The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel
Douban
John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life
Charles J. Shields
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When Stoner was published in 1965, the novel sold only a couple of thousand copies before disappearing with hardly a trace. Yet John Williams’s quietly powerful tale of a Midwestern college professor, William Stoner, whose life becomes a parable of solitude and anguish eventually found an admiring audience in America and especially in Europe. The New York Times called Stoner “a perfect novel,” and a host of writers and critics, including Colum McCann, Julian Barnes, Bret Easton Ellis, Ian McEwan, Emma Straub, Ruth Rendell, C. P. Snow, and Irving Howe, praised its artistry. The New Yorker deemed it “a masterly portrait of a truly virtuous and dedicated man.”
contents
Introduction
Part I. Nothing But the Night
Chapter One: He Comes from Texas
Chapter Two: “Ho, Ho! Wasn’t I the Character Then?”
Chapter Three: Rough Draft
Chapter Four: Key West
Chapter Five: Alan Swallow
Chapter Six: Love
Part II. Butcher’s Crossing
Chapter Seven: The Winters Circle
Chapter Eight: “Natural Liars Are the Best Writers”
Chapter Nine: Butcher’s Crossing
Chapter Ten: Fiasco
Part III. Stoner
Chapter Eleven: “It Was That Kind of World”
Chapter Twelve: “The Williams Affair”
Chapter Thirteen: Stoner
Part IV. Augustus
Chapter Fourteen: Bread Loaf and “Up on the Hill”
Chapter Fifteen: The Good Guys
Chapter Sixteen: “Long Life to the Emperor!”
Part V. The Sleep of Reason
Poem: “An Old Actor to His Audience”
Chapter Seventeen: “How Can Such a Son of a Bitch Have Such Talent?”
Chapter Eighteen: In Extremis
Epilogue. John Williams Redux
Acknowledgments
Notes
Works Consulted
A John Williams Bibliography
Index