Day 107.1: Stoner and Male Loneliness
Aug. 31st, 2024 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunshowerdandelionI'm very silly and so for the longest time I thought Stoner by John Williams was about someone who smoked marijuana. I'm glad that I tried reading it because I was then pleasantly surprised to find that Stoner is instead about an undistinguished man (a university professor named Stoner) as he tries making his way through what seems to me to be the loneliest life possible - but is actually, realistically, a pretty common life.
I'm at the part where his wife gives birth to his daughter and it's very important to note that the wife, Edith, too, is extremely lonely but in a wholly different and grating way where she was raised as a privileged woman detached from her body, her desires, and life in general.
I'm a bit surprised to read that masculine loneliness is quite different from feminine loneliness. To be clear: William Stoner is deeply masculine - he sexually assaults his wife when she rejects his advances - but his loneliness is very recognizable to me. He talks about watching the dark corners of the room - which I do when I'm lonely, and about detachment, feeling his words escape him, feeling as if he's not fully in his body. Edith's loneliness should be more familiar to me, but hers is stranger: She's incredibly shy, but I don't think that word fully encapsulates how estranged she is from life. Shyness has connotations of sweetness, and she is not that - she is ill-fitting, awkward, and blocky, advances in spurts of strange action and brittle stubbornness. I must, must read more about her.
By far my favorite part thus far has been Stoner's descriptions of his love of literature. There's a classroom scene where he reads one of the sonnets, and that scene's absolutely magical. Yes, yes, it does feel like that. Looking forward to more misery.
I'm at the part where his wife gives birth to his daughter and it's very important to note that the wife, Edith, too, is extremely lonely but in a wholly different and grating way where she was raised as a privileged woman detached from her body, her desires, and life in general.
I'm a bit surprised to read that masculine loneliness is quite different from feminine loneliness. To be clear: William Stoner is deeply masculine - he sexually assaults his wife when she rejects his advances - but his loneliness is very recognizable to me. He talks about watching the dark corners of the room - which I do when I'm lonely, and about detachment, feeling his words escape him, feeling as if he's not fully in his body. Edith's loneliness should be more familiar to me, but hers is stranger: She's incredibly shy, but I don't think that word fully encapsulates how estranged she is from life. Shyness has connotations of sweetness, and she is not that - she is ill-fitting, awkward, and blocky, advances in spurts of strange action and brittle stubbornness. I must, must read more about her.
By far my favorite part thus far has been Stoner's descriptions of his love of literature. There's a classroom scene where he reads one of the sonnets, and that scene's absolutely magical. Yes, yes, it does feel like that. Looking forward to more misery.
