The Man Who Wrote The Mediocre Novel

by Katharine Coldiron

Stoner is not a perfect novel. It’s not even a particularly well-written novel. You’ve probably read a hundred books like it. It is a methodical, hagiographic piece of fiction about a college professor, a man who plods passively through his life and takes joy only in literature.

William Stoner is born on a farm. He goes to college, becomes a professor at that college, takes a wife, has a child, undergoes professional difficulties, and dies. This is a terrific way to write a novel — to do a character study of a small, mediocre life. But Williams’s mediocrity blurs with Stoner’s until they both lose the reader’s interest. And one or both of them has a frightening carelessness toward women. Stoner repeatedly indulges in marital rape, saying that when his wife shifts against him in her sleep, “he moved upon her.” His wife, in response, “turn[s] her head sideways in a familiar gesture and bur[ies] it in her pillow, enduring violation,” so there is no mistaking these encounters as consensual. Dickstein’s review didn’t mention that. But then, Stoner is aimed toward Dickstein, and not toward me.

There’s a reason a book like Stoner was re-issued, and a biography like The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel was published. The most elevated cultural conversations favor writing that is traditionally male, subjectively male, overtly male. This may be occurring almost involuntarily on the part of the editors and critics. In Stoner, a male critic might not notice that Stoner’s wife is relegated to the stereotypes of frigid bitch…

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