REVIEWS

“It’s simply a novel about a guy who goes to college and becomes a teacher. But it’s one of the most fascinating things that you’ve ever come across.”—Tom Hanks, actor and director, on Stoner, one of his top five favorite books

“A perfect novel, so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving, it takes your breath away.”—New York Times Book Review

“A masterly portrait of a truly virtuous and dedicated man”—New Yorker

“An exquisite study, bleak as Hopper, of a hopelessly honest academic at a meretricious Midwestern university. I had not known…that the kind of unsparing portrait of failed marriage shown in Stoner existed before John Cheever.”—Los Angeles Times

“Serious, beautiful and affecting, what makes Stoner so impressive is the contained intensity the author and character share.”—New Republic

“Robin Field fully inhabits Stoner’s character, dragging every morsel of tragedy, inevitability and, occasionally, wiliness and joy from Williams’ understated writing. Field’s performance helps us understand that an ordinary person’s life is still grand, emotional, and worthy. Originally published in 1965 and recently reissued, Stoner is a small miracle of a novel that is enhanced by a narrator who is a perfect match. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”—AudioFile

“Very few novels in English, or literary productions of any kind, have come anywhere near its level for human wisdom or as a work of art.”—C. P. Snow

“Stoner is written in the most plainspoken of styles....Its hero is an obscure academic who endures a series of personal and professional agonies. Yet the novel is utterly riveting, and for one simple reason: because the author, John Williams, treats his characters with such tender and ruthless honesty that we cannot help but love them.”—Steve Almond, author of Tin House

JOHN WILLIAMS (1922-1994), poet and novelist, was born in Texas and received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. In 1955 he became the director of the University of Denver’s creative writing program where he edited the University of Denver Quarterly. He remained at Denver until his retirement in 1986. He was a co-winner of the 1973 National Book Award for Fiction for the novel Augustus.

* packaged in a sturdy vinyl case.