I love my work. It keeps me in touch with youngsters. Many times, I get to meet a bright kid who expands my world and makes me fall in love with humanity all over again. That’s quite a high! Recently, an eleventh IB student gifted me two books to read: “Stoner” by John Williams and “Pale Fire” by Vladimir Nabokov. This young man read 36 books in 2023. His reading list jolted me and I asked myself: if a sixteen year old, with school exam pressure and all the other challenges of growing years can find time to read almost three books a month then what am I doing? So, step one: I will read at least one book every month.

“A good book leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.” Richard Flanagan, “The Narrow Road to the Deep North”

The book Stoner is a kind of hidden gem. It didn’t get much recognition when it was published in the sixties but somehow became a sensation around 2013/14. None other than Julian Barnes wrote a glowing review in the Guardian in 2013. Tim Krieder called it a page turner in the New Yorker. The book doesn’t have the culture sweep of “The Great Gatsby” and in fact, it is a very un-American book. The typical American narrative is of heroism and achievement. That’s totally missing in Stoner.

In the hullabaloo of life, we forget the basics. We need to read to replenish our souls. I needed that reminder. I do read but lately, reading fiction has mostly evaporated from my life. The simple story of an English language professor, William Stoner, is a poignant reminder of some very crucial questions: what is a well-lived life? How to deal with the vicissitude of events beyond our control? How to do our work with love and care in the midst of inane politics and bureaucracy.

In the book, William Stoner, son of impoverished farmers, enters a college to study Agriculture Science with an unstated objective of helping his family in the future. The course requirement of English Literature takes Stoner to an eccentric professor, Archer Sloane’s class, where he discovers a passion for the language, starting with the seventy-third sonnet. From the beginning, it’s evident to Sloane that Stoner has a flair for the language. The following passage, describing Stoner’s quest, deeply resonated with me:

“Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he laboured was shattered as he realised the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.”

The two world wars present the bookends of Stoner’s professional life. Stoner gets married, but his marital life is guarded by conventions that offer no feelings. Stoner’s wife, Edith, comes from a rich family, but their relationship is very stilted, and he never gets around to experiencing any comfort of domesticity. He dearly loves his daughter, Grace, but Edith manoeuvres to keep Grace away from Stoner. The only time Stoner finds love for a brief period is when he is forty-three years old with a research assistant, Katherine Driscoll. In a moving paragraph, John Williams describes the time when Stoner realises his feelings.

“It was dark outside, and a spring chill was in the evening air. He breathed deeply and felt his body tingle in the coolness. Beyond the jagged outline of the apartment houses the town lights glowed upon a thin mist that hung in the air. At the corner a street light pushed feebly against the darkness that closed around it; from the darkness beyond it the sound of laughter broke abruptly into the silence, lingered and died. The smell of smoke from trash burning in backyards was held by the mist; and as he walked slowly through the evening, breathing the fragrance and tasting upon the tongue the sharp night-time air, it seemed to him that the moment he walked in was enough and that he might not need a great deal more. And so he had his love affair.”

It’s this quality of lyrical prose that lifts the book because Stoner is no hero in the classical sense. He cedes space at home and Edith almost takes pleasure in making his life difficult and not letting him even love his daughter. At the university, time and again, the work politics and his bete noire, Lomax, the department head, gets the better of him. Stoner doesn’t fight with the world or rebel against norms to go with Katherine. We see him as full of contradiction (the way all humans are) and trapped in the vortex of life. We experience his isolation, loneliness, yearning for connection. It is this ordinariness of life that makes it a classic. The slice of life is presented in a prose that is restrained, contained but shines like an old teak.

The story touches your heart (did mine!) and you will savour the book by returning to it and rereading passages. Somewhere I felt that Stoner was hugely stoic in the face of the continuous onslaught of events. He is a hero, not in a swashbuckling style. He loves his work and is serious about sharing his passion for literature with his students. The other remarkable part of Stoner’s personality is his quiet principles. On numerous occasions, Stoner had options of taking conventional, wordly wise decisions, but he took the difficult path with no moralistic grandstanding. He makes it almost as an obvious choice.

We live in a chaotic time. It requires effort to see beauty in the world. A simple story of an ordinary professor written in less than three hundred words infused my world with hope and warmth. To conclude, let me share a short passage where Stoner’s teacher, Sloane, shares advice to follow at crossroads:

“You must remember what you are and what you have chosen to become, and the significance of what you are doing. There are wars and defeats and victories of the human race that are not military and that are not recorded in the annals of history. Remember that while you’re trying to decide what to do.”