This marking of evil with deformity strikes a twenty-first century reader as heavy-handed, not to mention un-p.c., like something out of fairy tales or “Dick Tracy.” But, unlike the villains of melodrama, these characters truly live. Two of them are even disfigured-one, Hollis Lomax, Stoner’s colleague and enemy, is a hunchback, and the other, Charles Walker, Lomax’s protégé, has a crippled arm and leg. The book’s antagonists are its most problematic aspect they’re essentially instruments used by the world to crush and smother anything that William Stoner loves. It all feels grindingly inevitable, like the annihilating whim of the gods in Euripides. Williams contrives to forcibly deprive his hero of happiness in his marriage, his daughter, his lover, even his vocation. Later on, after his daughter has been lost to him, Stoner finds real love again with a young student, his intellectual equal-and once again an enemy, seeing his happiness, sets out to take it from him. I had to stop reading it for a year or two, near the middle of the book, when Stoner’s wife, Edith, undertakes a deliberate but unselfconscious campaign to estrange him from his daughter, the one person he truly loves. And wisdom is, of course, perennially out of style.ĭespite its pellucid prose, “Stoner” isn’t an easy book to read-not because it’s dense or abstruse but because it’s so painful. It’s the same thing I sense in reading James Salter: the presence of wisdom. And there is something in even those first paragraphs, an un-show-off-y assurance in the prose, like the soft opening notes of a virtuoso or the first casual gestures of a master artist, that tells us we are in the presence not just of a great writer but of something more-someone who knows life, who maybe even understands it. It’s also, in its unassuming way, an audacious beginning by preëmpting the usual suspense of narrative, denying us even the promise of some cathartic tragedy, Williams forces us to wonder: What will this book be about? Its ambition is evident in the apparent humility of its subject: like Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy, it’s to be nothing more or less than the story of a life. It mentions that the only evidence of his existence is a medieval manuscript donated to the library by his colleagues in his name. “Stoner” opens with a short prologue, describing, in terse, obit-like prose, the life and death of an unbeloved assistant professor of English at a provincial university. And its prose, compared to Fitzgerald’s ecstatic art-nouveau lyricism, is austere, restrained, and precise its polish is the less flashy, more enduring glow of burnished hardwood its construction is invisibly flawless, like the kind of house they don’t know how to build anymore. Its values seem old-fashioned, prewar (which may be one reason it’s set a generation before it was written), holding up conscientious slogging as life’s greatest virtue and reward. It’s ostensibly an academic novel, a genre historically of interest exclusively to academics. The book is set not in the city of dreams but back in the dusty heartland. “Stoner” ’s protagonist is an unglamorous, hardworking academic who marries badly, is estranged from his child, drudges away in a dead-end career, dies, and is forgotten: a failure. Gatsby’s a success story: he makes a ton of money, looks like a million bucks, owns a mansion, throws great parties, and even gets his dream girl, for a little while, at least. Americans don’t really see him as an anti-hero or a tragic figure-not any more than they see the current breed of charismatic criminals on cable as villains. You could almost describe it as an anti-“Gatsby.” I suspect one reason “Gatsby” is a classic is that, despite his delusions and his bad end, we all secretly think Gatsby’s pretty cool. When facing difficulties with puzzles or our website in general, feel free to drop us a message at the contact page.“Stoner” is undeniably a great book, but I can also understand why it isn’t a sentimental favorite in its native land. Oft-used phrase during Zoom meetings … or the reason for the misunderstandings at 17-, 26-, 50- and 60-Across?."The Young and the Restless" and "The Bold and the Beautiful".Vehicle at the center of the Hindu festival Ratha Yatra.Today's puzzle is listed on our homepage along with all the possible crossword clue solutions. This crossword clue might have a different answer every time it appears on a new New York Times Puzzle, please read all the answers until you find the one that solves your clue. When you see multiple answers, look for the last one because that’s the most recent. Did you came up with a solution that did not solve the clue? No worries the correct answers are below. Holy NYT Crossword Clue Answers are listed below.
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