49 pages • 1 hour read
John WilliamsStoner
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1965A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Literary Context: The Campus Novel
Content Warning: This guide contains references to death by suicide and people with alcohol addictions. The referenced book engages in ableism and stereotypes about physical disabilities. It depicts people with physical disabilities in a problematic manner.
Stoner is an exemplar of the campus novel. The campus novel is a subgenre of literary fiction that focuses on the experiences of students and professors on university campuses. The campus novel is defined by the setting of the university, the sexual tension between academics and often students, the pettiness of academia, and the quiet joy inherent in the study of the humanities and sciences. The campus novel is often sarcastic in tone and satirizes campus and academic life. The campus novel typically explores the pros and cons of institutions and the individuals who either uphold those institutions or defy institutional expectations.
The campus novel was popularized by Kingsley Amis and Vladimir Nabokov. Amis’s campus novel, Lucky Jim, published in 1954, is a comedic satire that follows a professor, Jim, as he struggles to maintain his career on campus, get his paper published, and deal with inter-personal relations. Nabokov’s 13th novel, Pnin, published in 1957, follows a professor as he struggles to acclimate to American university life. People make fun of his Russian accent, and he struggles with establishing respect for himself on campus.
One of the most famous examples of the campus novel is The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Published in 1992, The Secret History follows the scandalous lives of six students of Ancient Greek as they vie for popularity with their mysterious professor, compete to master the language, and struggle to find their own identities separate from the pressures of an academic life.
Like Pnin, Stoner is an antihero who is so typical that it first appears the book is about nothing. But Stoner’s typical qualities are precisely the elements that make him a type of hero. In living an average but meaningful life, Stoner’s life in academia highlights, in the book’s view, that there is beauty in small things and in pursuing passion. Stoner is not a particularly successful professor in terms of ambition or scholarly fame, but he is satisfied to spend his days reading, writing about reading, and teaching. Stoner is also informed by events that are characteristic of the campus novel, such as an affair with a student, a feud with a powerful colleague, and the push-and-pull between the institution’s expectations and Stoner’s own desires. In Stoner, the University of Missouri is a safe-haven for Stoner, but it also becomes a setting that allows Stoner to develop a bubble between him and the rest of the world. In Stoner, the university setting is therefore both a detriment to character development and a scene of great drama and meaningful passion.
Literary Context: Literary Realism
Literary realism is a style of literature that emerged in the 19th century as a departure from the poetic style of Romanticism. Literary realism depicts real life by highlighting mundane, average, and everyday experiences as they occur in reality. Literary realism doesn’t dramatize or romanticize a story; rather, literary realism portrays a story and its character as authentic to real life as possible.
French author Gustave Flaubert is foundational in literary realism. In his classic novel Madame Bovary (1856), Flaubert depicts the sometimes boring life of Emma Bovary, an often dissatisfied everywoman of the middle class. Emma is in constant battle with the expectations her society has for women, and her life is defined by banality, feelings of oppression, lack of choice, and a desire for true love and passion. Emma’s life is not depicted romantically or poetically. Instead, the events of Emma’s life and her feelings are portrayed realistically, which highlights the universality of her experience and the average lives, in the book’s view, that most people lead. Literary realism seeks to exemplify that an average life is nevertheless meaningful. The development of literary realism is important to the history of literature because literary realism invites the reader into a psychological exploration of the human condition and invites them into a story in which they can see their own lives reflected. Literary realism doesn’t present the escapism of Romanticism, but it uplifts the human experience by forcing readers to confront the banality of life and its disappointments.
Literary realism also made way for literature to capture language that was more authentic, in some authors’ view, to social settings and culture. For example, Mark Twain’s 1884 novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is credited with being the first American novel to utilize real language styles and vernaculars, making the novel realistic and authentically representative of certain, although not all, cultures. Literary realism also allows for a study of middle-class life, which developed in England thanks to the Industrial Revolution. With the development of the middle-class, readers needed a new form of literature that would better represent their actual lives. George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch (1871) is an example of literary realism’s response to new class structures and shifting societal values.
Stoner is an example of literary realism. Stoner is a typical man, and his conflicts at work, his unhappy marriage, and his deflated feelings of failure in relationships are relatable to many readers. Stoner lives, in the book’s view, a life in balance: Some years are good, some years are fine, and some years are difficult. He is successful in his career but not exceedingly so. He is not ambitious but is rather satisfied with his job as it is. Stoner’s characterization and the story of his life are mundane, but the point of literary realism is to highlight that banality. By making Stoner the central figure of his novel, John Williams highlights the idea that the average life is a life worth celebrating and honoring.
