Stoner by John Williams (Book Analysis) E-Book

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• Herausgeber: BrightSummaries.com
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: BrightSummaries.com
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 27

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Unlock the more straightforward side of Stoner with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!

This engaging summary presents an analysis of Stoner by John Williams, which tells the life story of a man named William Stoner from the cradle to the grave. Stoner’s life resembles the author’s in many respects: he finds his vocation as a writer and teacher fairly early in life, and devotes the rest of his life to literature. Stoner’s everyday struggles are not those of a traditional literary hero – indeed, he is exempted from military service – but he comes to realise that the battles he faces in the classroom are no less important for going unsung. Stoner was a relatively unknown novel during Williams’ lifetime, but has come to be seen as a classic of 20th-century American literature in recent years.

Find out everything you need to know about Stoner in a fraction of the time!

This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you:


• A complete plot summary
• Character studies
• Key themes and symbols
• Questions for further reflection

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Leseprobe

JOHN WILLIAMS

AMERICAN WRITER

Born in Texas in 1922.Died in Arkansas in 1994.Notable works:Nothing But the Night (1948), novelButcher’s Crossing (1960), novelAugustus (1972), novel

John Williams was a novelist, poet, US Air Force pilot and professor of English literature.

He became a writer thanks to his Junior High School teacher, Annie Laurie Smith:

“She read my theme aloud in class because she thought it was good, and wrote on the paper, ‘This is up to the work of a college student.’ It was one of the first compliments I ever had in my life about anything I’d done, and I said, ‘My God, I’ve found my vocation’.” (Wakefield: 15)

After serving as a radio operator and co-pilot in China, Burma and India, he published his first novel, Nothing But the Night, in 1948 and his first collection of poems, The Broken Landscape, in 1949. Stoner, the novel for which he was posthumously and globally acclaimed, was published in 1965. His last novel, Augustus, was named co-winner of the National Book Award for Fiction in 1973. He taught literature at the University of Missouri for over 30 years.

“I love the novel” he once said, “because it’s a form that’s imprecise, in flux, and it takes advantage of every known literary form that’s gone before – poetry, the essay, drama. I think the novel is in a sense ‘A Life’” (Wakefield: 19).

STONER

THE LIFE OF A TEACHER

Genre: novelReference edition: Williams, J. (2012) Stoner. London: Vintage Classics.1stedition: 1965Themes: literature, teaching, love, war, marriage

Stoner was published in 1965. Its early life was uneventful:

“It sold about 2,000 copies, and the only review it received in any national publication appeared in the ‘Briefly Noted’ column of The New Yorker. A year later, someone recommended the novel to Irving Howe, who was moved to write an appreciative essay about it in The New Republic, which, as Williams says, ‘didn’t sell a single copy, but gave the book a kind of underground life’.” (Wakefield: 11)

It tells the story, from birth to death, of William Stoner, a son of a farmer, who becomes a professor of English Literature. His work, his marriage, his family, his loves, triumphs and disappointments are the novel’s subjects.

From 2011, after decades of lying dormant, Stoner rose rapidly to prominence, selling millions of copies globally and becoming internationally acclaimed as a classic of the 20th century. “Stoner is a perfect novel,” wrote a columnist in the New York Times, “so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving, that it takes your breath away” (New York Times, 2007).

SUMMARY

TO BE A TEACHER

William Stoner is born in 1891 on a small farm in central Missouri. “It was a lonely household, of which he was an only child” (p. 4). At the age of 19, his father suggests that William attend the University in Columbia to study at the College of Agriculture. It is not until his second year, however, that “William Stoner learned why he had come to college” (p. 9).