Ageless as Loneliness
[网评]1965年出版之后，《斯通纳》曾经两次绝版，原因是俗常的日常生活情节和克制的风格令这本书的销售难有起色——同时一件值得玩味的事发生在图书库存变化上。多年以来它逐渐在名人雅士中累积了一批忠实拥趸——其中不乏名作家，它成为了一份“小众阅读”的选择，相比当年第一版在美国只卖了不到2000册，如今《斯通纳》已经横扫欧洲的畅销榜单，持续引爆了关于美国文学正典的讨论。（下文为英文）
On the 50th anniversary of Stoner‘s republication, readers took pictures with the cover of the English version, to pay their tributes to the author John Williams.
This is both a behavioral art and a hint that everyone behind the photo may have a similar life experience and spiritual world like Stoner.
However, what is this book talking about? Why are so many people willing to join this activity?
I'd like to talk about this book in three parts.
INTRODUCTION
Basic
background
John Williams, 1922-1994, American writer, poet, scholar.
In his writing career, he wrote only four novels. They are Only the Night, Butcher's Crossing, Stoner, and Augustus.
As Mr. William himself once described, " the mystery of the mind and heart showing themselves in the minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words, in the blackest and coldest print- the love which he had hidden as if it were illicit and dangerous, he began to display, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then proudly. " (New York: New York Review Book, 2003).
What we must admit is it is hard to read the book all the way to the end, as it is full of trivial plots. When I read this book, I often felt sleepy. But this feeling, dim and distant, shaped one of my impressions of this book.
02
KEY WORDS
Lonely，ego，
and courage
Stoner, the protagonist of this book, just like a stone, is controlled, stubborn, and taciturn.
This novel described Stoner's life.
In Missouri, United States , a young man, who came from a poor farm, accidentally opened the literary door in an elective literature class and thus changed his life. His name was William Stoner.
Reading this book, we will feel a sense of undescribable loneliness. His parents were ordinary farmers, who could not understand why he gave up learning agronomy and chose to learn Literature. His marriage was a failure. Besides, He was suppressed everywhere in his work. And his daughter, who used to be a very intelligent girl, became dull in this unhappy family.
All his life is a boring and lonely journey.
However, in an elective literature class, Stoner was asked to share his understanding of a Shakespearean sonnet. At that moment, he felt the charm of literature. And it is the class that made Stoner find out the most important thing in his life.
Even though his life can be described as a failure, he is living in his own rhythm.Choosing to be himself made his life more difficult but more meaningful.
As we all know, people in American adore heroes. So we can understand why this book has been unpopular for 50 years. Stoner is such a sorehead that it he does not at all match the American aesthetic taste. But all of us needs to think :
Is a trite life worth experienceing? Do we have the courage to be ourselves?
03
EXCERPTS
some short
pieces
Mr. Shakespeare speaks to you across three hundred years, Mr Stoner. Do you hear him?
In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.
You must remember what you are and what you have chosen to become, and the significance of what you are doing. There are wars and defeats and victories of the human race that are not military and that are not recorded in the annals of history. Remember that while you're trying to decide what to do.
Lust and learning. That's really all there is, isn't it?
While they talked they remembered the years of their youth, and each thought of the other as he had been at another time.
This is a reading recommendation. I hope that I could meet you in this book.
原文链接：Reaction to Stoner
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