Last meeting of the seventh edition of "The Garden" Reading Group.
"Stoner" by John Williams
Reading and commentary by Paolo Gualandi
The work:
William Stoner has a life that seems to be very flat and desolate. He never strays more than a hundred and fifty miles from Booneville, the small rural town where he was born; he keeps the same job all his life; for nearly forty years he is unhappily married to the same woman; he has sporadic contact with his beloved daughter and is a stranger to his parents; by his own admission he has only two friends, one of whom died in his youth. This does not sound like too promising material for a novel, and yet somehow, almost miraculously, John Williams makes William Stoner's life an exciting, profound, and heartbreaking story.
Author:
Unfortunately, the fate of some great writers is to be discovered by the world only after they have left it, and this is the case with John Williams (1922-1994), rehabilitated only in 2006 thanks to the New Tork Review of Books. The writer, who would have turned 100 this year, is now considered the father of some of the masterpieces of American literature. Stoner, published in 1965, did not become an international publishing case until fifty years later, rising to a true cult book. Born in Texas to a farming family, he participated in World War II in India and Burma. Upon his return he moved to Denver, Colorado, where he spent the rest of his life with his wife and children, teaching at the university. In addition to Stoner he wrote three other novels, all many years apart: Nothing but the Night (1948), Butcher's Crossing (1958) and Augustus (1972).
Texts and event by The Garden Social Center