I finished (listening to) the book a week ago, but needed to mull it over before I could review it. It seemed so...bland, until I realized I took it in like a fish experiences water. The story of a man from poor Missouri farming roots to a highly educated assistant professor that only ever serves as a supporting character in others’ lives also struck me as mundane, at first.

Directly before this book I’d read “Where the Red Fern Grows” (hillbilly Ozark boy and his hunting dogs, near southern Missouri) and “The Paris Wife” (fictionalized account of Hemingway’s first wife, including her upbringing in St. Louis, similar to Stoner’s wife). These books share, for at least part of their scope, Missouri, or the Ozarks, and the early 19th century, all to very different effect. Being from Missouri, and families who have been in the area for generations, I feel like these storylines are, or could have been, part of my families’ oral traditions. Maybe they are if I traced other branches of certain families.

With these recent and personal backgrounds behind my reading, it took a bit of sorting to find the parts of “Stoner” that I loved. First, the homage to literature, learning about literature, and loving literature. I’m an English teacher who’s stuck teaching the lower level of the language, rarely brushing up against its artistic use with my students. Stoner found himself in a similar position for years, but maintained his personal study and learning, even as he overstepped boundaries in other areas of his life.

The tension readers experience as different areas in his life ebb and flow create a maintained melancholy, and produce the wisdom Stoner achieves as he reviews his life.