Fiction: Every week, or so it seems, a new literary genius is discovered. Hype, admittedly, determines not so much the content of the reviews as who gets reviewed. Publishing has become far less about books and far more about the people who write them. Yet for every new literary talent and each tired established star writing the same book again and again, wonders continue to emerge, writes Eileen Battersby.
In some cases, it is the process of translation that alerts the English reading world to a previously unknown treasure, such as Hungarian Sandor Marai's Embers. Then there is the rediscovery of great books that somehow seemed to have become forgotten, or simply lost in the wave of new books. Not long after Saul Bellow published Herzog, another US writer, a Texan by the name of John Williams, published his third novel, Stoner. It is a terrific novel, far closer to Eudora Welty and the Southern school of US literature than it is to the Hellers, the Mailers, the Bellows or the Pynchons that were dominating the scene.
Little is known of Williams; there is no entry in the reference books. This is a strange omission considering he won the National Book Award in 1973 with his fourth, and final novel, Augustus. Vintage, however, has now rectified the situation by reissuing both Augustus and Stoner. Adding to the excitement of this discovery of another US master is the fact that the Irish novelist, John McGahern has written introductions to both books.
A few years ago, another British publisher, Harvill, quite brilliantly revived the work of the wonderful William Maxwell, a long-time New Yorker fiction editor and author of works such as So Long, See You Tomorrow, Time Will Darken It and They Came Like Swallows. Maxwell, who had been born in 1908, lived long enough to enjoy his late revival and died, aged 92, in July 2000. Williams's story is both similar and different. He served in the US Air Force, and then spent his life in an academic setting. During a long teaching career, he also published on his specialist area, English Renaissance poetry. He wrote four novels: Nothing But the Night (1948), Butcher's Crossing (1960), Stoner (1965) and Augustus (1972).
His 30-year academic career appears to have provided both buffer and obstruction to his fiction.
Much could be made of the differences bet-ween his four novels, and some critics have suggested they could have been written by four different people. Yet McGahern shrewdly identifies the unifying quality that certainly links Stoner and Augustus.
Stoner says everything and little in its opening paragraph. But one thing is sure, it is the story of a life:
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 One, 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.
This is a novel of such subtle power, written in a quiet, formal prose, that it takes a while for the reader to realise exactly how intensely Williams has cast a spell. William Stoner, born to humble farming folk, arrives at university to study agriculture, but is instead seduced by literature.
In time, he is entrapped by a beautiful young girl, who is possessed of allure, if little personality. On his wedding night, her magic is revealed as something far, far darker. The young man loses his illusions as well as his innocence. In time, his wife decides she wants a child and sets about securing this ambition.
Passion and cruelty walk in tandem throughout Stoner. The protagonist's domestic life proves a tragedy, and his career is also about struggle. McGahern quotes an interview in which Williams refers to Stoner as a hero. He is that, and far more; he is a real person.
Above all, though, Williams has created a true picture of university life, underlining both the elevating and corrupting influence of knowledge. Stoner is given one chance at real love and sacrifices it in order to sustain the balance of the ordinary.
This is no fairytale. Just as he sees his relationship with his only child destroyed by the vengeful malcontent his wife becomes, Stoner also knows he exists only through his job. Restrained and deliberate, it is an astute, dramatic narrative about one man's discovery of his life, himself and love, "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".
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
Stoner. By John Williams, Vintage, 278pp, £6.99