The book is called Stoner, written by John Edward Williams. It's lengthy, but I managed to read the whole novel in a single sitting one night in September. Besides Roshan's "Leonard Hotel Near Marble Arch (Decent into Irkalla)," her "Dahkma," and Eliot's "The Dry Salvages," Stoner is the only piece that has made me cry in the past few months. It is a masterpiece. When I begin writing about it, you'll immediately understand why I specifically say as much—
This is how the novel begins:
Brilliant. Just brilliant.William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen. Eight years later, during the height of World War I, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree and accepted an instructorship at the same University, where he taught until his death in 1956. He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his courses. When he died his colleagues made a memorial contribution of a medieval manuscript to the University library. This manuscript may still be found in the Rare Books Collection, bearing the inscription: "Presented to the Library of the University of Missouri, in memory of William Stoner, Department of English. By his colleagues."
An occasional student who comes upon the name may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual question. Stoner's colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers.
The novel continues to document the life of William Stoner: a socially subdued, unglamorous, conscientious literary scholar toiling for what turns out to be his dead-end career, who, although having had a variety of worthwhile life experiences, arguably having lived an overall better life than most, still endured a failed marriage in which he both cheated and [essentially] sexually assaulted his very inexperienced then-20-year-old wife (after she refused to have sex multiple times, forcing himself upon her as she covered her eyes and balled-up but never explicitly said "no"), is later pushed away by her from his child (who turns out to become a deadbeat alcoholic as she ages), endures multiple years-long professional and interpersonal conflicts, writes a book with no success, and during his last breaths (end of the novel), reflects:
I cried, again, while transcribing that.What did you expect? he thought again.
A kind of joy came upon him, as if borne in on a summer breeze. He dimly recalled that he had been thinking of failure—as if it mattered. It seemed to him now that such thoughts were mean, unworthy of what his life had been. Dim presences gathered at the edge of his consciousness; he could not see them, but he knew that they were there, gathering their forces toward a kind of palpability he could not see or hear. He was approaching them, he knew; but there was no need to hurry. He could ignore them if he wished; he had all the time there was.
There was a softness around him, and a languor crept upon his limbs. A sense of his own identity came upon him with a sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself, and he knew what he had been.
His head turned. His bedside table was piled with books that he had not touched for a long time. He let his hand play over them for a moment; he marveled at the thinness of the fingers, at the intricate articulation of the joints as he flexed them. He felt the strength within them, and let them pull a book from the jumble on the tabletop. It was his own book that he sought, and when the hand held it he smiled at the familiar red cover that had for a long time been faded and scuffed.
It hardly mattered to him that the book was forgotten and that it served no use; and the question of its worth at any time seemed almost trivial. He did not have the illusion that he would find himself there, in that fading print; and yet, he knew, a small part of him that he could not deny was there, and would be there.
He opened the book; and as he did so it became not his own.
He let his fingers riffle through the pages and felt a tingling, as if those pages were alive. The tingling came through his fingers and coursed through his flesh and bone; he was minutely aware of it, and he waited until it contained him, until the old excitement that was like terror fixed him where he lay. The sunlight, passing his window, shone upon the page, and he could not see what was written there.
The fingers loosened, and the book they had held moved slowly and swiftly across the still body and fell into the silence of the room.
tbcd