Stoner (novel)

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Stoner is a novel by the American author John Williams , which was first printed in 1965, was long forgotten, was only noticed by international critics after its new edition in 2006 by Edwin Frank in the NYRB Classics and then developed into a popular success.

The novel is set in the USA in the first half of the 20th century. The protagonist of the novel, William Stoner, the only son of a poor farming couple, is sent to a university to study agriculture, where he discovers his love for English literature, to which he remains loyal throughout his life. He became a lecturer in English literature at the university, had an unhappy marriage, estranged himself from his parents, raised their daughter without the help of his wife and lived in an academic profession with hardships and without glamor.

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William Stoner was born in 1891 near the village of Booneville, Missouri . A life full of hardship in the fields on his parents' farm seems to be mapped out, even when his father unexpectedly sent him to the University of Missouri in Columbia to study agriculture after graduating from high school in 1910 . An introductory course in English literature , given by the aloof lecturer Archer Sloane, arouses an undreamt-of passion for literature in the student. He changed his field of study and did not return to his parents' farm even after graduating with a master's degree in literature , but instead stayed at the university as a doctoral student and lecturer at Sloane's instigation .

Stoner makes two friends among his fellow students: the technically brilliant David Masters and the more friendly and sociable Gordon Finch. Both this, after entry into the war the United States in the First World War as a volunteer while Stoner remains in Columbia and is writing his doctoral thesis. Masters falls in France, Finch returns and pursues a career at university, where he quickly rises to dean of arts and sciences while Stoner remains an assistant professor for the rest of his life .

Stoner's marriage in 1919 to Edith Bostwick, daughter of a wealthy St. Louis family that was ruined as a result of Black Thursday 1929, remains unhappy. Edith, who accuses her husband of not being able to offer her the traditional standard of living, is ailing and soon wages a downright guerrilla war against her husband, who withdraws more and more from the common house to the university. The daughter Grace, born in 1923, does not ensure the family happiness she had hoped for. Edith estranges the girl from her father and brings her up with a strictness from which the daughter escapes at 18 into pregnancy and early marriage. Her husband dies in World War II , and Grace, overwhelmed by her son's upbringing, begins to drink.

After the death of Archer Sloane, his successor Hollis N. Lomax becomes Stoner's opponent at the university. The conflict is sparked by the evaluation of Lomax's assistant Charles Walker, whom Stoner drops through an exam. The diminutive Lomax insinuates Stoner prejudice against Walker's physical ailments and from that moment on pursues Stoner with irreconcilable hatred. When he took over the management of the faculty , Stoner was largely ignored academically with teaching obligations for freshmen.

A love affair with the much younger doctoral student Katherine Driscoll brought unexpected happiness to Stoner's life in the fall of 1932. But while Edith seems to be able to overlook her husband's affair as long as he doesn't divorce, it is ultimately the hostile Lomax who ends the relationship by damaging Driscoll's reputation and forcing her to move out of Columbia . As a result, Stoner ages noticeably. At the university he now enjoys the reputation of an original, but he knows all too well that he is nothing more than a mediocre lecturer. He reads one more time from his lover: she dedicated her dissertation to him.

In 1956 there is a final argument between Lomax, who wants to send the assistant professor into retirement, and Stoner, who insists on his continued employment until he retires. But then an intestinal tumor ends Stoner's university career for good . He still has a few weeks for a regular exit before an operation confirms the malignancy of the tumor. On his deathbed, Stoner realizes that his life will be mistaken for a failure. But it seems to him the most important thing that he has always remained himself.

reception

When the book came out in the USA in 1965, it received positive reviews in The New Yorker magazine , and around 2,000 copies were sold. Then, when the American literary critic Irving Howe in 1966 in The New Republic published an essay in which he the book as "serious, beautiful and touching" ( Serious, beautiful and Affecting) described, it was in the book market already expired. It was published in England in 1973, but was hardly noticed there either. CP Snow asked himself in the Financial Times why the book was not famous. In 2006, Edwin Frank, director of the New York Review of Books Classics , published the book with an introduction by Irish novelist John McGahern .

In 2007, Morris Dickstein called the novel "a perfect novel" in his review in the New York Times and was thus able to draw the attention of international literary critics to the book for the first time. Translations into several European languages ​​followed, including French by Anna Gavalda . The Italian translation went into its 11th edition in 2013. In 2013, the Dutch translation was number one in the bestseller list for several months. 125,000 copies have now been sold in the Netherlands.

Also in 2013, the Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag published the first translation into German by Bernhard Robben . The book has now been translated into more than ten other languages, including Brazilian-Portuguese, Chinese, Danish, Catalan, Russian, Swedish, Spanish and Turkish.

In her review of the book for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 2013, Angela Schader wrote that the novel was told in a language “that hugs the body of the narrative like a simple but perfectly crafted garment, which gives moments of deep bitterness just as conclusively as it does the rare, sudden incursions of light that lead the protagonist to the limits of earthly existence. ”Furthermore, it is said that“ Stoner's spirit ”will“ at least not come to rest so quickly in the reader's memory. ”

In a review of the audio version of the book in 2013, NDR Kultur summed up: “Basically, this university novel is about the sometimes strange paths of love. In the academic world, passions can be sublimated into teaching and research; but competition and intrigue can also turn it into something unhealthy. The book skilfully depicts this using the example of the university professor William Stoner, who, probably not entirely by chance, bears some resemblance in name to his creator John Williams. "

The 2013 review by Sibylle Peine for dpa said: “Williams shows his hero as an authentic and straightforward figure. Stoner opposes the unreasonable demands and injustices of life with a stoic attitude of mind and tolerance, which one does not know whether one should find it admirable or outrageous. Because with just a little more selfishness, Stoner's life would be a lot happier. But like his rural ancestors, he doesn't quarrel with his fate. In a wonderfully differentiated language that knows how to capture the most diverse moods, Williams brings us close to a touching old-fashioned figure. "

It is lucky that we can rediscover him [Williams' novel], wrote Ulrich Greiner for Die Zeit - and further: “We understand: You can only live life as best you can. You can't really understand it. Perhaps that is the greatest strength of this moving book: that it does not see through its hero, does not properly define it. It puts him in front of us in all his strengths and weaknesses, in all his middle humanity and says: Look, your brother! "

expenditure

literature

  • Charles J. Shields : The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel. John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life . University of Texas Press, 2018

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Williams: Stoner , at DTV
  2. ↑ quoted from: Claire Cameron. A foregotten bestseller. In MM. The Millions. 6th June 2013.
  3. ↑ Why isn't this book famous? Quoted from Claire Cameron. A Forgotten bestseller. 6th June 2013.
  4. ^ Claire Cameron: A Forgotten Bestseller.
  5. ↑ "Stoner" - late bloomer from America · The hero as a tilting figure . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , September 10, 2013. Accessed October 1, 2013.
  6. ^ John Williams - Stoner ( Memento October 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). On: NDR Kultur , September 3, 2013. Retrieved October 26, 2013.
  7. ↑ Rediscovered: "Stoner" by John Williams . In: Focus , October 22, 2013. Retrieved October 26, 2013.
  8. ↑ Literature: John Williams' novel "Stoner" rediscovered . In: Zeit Literature No. 49, November 2013, p. 10.