I think the difference IMHO is that Stoner earns his right to talk about a boring life, and has the scholarship and experience to write about other things. In the hands of a lesser writer it would not work.
I'm sure that with talent it could be done right. Plus the innovators deserve more respect than the epigons. It's just that I'm a bit jaded about this genre.
I think the difference between this and other entrees in the genre is its lack of cynicism. There is a nobility in William's prose and in the character of Stoner that you do not find in almost all contemporary fiction, which can treat this sort of person either as an objective of satire or with a sort of knowing disgust. Williams simply is not like that.
A few years ago I read another novel of his--Augustus--and it is similar both in themes and tone. Perhaps you might consider that book and then decide whether you like it enough to read this novel too.
Very good review, thoughtful. Yes, the problems with the Bible, and maybe more generally with soul, beauty, poetry. So Stoner's parents and their milieu are portrayed as brutish, without language. But the frontier was settled with Blackstone and the Bible, and King James is a stylistic masterpiece. Read not just Lincoln, but virtually any 19th century small town newspaper -- the frontier may have been brutal, but it was lyrical. Of course one might say similar things about the poetry and literature to which Stoner -- for reasons completely unexplained -- devotes his life. Without a soul, why old poems? Etc. As you say.
On another, weird note: Europeans love Stoner, have heard about it more in that context than this.
I first read Stoner about 20 years ago and I was just too young to fully appreciate its subtlety, depth, and mastery of expressive language (itself perhaps a kind of meta-irony). Heh, now I may be too old to maintain a sufficiently detached perspective. “Too soon?” – “No, too close.”
I am also a big Coen Brothers fan, and when I saw, “A Serious Man” it seemed very similar and might even be inspired by Williams’ work. This observation is hardly original to me, a cursory search showed me that Sutherland noticed the same thing in his brief write up at The Telegraph.
Consider that in A Serious Man, Gopnik is a professor (Physics) at a Midwestern University (Minnesota) in the 1960s, something of that paradox of “a mediocrity at his level of intellectual eliteness” and his formerly ordinary / boring-seeming life is falling apart, as a personified condensed symbol for the large forces (the tornado) making a whole particular subculture’s way of life, commitments, confidences, and self-understanding fall apart.
In particular, there is a kind of shared irony about their lives. Gopnik is a master of theoretical physics which he finds to be so easy and straightforward that he is oblivious to how far his teaching is above-the-level of his mostly overwhelmed and uninterested students. He is, in other words, an adept knower of the esoteric secrets of the universe and the nature of existence. Few on earth have spent more time or effort in becoming a master of those details, and he is considered an expert by almost everyone. And yet this provides him with no actionable guidance in his own life and he is completely lost at sea when it comes to realizing his misplaced priorities (especially with regard to his family), seeing what’s right in front of him (his wife’s lost love, his son’s marijuana use), making sense of it, or deciding what’s really important or what he ought to be doing. He is constantly looking for other people to provide the explainer with explanation and guidance.
The Coens hint toward all the physics knowledge as being spiritually inadequate in parallel layers, both in the personal sense of private usability and in (as portrayed in the opening scene) the metaphysical sense of being a full and adequate explanation of the broader universe and the experience of the human consciousness within it desperately trying to understand itself. Then again, as I think C.P. Snow mentioned in "The Two Cultures" this is a kind of trope and attempt at status-judo cope that humanities and artists and soft-philosophers deploy when expressing a combination of condescension and resentment about purportedly auto-dehumanized STEM-types, a "Physics Envy" writ large.
Gopnik’s anxiety, insecurity, and neurotic stress is summed up by his use of the word “tsuris” in his complaint to Mashak's secretary, when trying to get a counseling appointment with yet another in a string of Rabbis. Gropnik says he followed the life script, albeit half-heartedly, and wants to know how to remedy or else how to make peace with the unsatisfactory results, and keeps getting unsatisfactory responses, as in truth there is no good answer for him. “Please. I need help. I’ve already talked to the other rabbis. Please. It’s not about Danny’s bar mitzvah – my boy Danny, this coming Shabbos, very joyous event, that’s all fine. It’s, it’s more about myself, I’ve… I’ve had quite a bit of tsuris lately. Marital problems, professional, you name it. This is not a frivolous request. This is a ser- I’m a ser- I’m, uh, I’ve tried to be a serious man, you know? Tried to do right, be a member of the community, raise the- Danny, Sarah, they both go to school, Hebrew school, a good breakfast… Well, Danny goes to Hebrew school, Sarah doesn’t have time, she mostly… washes her hair. Apparently there are several steps involved, but you don’t have to tell Marshak that. Just tell him I need help. Please? I need help.”
Side note: I don’t think there’s any hidden connection between ASM's comic weed theme and “stoner”, but who knows.
At any rate, the analogy is to Stoner’s inability to fully express his own thoughts and experience at the level of the poetry to which he has dedicated his intellectual life to understanding and teaching. Stoner is not merely Midwest-Native-Laconic in temperament or style, he is also blocked by a tragic limitation in his capability for eloquence. He knows as well as anyone what it looks like when an author has done it right, what it means, what it feels like. But he is just below the level of ever being able to do it himself.
His whole life is the frustrating experience of having the perfectly apt word just on the tip of your tongue, but never remembering it. More to the point, it's not just having le mot propre be just out of reach, but the disillusioning knowledge that you will never develop into the kind of person for whom these things will no longer be out of reach, or if you know them, it will only be in a kind of perpetual l’esprit d’escalier, “The Owl of Minerva flies only at dusk” kind of way. Too little, too late.
This seems like an early entry in the genre that now dominates american literary fiction: the boring lives of boring scholars.
I think the difference IMHO is that Stoner earns his right to talk about a boring life, and has the scholarship and experience to write about other things. In the hands of a lesser writer it would not work.
I'm sure that with talent it could be done right. Plus the innovators deserve more respect than the epigons. It's just that I'm a bit jaded about this genre.
I think the difference between this and other entrees in the genre is its lack of cynicism. There is a nobility in William's prose and in the character of Stoner that you do not find in almost all contemporary fiction, which can treat this sort of person either as an objective of satire or with a sort of knowing disgust. Williams simply is not like that.
A few years ago I read another novel of his--Augustus--and it is similar both in themes and tone. Perhaps you might consider that book and then decide whether you like it enough to read this novel too.
Thank you for the suggestion.
Very good review, thoughtful. Yes, the problems with the Bible, and maybe more generally with soul, beauty, poetry. So Stoner's parents and their milieu are portrayed as brutish, without language. But the frontier was settled with Blackstone and the Bible, and King James is a stylistic masterpiece. Read not just Lincoln, but virtually any 19th century small town newspaper -- the frontier may have been brutal, but it was lyrical. Of course one might say similar things about the poetry and literature to which Stoner -- for reasons completely unexplained -- devotes his life. Without a soul, why old poems? Etc. As you say.
On another, weird note: Europeans love Stoner, have heard about it more in that context than this.
Anyway, very nice, thank you.
I have to read it now
I first read Stoner about 20 years ago and I was just too young to fully appreciate its subtlety, depth, and mastery of expressive language (itself perhaps a kind of meta-irony). Heh, now I may be too old to maintain a sufficiently detached perspective. “Too soon?” – “No, too close.”
I am also a big Coen Brothers fan, and when I saw, “A Serious Man” it seemed very similar and might even be inspired by Williams’ work. This observation is hardly original to me, a cursory search showed me that Sutherland noticed the same thing in his brief write up at The Telegraph.
Consider that in A Serious Man, Gopnik is a professor (Physics) at a Midwestern University (Minnesota) in the 1960s, something of that paradox of “a mediocrity at his level of intellectual eliteness” and his formerly ordinary / boring-seeming life is falling apart, as a personified condensed symbol for the large forces (the tornado) making a whole particular subculture’s way of life, commitments, confidences, and self-understanding fall apart.
In particular, there is a kind of shared irony about their lives. Gopnik is a master of theoretical physics which he finds to be so easy and straightforward that he is oblivious to how far his teaching is above-the-level of his mostly overwhelmed and uninterested students. He is, in other words, an adept knower of the esoteric secrets of the universe and the nature of existence. Few on earth have spent more time or effort in becoming a master of those details, and he is considered an expert by almost everyone. And yet this provides him with no actionable guidance in his own life and he is completely lost at sea when it comes to realizing his misplaced priorities (especially with regard to his family), seeing what’s right in front of him (his wife’s lost love, his son’s marijuana use), making sense of it, or deciding what’s really important or what he ought to be doing. He is constantly looking for other people to provide the explainer with explanation and guidance.
The Coens hint toward all the physics knowledge as being spiritually inadequate in parallel layers, both in the personal sense of private usability and in (as portrayed in the opening scene) the metaphysical sense of being a full and adequate explanation of the broader universe and the experience of the human consciousness within it desperately trying to understand itself. Then again, as I think C.P. Snow mentioned in "The Two Cultures" this is a kind of trope and attempt at status-judo cope that humanities and artists and soft-philosophers deploy when expressing a combination of condescension and resentment about purportedly auto-dehumanized STEM-types, a "Physics Envy" writ large.
Gopnik’s anxiety, insecurity, and neurotic stress is summed up by his use of the word “tsuris” in his complaint to Mashak's secretary, when trying to get a counseling appointment with yet another in a string of Rabbis. Gropnik says he followed the life script, albeit half-heartedly, and wants to know how to remedy or else how to make peace with the unsatisfactory results, and keeps getting unsatisfactory responses, as in truth there is no good answer for him. “Please. I need help. I’ve already talked to the other rabbis. Please. It’s not about Danny’s bar mitzvah – my boy Danny, this coming Shabbos, very joyous event, that’s all fine. It’s, it’s more about myself, I’ve… I’ve had quite a bit of tsuris lately. Marital problems, professional, you name it. This is not a frivolous request. This is a ser- I’m a ser- I’m, uh, I’ve tried to be a serious man, you know? Tried to do right, be a member of the community, raise the- Danny, Sarah, they both go to school, Hebrew school, a good breakfast… Well, Danny goes to Hebrew school, Sarah doesn’t have time, she mostly… washes her hair. Apparently there are several steps involved, but you don’t have to tell Marshak that. Just tell him I need help. Please? I need help.”
Side note: I don’t think there’s any hidden connection between ASM's comic weed theme and “stoner”, but who knows.
At any rate, the analogy is to Stoner’s inability to fully express his own thoughts and experience at the level of the poetry to which he has dedicated his intellectual life to understanding and teaching. Stoner is not merely Midwest-Native-Laconic in temperament or style, he is also blocked by a tragic limitation in his capability for eloquence. He knows as well as anyone what it looks like when an author has done it right, what it means, what it feels like. But he is just below the level of ever being able to do it himself.
His whole life is the frustrating experience of having the perfectly apt word just on the tip of your tongue, but never remembering it. More to the point, it's not just having le mot propre be just out of reach, but the disillusioning knowledge that you will never develop into the kind of person for whom these things will no longer be out of reach, or if you know them, it will only be in a kind of perpetual l’esprit d’escalier, “The Owl of Minerva flies only at dusk” kind of way. Too little, too late.
I really liked this book. Perfectly written, as you say.