It’s hard to adequately convey how powerful a novel Stoner is, perhaps because there is nothing unusual in Williams’s prose style, pacing, or the way he is using the bildungsroman conventions to focus on an erudite, bookish man’s familial, psychological, and collegiate conflicts.
I think that Williams is a master of flow: Stoner pulls you in, and you are immediately swept away—again, not because the prose or the narrative itself are particularly enthralling per se, but because Williams knows how to captivate and capture the reader’s attention and then drag him or her alongside Stoner throughout the book.
A must-read for those who adore reading, especially those who have been lucky enough to make reading their lives and livelihood.