In an interview on American Stories

Next up is the classic novel Stoner, by John Williams, which explores the repercussions of trying to better yourself through education.

This book begins in a similar way to O Pioneers!, with a hardscrabble farm in the same part of the world. It was set at the end of the 19th century and has nothing to do with being stoned. A lot of people think, “This is a novel about drugs.” It is not at all! It is about a young man, William Stoner, who goes off to university at great financial cost and deprivation to his father, who is a pioneer farmer. The boy goes off to agricultural college and this is seen as a great triumph. But while he is there he encounters literature for the first time, specifically a Shakespearian sonnet, and is transformed by reading it. He decides he doesn’t want to study agriculture at all, and we see him become a professor of literature.

It is tempting to think that this is an academic novel with all its trials and tribulations, but it is not that either. It is a much more tender thing. It is a novel based essentially on disappointment, because Stoner has a rotten marriage and a terrible time academically. But he carries on and develops an intense affection for his now much more modest life. It is a story of intellectual determination and the ability of a man to find love simply in what he does. It is a book about love of learning.

I don’t want to give it all away, but he does find true love with a woman towards the end of his life, so in the end there is great blessing and happiness. To me, Stoner is almost the perfect novel. It is very little known but anyone who reads it is completely captivated by it. It is a wonderful, wonderful book.

His first marriage is a move upwards socially, but as you say he isn’t happy in it. People often think that there is more social mobility in the US than in the UK. As someone who has lived in both places, do you think that is the case?

I do, to be perfectly honest. There are novels which show some ossification of social stratification in America, and in cities like Boston it is rampant. But generally I would say that there is a lot more social mobility in this country than in Britain. It is one of the reasons why I find there is a much greater degree of opportunity for someone like me than back in my home country of the UK. I have become a citizen of the United States, and while I am in no way disdainful of Britain and enormously affectionate of it, I am pleased that I am an American.