Chapter II: "The scholar should not be asked to destroy what he has aimed his life to build."

William Stoner was not one of those persons who came to college to hone the passions he already felt. Stoner had no real passions before the middle of his sophomore year. Even after his mentor, Archer Sloane, gently but firmly told him that his passion was literature and that his purpose was to become a teacher, we the readers still don't get to see a whole lot of passion in Stoner's life. Stoner has to grow into passion. He does it in fits and starts, clumsily, without any real finesse. If we could see more, we'd see the vulnerability of it; the rawness.

Like many doctoral students, Stoner got to teach freshman the basics of his field--in his case, he got to teach composition and grammar classes. Like many doctoral students, Stoner felt the glorious possibilities before him: he would be the instructor that shows his students (as no one ever before had shown them!) the life-altering principles underlying composition. He would connect (as no one ever before had connected!) grammar and the structure of a sentence, of a paragraph, to the coherence and intelligibility of life itself. He would impress upon them (as they never before had been so impressed!) the utterly basic, life-splitting, life-giving qualities of solid prose. He would revolutionize their lives.

Like most teachers, particularly young, inexperienced teachers, Stoner does none of these things. In the classroom, the nearly desperate passion he feels never makes itself felt outside his own heart (or outside his own head). His students remain unaware (or unconvinced) of the aliveness in their gangly young instructor. In his own head, the material was exciting, dramatic, dynamic. But his out-loud voice betrayed him: he was dull, flat, halting. Not actually bad. But certainly not very good.

Like many doctoral students, Stoner meets his best friends in graduate school. We readers have not yet heard whether Stoner had any friends. In his doctoral studies he makes a few friends. And when those friends--the first friends of Stoner's "new" life as an academic--join the war efforts, they encourage him to join as well.

Stoner is conflicted. He doesn't want to be left behind. He doesn't want to come off a coward. But he isn't sure. So he mentions it to Sloane. We don't know what he said to Sloane--we don't know whether he asked for advice or whether he tried to "casually" bring up the subject of war. We do know Sloane's reaction. Sloane comes off a twentieth-century Socrates when he says "if a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that's left is the brute, the creature that we--you and I and others like us--have brought up from the slime." In the Crito, at 47e, Socrates asks his long-time friend "is life worth living for us with that part of us corrupted that unjust action harms and just action benefits? Or do we think that part of us, whatever it is, that is concerned with justice and injustice, is inferior to the body?"

Both Sloane and Socrates are concerned with the part of both the individual human soul and human nature as a whole that is harmed by injustice, violence, ignorance, and careless reasoning. Plato links Socrates to Achilles at the beginning of Crito. Socrates, like Achilles, chooses the shorter but more honorable life. Sloane reminds Stoner that "there are wars and defeats and victories of the human race that are not military and are not recorded in the annals of history." What kind of life will Stoner want to build? If we would have integrity, then it is a requirement that we have some goal, some vision for the life we want to have. Will Stoner's life turn out to be a life of integrity?

Chapter I: Did you cry with Stoner's mother?

In the first chapter, William Stoner doesn't come off as a very strong person, as one in charge of his own life. He went off to college on his parents' command. It wouldn't have occurred to Stoner to go to college, any more than it occurred to him later to stay for a master's degree or a doctoral degree; or any more than it occurred to him that he might stay as faculty at the University of Missouri. It certainly didn't seem to occur to Stoner to stand up for himself to his aunt and uncle Foote while they watched him work their farm for room and board.

Stoner's passivity (or apparent passivity) extends to his capacity for attention. He takes the sophomore literature survey because he must, and it bothers him. He doesn't even realize it bothers him until his professor singles him out one day in the classroom and tells him what he doesn't know: "Mr. Shakespeare speaks to you across three hundred years, Mr. Stoner; do you hear him?" Even then, the long hours puzzling over the poetry and prose that resisted his understanding, the failed exams, the apparently sudden and surprising switch from the agricultural science sequence to a course of study in the liberal arts appear to be absent from Stoner's attention, from his conscious awareness. They aren't part of any deliberate plan on Stoner's part. They are just things that are happening to him, episodes in his life, barely related, until his professor tells him, gently, "Don't you understand about yourself yet? You're going to be a teacher."

It would be saying too much to say that Stoner's life clicks into place and becomes complete and completely suffused with meaning when Professor Sloane gives him his life project. But once Sloane tells Stoner he is to be a teacher, Stoner has, at last, a frame for the story of his life. Then he can start filling in details and training his attention.

Did you cry with Stoner's mother at the end of the chapter? Did you put your fists to your face, feel your knuckles press deeply and painfully into the soft flesh of your cheeks? Did you notice the posture she must have held when you found yourself hunched over, eyes downcast, forehead furrowed? Did you feel for her when you imagined your mother thus? Did you feel for yourself when you pictured your own child, years from now, leaving you for a life you can't imagine?

What else did you notice?

welcome!

The book we'll read and discuss together is John Williams's novel Stoner. I read a few blog posts over at Better Living Through Beowulf that piqued my interest and made me think this might be a novel that could inspire reflections and discussions on the main themes in all my classes: failure, disappointment, disenchantment, integrity, personhood, and how to live well.

Check out what Professor Bates has over on his blog about the novel here and here.

My plan is to post my reflections on Sundays, beginning with this Sunday. Most weeks I'll cover one chapter; if the chapter is quite short, then I'll post on two chapters.

I'm looking forward to lively discussions!