Stoner

Stoner is a book that is deeply about the different facets of love and how they complete us and direct our lives, to the point that Stoner, despite his life being unexceptional, is worthy because he truly did love in his life.

I haven't read a book in a long time whose main character is so awkward and passive. Throughout the whole book his strategy is generally to accept the vicissitudes of ill-fortune, never to do anything radical. He rarely speaks his mind directly; he rarely takes direct action; he shuns power and responsibility. He attempts contentedness even as his daughter becomes the battleground of his marriage or his one true love is forced away from him. There is a metaphor within his skipping of World War 1. Dave Masters, his brilliant friend who understood the world best, was killed. His other friend Finch, who was basically a well meaning, likeable but slightly incompetent student, took up a training post away from the front lines. And Stoner did not go to war altogether. And in that sense much of his life is understood.

His acceptance of the quiet tragedy of his life would seemingly be a tale purely of masochism. But the character is animated by a profoundness of spirit. His life is filled, as much as he can manage it, with love. His love of work. His love of his affair. His love of his daughter.

A kind of joy came upon him, as if borne on a summer breeze. He dimly recalled that he had been thinking of failure --as if it mattered. It seemed to him now that such thoughts were mean, unworthy of what his life had been.

And thus can we all take something from it. That to live is not necessarily to be grandiose. That there is much to be had in a life, that most of our lives, whether we like it or not, are in a similar vein. Small moments.

I do think that atleast we can take from it slightly a bit of a call to action. Even though its not the authors intention. The book is trying to get you to see the profundity allowed to Stoner's life. That he lives better than a lot of people. And yet, there really were moments he could have done better. He could have sheltered his child better. Waged war where it mattered. He did not easily choose his battles. And in the end I think in many cases he chose incorrectly. Even if his view is that of the farmer implacably working the field tirelessly and forever. A Sisyphean view. The truth is that he avoided so much that would have made his life richer, for no gain.