Preamble
Ever got bullied before? I have. I won’t go into detail here, but it sucks like hell. You’re the one whose right has been compromised, but you’re the one with the homework. You gotta collect evidence and it’s not like anyone’s done detective work before. I felt so sorry for Stoner when Lomax was abusing him. I wouldn’t want to be in his position. The man was in his forties. Fate should have given him a break. I thought about how the university stories including the conflict, the lectures, the oral, preliminary orals I mean, the crazy timetables could be so vivid. I thought this is simply impossible to recreate without being a faculty oneself. I could also bet the author would have gotten bullied at least once in his life. For the first time, I decided to investigate the author.
Written from scratch by Meston Ecoa
No assistance was received from any form of Artificial Intelligence.
The Life of John Williams
1922 (00)
Born (Texas, USA)
1941 (19)
1st marriage to Alyeene Bryan (approximate timeline)
1942 (20)
Enlists in U.S. Army Air Force. Served for 2.5 years
1948 (26)
1st Novel “Nothing But the Night” – About a man who suffered trauma in sight of violence.
1949 (27)
B.A. @ University of Denver
1950 (28)
M.A. @ University of Denver
2nd marriage to Yvonne Stone (approximate timeline)
1954 (32)
Ph.D in English Literature @ University of Missouri
1955 (33)
Assistant Professor @ University of Denver
3rd marriage to Avalon Smith (approximate timeline)
1959 (37)
4th and final marriage to Nancy Gardner
1960 (38)
2nd Novel “Butcher’s Crossing” – A young Harvard student leaves home to explore the West and the buffalo hunt.
1965 (43)
Founding editor of the University of Denver Quarterly
3rd Novel: “Stoner” – About a man born to a farmer. He falls in love with literature, and lived life as a professor, husband, father.
1972 (50)
4th Novel: “Augustus” – An epistolary, historical fiction on the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire
1985 (63)
Retirement from University of Denver
1994 (71)
Died of respiratory failure at home (Arkansas, USA)
• In brackets are age. Date of birth was not accounted for in calculating age. It is there for your reference.
• “approximate timeline” is marked when only the year, decade, or age were able to be found from the source
• Source: Colorado Encyclopedia, Wikipedia
I guess I was right. He did study extensively throughout his life. He was also born to a farmer too. His dedication was in literature. Interestingly, he failed freshman English in junior college. He used to work at the bookstore and at the radio station when he was young. To deviate a little from Stoner, he did join the military for two years. It seems he gets inspiration for his works from his own life. His first novel depicted the violence he witnessed during his days from the army. Stoner drew from his days at the university. Now I want to go into some more points that I haven’t been able to cover in the first post.
A Tweak to the Obituary Mindset
Prospective deathbed recollection is a big navigator for me. If I think I will regret not having done something at a particular time in the past, I will do it. Vice versa. This approach is not original. Its iterations have been continued through the generations in their own versions. Most recent one that I remember is Charlie Munger advising to write your obituary and to live by it. Reading Stoner had given me a slight tweak to such an approach. That, it’s about the checkmarks you have ticked throughout the lifetime, not what you retain at the moment of death. It’s a less strict criteria. The final days of life will have its nasty side. Especially if there is illness involved. Freedom would have decayed to a state of immobility. To wish for the day of death to be a grand beautiful day with nothing wrong is too strict. This would make even the most happily lived and successful lives to be insufficient. And this shifted me away a bit from the deathbed mindset to the present mindset. The joy of ticking the boxes right here right now. Having had the joy is what matters. Not which of these persists till the day of death. Like the friendship between Stoner and Dave Masters. Or the many friends that I had great time with in the past that I have no real connection at the moment and probably will continue to do so.
Relatability 1: Falling in Love with Literature
Light slanted from the windows and settled upon the faces of his fellow students, so that the illumination seemed to come from within them and go out against a dimness – page 11
I jokingly tell my friends that I quit my job to read books. It has truth to it. I remember picking up Born a Crime by Trevor Noah in the Noting Hill bookstore. The Noting Hill bookstore from the movie, yes. It was in summer of 2023. It would have been a long while since I have read any book as per that moment. I was so far from calling myself a reader that if you asked me if I like to read I would have thought you were patronizing me. Anyhow, I asked the lady there for a fun read and Trevor Noah’s work was the one recommended by the lady there. I took a seat alongside the market road at a cafe, sipping coffee. It was pleasant. It was so pleasant that I ended up having waffles for lunch in the same cafe to extend the stay.
I also found great pleasure reading the first few books after I deem myself a reader. The sensation of being connected to a pool of knowledge and emotions as big as the sea. Breathtaken to the breadth of corpus. The delusional joy of wondering the possibilities that it could offer. The simultaneous urgency and fear of having missed out for too long. To be able to put on a smile when I see a beautiful expression such as above.
Relatability 2: Profound Enlightenment Evokes Nostalgia
He thought of his parents, … he felt a mixed pity for them and a distant love – page 15
Already, he realized, he and his parents were becoming strangers, and he felt his love increased by its loss. He returned to Columbia a week earlier than intended. – page 24
Upon reading The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, I became aware that human’s memory is very malleable and not to be trusted with conviction, especially those of the distant past, without any tangible corroboration. I was so convinced and enlightened that I looked back on myself from a few days ago, a version that had not read this book and I thought myself primitive, reckless, like how did I get by with that level of perception?
Such ensuing detachment is permissible and non-harmful. It is because the previous self belongs to a different fragment of time. The confrontation cannot happen. However, to other beings of the present time, it does happen. Later that week, I took the subway and found myself looking with some detachedness at the passengers, the collective notion of people, seemingly same as that of yesterday, while I have gained a new eye. It also alluded to the wealth notions that I must still be missing out, while some on this compartment would have access to. You feel lifted from a world. You cannot traverse back. And that evokes nostalgia – to the former self, the former world, and inhabitants that you believe still reside in that world. In this sense I found Stoner to be deeply relatable.
Relatability 3: The Speed of Life
The book is like an unedited clip of a poker game, where many hands would actually go without much action. It is so natural. The composition of a man’s time allocation, or the speed in which the mood shifts or a new resolution is made or an action is taken seemed very close to reality. I felt a personal kinship to the delayed response to his misery, and how often it was met with further obstacles. Only after some misery did he find a new balance working in his new study, redoing the furnitures, spending time with Grace, focusing in his teachings and study. The new balance is soon hindered by his irritable wife. Only after years of unhappy marriage did he come across true love. The joy is soon disrupt by the faculty community. Only after great damage incurred by Lomax did he rebel and regain control. His illness made those days short lived as well. I think this mimicked life that I see too well. Life will hurl crazy curveballs at you every now and then that pax romana is always ephemeral. It was consoling, telling that this is indeed the speed in which time flows. It’s like a deep breath, dropping our pulse to a steady low, saying no rush. Not every second of life can be eventful, let alone joyful.
Other Things
Here are three other points of discussion that I wrote a great deal, I really did, but rambled on too long that I decided to spare you the boredom of.
• What damage was done to Edith that made her so hysterical?
• What is the nature of Sloan’s depression during and after the war?
• I found some relationships or personalities to have apparent similarities. Do you agree?
Grace’s marriage – Edith’s marriage
Archer Sloane – William Stoner
The way of Edith in her marriage – Her parent’s relationship
Stoner’s personality – His parent’s personality
