival too predictably Richard III-like. But there are some unforgettable scenes and brilliant characters. Whe Stoner finds brief happiness in love, your heart swells for the man because he seems so pure and good and unrecognized. He would be the tall man in the corner at a party who no one would remember having seen or spoken to, but who we could now guess had a hidden depth that we would have never known. Stoner is a tragic figure and, amazingly enough, I've never read about someone so boring who was this interesting.

I've read a lot this summer, but this books stands out much like Stoner himself--unexpectedly and quietly good.