Stoner, John Williams
Stoner, John Williams
3 Rating(s)
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Stoner

Author: John Williams

Narrator: Robin Field

Unabridged: 9 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/09/2010

Categories: Fiction, Classic

Synopsis

William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirtpoor Missouri farming family. Sent to a university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar's life. As the years pass, Stoner encounters a series of disappointments: marriage into a proper family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude. John Williams' deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges not only as an archetypal American but as an unlikely existential hero, standing in stark relief against an unforgiving world.

About John Williams

John Williams (1922–1994) was an editor, professor, and author of several works, including two volumes of poetry and three novels, Butcher’s Crossing, Stoner, and the National Book Award–winning Augustus. He was born in Texas and received his PhD from the University of Missouri in the early 1950s, where he also was a professor. In 1955 he became the director of the University of Denver’s creative writing program, where he became the editor of the University of Denver Quarterly.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jeffrey on January 31, 2019

"In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarra......more

Goodreads review by Jim on January 23, 2018

I read Stoner after I saw that almost all my friends on GR had read it. It’s an impressive work which I finished months ago but hard a hard time figuring out what to say about it with thousands of reviews already out there. Stoner is the life story of an unremarkable man and the consensus seems to b......more

Goodreads review by emma on November 20, 2024

welcome to...STON(OVEMB)ER. it's a new month, i'm reading a classic, i'm doing a bad pun: it's another installment of project long classics, in which i read old intimidating books in small chunks over several weeks in order to assuage my fears. this one is not really all that long, but i just finished......more

Goodreads review by Emily May on February 02, 2022

What did you expect? I know this book touched me deeply because I am mentally going through every person I know to figure out who I can recommend it to. Most of them, I think. It's that kind of book that-- while still telling its own individual story --contains so many universal themes. Life, dea......more

Goodreads review by Glenn on May 27, 2022

For the hardworking men and women living in the open, windswept farm country of the American Midwest during the late 19th and early 20th century, day-to-day existence was frequently harsh and occasionally downright hostile, a stark, demanding life chiseling character as can be seen above in artist G......more

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List