Favourite Campus Novels: 'Stoner' by John Williams

John Williams’ ‘Stoner’ follows the life of William Stoner, from his childhood on a bleak, sterile farm to his adulthood as a student, and later professor, in the University of Missouri’s Literary Studies department.

An undisputed classic of the ‘campus novel’ genre, Williams spins a remarkably beautiful tale of a beautifully unremarkable life. We are guided through the life of the novel’s eponymous figure by Williams’ elegant, deft prose, at times wry, at others, utterly devastating. To describe ‘Stoner’ in a word – to not be reductive – the most effective choice, I think, would be understated. In both its style and its narrative, the underlying profundity of ‘Stoner’ is precisely that: it sits just beneath the surface, poignant without announcing itself to be so, and is all the more powerful for it.