So, I finally got around to reading Stoner, and I really enjoyed it. It was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant few months of not reading as much as I should. (Spoilers to follow, friends)
Edith really pissed me off, and I saw in the rushed marriage the sort of futile reconciliation Stoner tried with material things and in thinking that the "purity" of his love was enough to bring her 'round. But the length of time her and Lomax put into being dicks, literally over seasons and years, seemed to me absurd. Definitely felt the hopelessness of the situation like it was mine. To be honest, when first reading it I thought (through reading threads I saw mention of NTR occurring at some point in the book) Edith's unhappiness was going to bleed into an affair with half-ugly Lomax, but really it was through Stoner's on acquired-too-late love with Katherine.
The ending was beautiful, and I took a lot out of Stoner's quiet acceptance of his own death.
In the end, I'm glad I read the book; to me it felt like those books I first picked up as a kid and couldn't pit down again. I don't know why it resonated with me so much. If you've seen it shilled around Yea Forums haven't gotten around to it yet, I definitely recommend it.
What did you all think? A little late to the party, but glad I showed up at all.
I felt the same about Edith at first, but towards the end of the story I couldn't help but pity her. Taking all the things she did into account, like burning her old things when her father passed, trying to reinvent herself etc., just seemed like attempts at coping with a bad, stifled childhood. Early on in the story it's mentioned that things like sex, or anything related to it, weren't mentioned during her upbringing and education at all; she was raised to be a passive doll, and possibly resented Stoner for being just as stiff. And stiff he was; it wasn't until Katherine that he had anything resembling intimacy, and he wouldn't do anything particularly daring until he was too old to care about conforming. He very much remained a subservient farmer for most of his life, as his upbringing had taught him to be.
Michael Gutierrez
Keep in mind Stoner repeatedly raped Edith earlier in the novel.
Camden Flores
Stoner deserved everything that happened to him, including his peace in the end. The lesson of Stoner can be summed up in "don't be a coward or a cuck"
Only truly evil thing he did was fucking over Walker. Stoner a smart enough nigga not to be petty redtape nigger to young adventurous nigga
Ian Young
Nah fuck that cripple sophist.
Joshua Hughes
t. CIA nigger academic
Cooper Hall
>gets English PhD >knows nothing about English literature that sense of entitlement really gets the ol' noggin joggin
Xavier Robinson
>It’s another Stoner is just like me thread The book is good. The Edith hate/oversight and incel self-identification is YA tier appreciation.
Isaac Wright
Agreed. William deserved Edith.
Carson Ross
What would Masters have done?
Jonathan Bell
Awfully pretentious. I simply said the book itself resonated with me - and being pissed off at a character, or their actions, doesn’t mean you hate them.
Leo Martinez
You tell me. Should a sanctuary for the pursuit of learning turn into a joke because of some quip about how academia is a shelter for people who don't want to function in the real world?
Michael Morgan
I'm not only talking about the harboring weirdos line at this point. Masters wasn't a petty coward is my point. Also note that Walker was not a pseud or a moron. He just didn't give a shit about gay academic gay shit. Walker loved what he was doing and was passionate about literature in a way that Stoner never was. That is not my main point. Stoner was lying to himself when he thought he did it for "academic integrity". It was a narcissistic defence, the bad type of gatekeeping.
Ryder Gutierrez
That scene when stones and his daughter have a moment and laugh then bitch ass Edith comes in and ruins everything
David Powell
>Also note that Walker was not a pseud or a moron. He just didn't give a shit about gay academic gay shit. Yeah, he was an English PhD candidate who didn't care to read. Let's just give him a degree for doing fuck-all. >Masters wasn't a petty coward is my point. So he would have done what Stoner would have done. Which is to stand by his principles and smack down a pseud even if it meant destroying his chances at tenure for the rest of his life. >Stoner was lying to himself when he thought he did it for "academic integrity". It was a narcissistic defence, the bad type of gatekeeping. "Name some basic shit." *can't name anything. can't even distinguish Byron from Keats* *actually can't do anything without being spoonfed a response from Lomax* You are one stupid mouth-breathing pseud. I bet you see a lot of yourself in Walker.
William Robinson
Who gives a flying FUCK if he knows the designated materials. He had a novel and interesting project, he wanted to pursue it. That's more than William did in his career.
Jeremiah Green
>Who gives a flying FUCK if he knows the designated materials. Any serious university who doesn't want their reputation to go down the shitter for granting PhDs to retards. >He had a novel and interesting project, Are you sure it was HIS project? He couldn't even talk about it without being fed leading questions. It wasn't of his design. >he wanted to pursue it. ... without putting in the effort? Top entitlement. >That's more than William did in his career. William did a ton of interesting shit throughout his career. I wish I could have sat in that seminar about the trivium, minus having to deal with the antics of a posturing pseud disrupting the class.
Christopher Brown
I would not want you as my teacher or anywhere near my kids. You sound like a joyless soulless hardstuck functionary
James Reed
Good. I would not want to teach an entitled and egotistical brat. I'd rather be teaching good-natured kids who are genuinely interested in learning and aren't afraid to put in the work to do it. I wouldn't be spoon-feeding you my beliefs. Instead, I would be challenging you to come up with your own interpretations. If you can't handle it, you don't deserve an education.
Am I truly a "joyless, soulless, and hardstuck functionary" because I think that it's only natural for somebody to KNOW something about a subject that they're passionate about? With students who have a thirst for knowledge, you would never have to deal with this problem. Such students are already voracious readers and often come into these programs with a vast repertoire of knowledge. They only need guidance here and there to mature as intellectuals, except in special cases where the supervisor has much to learn from the student. In any case, there is no resistance to learning, unlike in the Walker case. If he did not want to read literature, he should not have entered a PhD program for literature. If Lomax wanted to take in a charity case to serve as a proxy for his own beliefs, he could have done it in his spare time, or better yet, just written his thesis under his own name.
Besides, who said that Stoner had no passion for literature? Did you forget about the passages where he first came to love it under the most unlikely of circumstances? How disappointed he was when he realized he wasn't able to communicate his love for literature until he found his stride later in life? Did you gloss over Stoner's passionate and lucid lecture on medieval rhetoric, only broken by Walker's noisy and callous late arrival? Despite Stoner going out of his way to save Walker's PhD program by allowing him into his full class, Walker did not even do the bare minimum to participate in the class. Instead, he had the gall to repeatedly disrupt the class and even insult his other students for the crime of wanting to learn about a fascinating subject.
If I came across somebody like Walker, I would strangle him. I wouldn't care if he was pretty, ugly, strong, crippled, whatever. He is a posturing pseud of the worst kind who drags down everyone around him.
A surprisingly somber and comfy read. I would also recommend
Parker King
So what you think about Augustus and Butcher's crossing? I haven't read anything else from Williams than Stoner but I own Augustus. Really excited to read his other work after I finished Stoner few weeks ago.
Angel Hughes
I very much enjoyed the epistolary format of Augustus, getting a picture of the titular character through the writings of both his friends and enemies was very interesting. He doesn't have a voice of his own until the very end; and what an end it is.
Juan Davis
the final chapter of augustus and stoner are very similar.
Caleb Stewart
He raped his wife
Caleb Turner
Ediths actions are entirely understandable. She was raped by both her father and her husband. She tried to protect her daughter from her husband. Stoner did nothing good by anyone, he never attempted any altruistic pursuit beyond farm work. He was a man of the soil plying at academic society and quite rightly he never made it. Stoner was the true pseud.
Christopher Ross
based as fuck
John Williams
I don't disagree with your take on Stoner -- I didn't like him very much either. But surely tearing Stoner's daughter from him was harsh? He wasn't forcing her apart from other children like Edith's father did. And it's not like her parenting was successful either. I can understand why she lashed out at Stoner like she did, but her actions are still reprehensible. Stoner at least did some good by his students, and despite not being a particularly altruistic person, he at least never tried to hurt anyone.
Logan Morales
>raped by her father Literally no, metaphorically maybe. Actually even then no, it was mostly her mother who subdued her sexuality.
Benjamin Allen
Edith's attitude towards Stoner is not justified but it is understandable, she had to marry some ugly lowborn chucklefuck that she didn't even know or care about just because her parents wanted to get rid of her.
