Stoner

By John Williams

1965

Literary fiction

William Stoner is a Missouri farm boy who discovers a passion for English literature at university and never leaves. He becomes a professor, endures a disastrous marriage, raises a daughter he cannot protect, fights a years-long academic feud, and loves briefly and intensely before settling into a quiet, mostly unremarked life. First published in 1965 to negligible sales, the novel found a vast readership decades later — particularly in Europe after 2000 — and is now considered one of the great American novels.