John Williams · 1965 · overland

John Williams's quiet, devastating 1965 novel of an ordinary life. William Stoner leaves his parents' hardscrabble Missouri farm to study agriculture at the University of Missouri, falls unexpectedly in love with literature, and never leaves, spending his whole existence within a few miles of a single town. He becomes a teacher, marries unhappily, endures a long feud and a brief late love, and dies largely unremarked. Deliberately one of the most rooted, unmoving lives in this collection, its small geography is exactly the point: a whole life measured out between a farm, a university and a river town.

1. 1
   The Farm

   William Stoner is born on a failing farm near Booneville and is sent, almost by accident, to study at the state university.

2. 2
   Columbia

   At the University of Missouri he abandons agriculture for English literature and quietly resolves never to leave the academic life.

3. 3
   St. Louis

   He courts and marries Edith and honeymoons in her family's city of St. Louis, the unhappy beginning of a lifelong estrangement.

4. 4
   Columbia (return)

   He returns to Columbia and lives out his entire career and life there, teaching, feuding, briefly loving, and dying almost unnoticed.