Day 114.1: Stoner and Maleness
Sep. 7th, 2024 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunshowerdandelionI finished Stoner! Very, very good book: I think it tottered a bit towards the end in terms of characters, but goodness the narrative style is so fluid, so unadorned, and the happenings in it are so disappointing (as is the nature with reality) and rather undramatic (confrontations with Lomax aside) that I can see why people call this one of the best American realist novels. I definitely agree.
I got rather emotional during some parts of the book: I think the affair was rather well done, at least from Stoner's perspective, and as mentioned before the early bits with Grace, and Stoner's death was gentle and nice. I don't quite know why, but William Stoner to me has that Bovaryesque nature to him - he's definitely a protagonist, and has a very male core, but he has that wilfulness and stubbornness born out of a want to live life the way he wants, and society has a way of beating him down like Bovary sometimes. And though he doesn't go out in a blaze, he does attempt some very quixotic things (at least for his standards).
The campus thing is of course true to life, as I can attest.
I think what struck me most was how male Stoner was, and how that skews the experience of loneliness in the novel. I think, except with his life's work - teaching literature - Stoner is fundamentally uncurious about others, something I've noticed with quite a few men in real life. The book glosses over the parts where he gets to know Katherine: We never do know her ambitions until she succeeds in them (presumably - teaching literature at a U.S. East Coast university), we get pretty scant hints about her interiority, and these are always in relation to Stoner and her attraction to Stoner. It is clear that Stoner, for all his love for her, uses that love to attempt to love himself foremost, and then literature, and then Katherine herself. When the affair ends, it is Katherine who leaves, who jeopardizes her own career in the University of Missouri. The same is true for Grace, and for Edith. Stoner is perpetually surprised and puzzled by their actions, which alienate him, but I can't help but think that in at least a few occasions - especially with Grace, later on, who suffers from alternating bouts of parental neglect and helicoptering, Stoner could have tried a little more.
This lack of curiosity extends to Lomax, I think, and to Finch. Lomax is persistently, amazingly hostile, for reasons that are at best implied to Stoner and which he perceives only dimly. Lomax is resembles a persistent force of misery, like gravity. He is a grotesque, but Stoner is not interested in him - which would be atypical in the works of women novelists, say Carson, say O'Connor, say, Welty. I think towards the end, Stoner's rogue's gallery, especially Edith, shed their humanity quite a bit, in marked contrast to Stoner himself.
I don't think he is a tragic figure. He isn't really undone by his actions, and what heights he attains are modest (at best). I do find him extremely sympathetic, and I wonder if my life will not sketch take a similar trajectory.
I got rather emotional during some parts of the book: I think the affair was rather well done, at least from Stoner's perspective, and as mentioned before the early bits with Grace, and Stoner's death was gentle and nice. I don't quite know why, but William Stoner to me has that Bovaryesque nature to him - he's definitely a protagonist, and has a very male core, but he has that wilfulness and stubbornness born out of a want to live life the way he wants, and society has a way of beating him down like Bovary sometimes. And though he doesn't go out in a blaze, he does attempt some very quixotic things (at least for his standards).
The campus thing is of course true to life, as I can attest.
I think what struck me most was how male Stoner was, and how that skews the experience of loneliness in the novel. I think, except with his life's work - teaching literature - Stoner is fundamentally uncurious about others, something I've noticed with quite a few men in real life. The book glosses over the parts where he gets to know Katherine: We never do know her ambitions until she succeeds in them (presumably - teaching literature at a U.S. East Coast university), we get pretty scant hints about her interiority, and these are always in relation to Stoner and her attraction to Stoner. It is clear that Stoner, for all his love for her, uses that love to attempt to love himself foremost, and then literature, and then Katherine herself. When the affair ends, it is Katherine who leaves, who jeopardizes her own career in the University of Missouri. The same is true for Grace, and for Edith. Stoner is perpetually surprised and puzzled by their actions, which alienate him, but I can't help but think that in at least a few occasions - especially with Grace, later on, who suffers from alternating bouts of parental neglect and helicoptering, Stoner could have tried a little more.
This lack of curiosity extends to Lomax, I think, and to Finch. Lomax is persistently, amazingly hostile, for reasons that are at best implied to Stoner and which he perceives only dimly. Lomax is resembles a persistent force of misery, like gravity. He is a grotesque, but Stoner is not interested in him - which would be atypical in the works of women novelists, say Carson, say O'Connor, say, Welty. I think towards the end, Stoner's rogue's gallery, especially Edith, shed their humanity quite a bit, in marked contrast to Stoner himself.
I don't think he is a tragic figure. He isn't really undone by his actions, and what heights he attains are modest (at best). I do find him extremely sympathetic, and I wonder if my life will not sketch take a similar trajectory.
