Reading 'Stoner'

More than 60 years after its publication, John Williams’s novel Stoner remains a revelatory portrait of higher education and the professoriate. Spanning much of the first half of the 20th century, the novel follows William Stoner from his undergraduate days at the University of Missouri through his career as an English professor at the same institution. The common tropes of the academic novel are all on display in Stoner, which features an illicit affair and a nasty interdepartmental feud. But it is Stoner’s intense focus on the purpose of college and the ineffable power of education that make it vital reading for anyone in academe. In the inaugural meeting of the College Matters Book Club, we’re diving into what one reviewer has described as “the perfect novel.”

Related Reading: 

The Inner Lives of Men - Morris Dickstein’s review of Stoner (The New York Times) 

The Greatest American Novel You’ve Never Heard Of (The New Yorker) 

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

Guests:

Nell Gluckman, senior reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education 

Julie Schumacher, novelist and English professor at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.