On “Stoner” and the Good Life
John Williams’s 1965 novel Stoner ends with the title character, a college professor, dying peacefully in his home after reflecting on his life. It’s a novel as portrait. We witness the character grow, recognize his purpose in life, make good and bad choices, become himself. He sees people die. Relationships come and go. Time never slows.
I turned 28 on April 17th, which, of course, means I’m nearly 30. I know neither age is “old”. But I can’t help be surprised over how the big three-oh is almost here. In college, it seemed like a lifetime away. And in a few years, I know I’ll be saying the same of 40 — and 50 and 60. And so on.
I mention Stoner for two reasons: I completed it about a month ago, and I found it profoundly moving; in it, we can clearly see the importance of making good choices, something I realized only a few years ago. Before, and I hate to say this, I thought just as others often do: I don’t have to do much to live a good life. Things will work out.
But things often don’t work out. We are endowed with free will, and we can choose wrongly.
Stoner, a farm boy, entered college a bit older than his peers. His parents asked that he go and study agriculture. They expected him to take over the farm when he was older and figured a university-level agricultural program would give him the chance to learn all of the latest developments in the field. He switched his major, though. Stoner’s literature professor read one of Shakespeare’s sonnets to his class and Stoner, shaken by the beauty of the poem, decided to study literature and become an academic.
Everything happens for a reason, you say. Things worked out for him. And they did, of course. He found his calling and did not choose wrongly.
But what if he had? Stoner did not undergo a period of discernment before electing to go to college. The omniscient narrator described him as dutiful, passive. His parents told him to go, and so he went. But if he were a bit more stubborn, he might have stayed on the farm. What would have happened then? We can assume he would have eventually taken it over. Maybe he would have expanded it. Perhaps his parents would have fixed him up with someone, and he would have raised both crops and children. That would have been it.
Then, you say, what’s the point? He never would have realized he wanted to be a professor. But Stoner, I’d posit, fell under Shakespeare’s spell because a part of him always knew he didn’t want to farm. He just hadn’t been able to articulate it yet. So had he stayed a farmer, part of him might have felt empty.
“Life is a journey” is an aphorism and a cliché because it is true. We are on journey toward both purpose and becoming the best version of ourselves. The choices we make often help us to become more complete. But we can also set ourselves back. Incorrect choices help us only if we recognize when we have sent ourselves in the wrong direction and are willing to learn from our mistakes.
There is another aphorism: “God writes straight with crooked lines.” People often take this to mean we will always get where we need to be, no matter how long or how arduous the journey. But I’m not sure that’s the correct way to read this statement. As free beings, we can resist God. He can pull at us — the straight line — but we can pull away. Our zigzagging movements create the crooked line.
And Stoner, though he ended up as an academic, did make some incorrect choices. He rushed into a marriage and later met the woman he would have been more compatible with, leading to an affair. Had he taken the chairmanship of the department, he would have prevented his nemesis, Hollis Lomax, from getting hired. Lomax also permanently stymied Stoner’s career.
Hindsight is 20/20. As time passes, the fog recedes, and we can look clearly at the decisions we made or didn’t make. But everything in front of us is often shrouded in darkness. We can pray and reflect, and we can consult our friends and family members, but there is always uncertainty whenever we do anything. And the clock is always ticking.
Here’s my hope: when I’m 80 or 90 or even 100 and I’m about to die, I want to be able to look back at everything I did and, like Stoner, be satisfied.
I want to be sure I lived my life well.
