Can we have a legitimate Stoner thread? Preferably with people who have actually read it.
I finally got around to finishing it. Didn't cry or anything but as I was reading the final pages, my chest was feeling more and more hollow.
To be honest, the book really have much of an emotional impact until the end. The repeated thought "what did you expect?", was cumulatively harrowing, and made me feel awful.
There were parts in the middle where Edith was a cunt. It's made pretty clear that finally being free of the implied constraints of her father set her off.
Grace offhandedly mentioning "all those boys in highschool" pissed me off, and it was that line in particular where it hit me how much of a failure of a father Stoner must have felt.
The extreme comfort and contentedness in Stoner's getaway with Katherine was the point at which for me, the bleakness of the rest of the story was highlighted.
Can we have a legitimate Stoner thread? Preferably with people who have actually read it
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newyorker.com
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Inb4 this thread is filled with "Edith did nothing wrong"
Also, why do you think Lomax was the cunt that he was? He opens up to Stoner and then immediately reverses.
Is he just bitter, and afraid of intimacy, and just takes it too far?
His deformity definitely has something to do with it. Why did he use the similarly crippled Charles Walker vicariously?
stoner literally raped her
I remember thinking Edith was cucking Stoner when she kissed the Lorax, and that was 8 years ago, before the cuck meme. I remember wondering if that was Williams' intention--to hint that she was having an affair, or at least that she was more interested romantically in Lomax.
He felt Stonder did not have heart when stoner wanted to expell the retard, Lomax saw himself in the retard.
To me it was that she was cucking Stoner with any other man, the Lorax just happened to be there. She was showing blatant disdain towards Stoner.
I think Stoner had a picture of Edith from the second he met her, which she didn't come close to fulfilling. And Edith saw Stoner as a disappointment from day one, symbolised by her never getting to visit Europe
No he didn't.
Him telling his parents that he was basically going to ditch them was sad too.
its the most human of his novels, but i prefer the emerson like feel of butchers crossing. butchers crossing is like an introduction to disappointment and stoner is like a warm hug telling you its not gonna get better, but youll get over it
Yes he does. He admits to it and feels disgust at his actions.
i liked stoner but why do you people insist on talking about this book over, and over, and over again?
Oh look it's another fucking stoner thread
>edith got raped by their father theory
>stoner raped edith
>stoner didn't raped edith
>stoner is a pussy
>stoner is a victim
>stoner's daughter that's so sad
>edith was right
>edith was a cunt
everybody go home and read Augustus
I read Stoner during a bad phase in my life, and it horrified me about my future even more. That said, it did profoundly change my attitude towards a lot of people and changed me into somewhat of a bloomer. I just did not want to have Stoner's life, so I decided to take chances at happiness even if they ridiculously fail. Thankfully, not all of them did. I think key to this change in mindset and this new drive was the harrowing question at the back of my mind too: "what did you expect?"
When it got to the point where Stoner began taking the meds for his cancer and slowly drifted away from the ambiance of the world around him hit close to home for me. I distinctly remember my aunt who took meds for her cancer slipping in and out of reality.
I cried when he was burying his parents. Only time a book ever made me cry
It is literally described as "the chastest kiss ever seen". She was not cucking Stoner. Still weird, though.
I didn’t care for the book overall, but this part got to me. There was this line about how his father looked like a stone getting punched over and over or something, I really liked that.
Yes, I thought that was a great line. This book has some of the greatest similes I've ever read.
You couldn't rape your wife back then.
>You couldn't rape your wife back then.
Legally yes. Marital rape was only criminalized in the USA in 1970s. But this does not mean it wasn't deeply immoral.
if this is rape, then we're all rapists.
WEED DUDE HAHA SMOKE THE GRASS
A beautiful book. Akin to the feeling of a setting sun
It was specifically meant to negate romance towards Stoner, instead of being a positive confirmation of romance directed towards anyone else.
No just you. Some of us are cucks thank you very much.
I don't know. I think it's normal that wives don't have to enjoy sex in conservatie societies - not that I think that's alright. But Edith chose to get married and wanted a child, Stoner did was expected of him in the world he lived in.
Yeah it happend on their honeymoon too and theyre both pretty awkward and virgins.
After that as well. Read the book gaawwd
Damn, I didn't see this thread and created another one. Copy and pasted below:
>"The belated success of “Stoner,” then, prompts a cultural counterfactual. What if cool analysis and formalist precision had gained greater purchase at the time? The letter-perfect novel might have become something more than an apprentice exercise, more than a rite of passage for the American novelist in search of an authentic voice, and a different postwar canon of American fiction might have taken shape"
>"The concept of a tradition—collective, convention-bound, transhistorical—remained for Williams the sturdiest counter to Romantic self-expression. He said, in his note about contemporary fiction, that writing possessed of a “classical” character “enables us to think or feel otherwise than we do, and to know someone other than ourselves.”
>"The recent success of “Stoner” wasn’t enabled by any decisive cultural shift. Romantic impulses continue to prevail. The widespread dissemination of a book in thrall to Yvor Winters occurred against the backdrop of a resurgent modernism and a boom in autofiction"
newyorker.com
Interesting article on John Edward Williams's novel 'Stoner' and the tradition of the understated, restrained literary style. It really makes me feel ashamed of my own more neurotic, self-indulgent, verbose attempts at writing.
What do you guys think?
>t. never married a virgin, as a virgin
I have, user. The wedding night (or whatever the equivalent for Stoner was) is very rarely a transcendent experience. No one knows what the hell they're doing. They were married and it was awkward. Thats it. You have no idea what tape is. Leave your title 9 woke shit at the door you absolute stooge.
He was mad at himself for getting too drunk at stoners party. He was embarrassed, lied to himself, and took it out on Stoner til the end of days.
he mentions using her to get off later, after the honeymoon - when he says he feels ashamed
Anyone read Nothing But The Night?
I was actually quite relieved by how bad / mediocre it was.
You aren't married, are you? Wives and husband's "use" each other all the time. As when one isn't into it but they do anyway - this is an entirely different scenario than the "no! No! I don't consent!" thing.
Stoner did nothing wrong
Not yet, figure I will just to say I have read all his books. Was hoping it wasn't actually that bad :/
It's really short, about 120 pages if that. It's one day in the life of a melancholy, dramatic young guy in a city. There are some nice sentences in there which hint that Williams is talented, but overall it's not memorable at all. It's reassuring though, to me at least, to read it and know that Williams later distanced himself from it etc.