![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow (1981), a heartbreaking, confessional story about how a boyhood moment of weakness earns the narrator a lifelong guilt over his cowardly act of betrayal, is another understated masterwork. Yet subtle mood-fictions such as Stoner create a hunger for similar, thoughtful works. Hype dictates nowadays, meaning calm, understated novels are often overlooked. Williams was a career academic and Stoner was his third of four novels. Since then, John Williams's subtle account of a farmer's unassuming son who attends a midwestern college to study agriculture, only to discover literature and instead become a university lecturer, continues to beguile readers across the world. ![]() John McGahern lovingly championed Stoner and wrote an introductory essay of rare critical intuition and insight. In order to secure the wider reverence, the support of a master was sought. And yet again, the reaction was positive, if muted.Īlmost 30 years would pass before a publisher decided to reissue it. Some time later, in 1973, Stoner was published in the UK, again without fanfare. Yet readers loved Stoner and it would become a book that lives through the insistence of word of mouth. Fifty years ago an American writer published a tender, quiet novel that caused barely a ripple. ![]()
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