Solitude becomes the end

I just finished two of the most depressing novels ever. One was great. One was not. Both are, at base, about solitude. It’s not a happy place.

Stoner, John Williams, published in 1965, doesn’t rest on the tip of the collective tongue when it comes to great novels or novelists. Several times the past few years it appeared on my radar. Finally I bought it, and the bookstore clerk raved when I brought it to the cashier. Still, it took me a while to get to it.

In some ways it’s a recast of the biblical story of Job. Shit rains on this guy, William Stoner, son of a Missouri dirt farmer, who becomes a professor of English at the University of Missouri. That’s about where the positivity ends.

The timeline spans pre WWI to after WWII. Stoner’s father sends him off to college to become an agricultural engineer. He returns (briefly) as an English major, then leaves for good to pursue a graduate degree.

Two institutions which can nurture you as an adult, your family and your workplace, don’t for Stoner. His wife should be on meds if they had the right ones back then. His academic department has it in for him. His two buddies, if you can call them that, go to war (WWI) and Stoner does not. One comes home in a box. The other becomes head of the English department. He tries to do right by Stoner but he is contradicted by the larger powers of the academic institution.

The life of the mind becomes the only aspect of life where Stoner finds relief. But it is solitary relief. Even his daughter, with the help of her mother, becomes distant.

In middle age, Stoner has an affair with a young graduate student. She leaves so that they both avoid the inevitable scandal.  He publishes a scholarly book that “was forgotten and that served no use.” He dies of cancer at the end.

Yet, his plight is riveting. His will to survive, to be someone other than a dirt farmer, to progress from physical toil to life of the mind and educate others, to rise above the anguish and his station in life, gripped me. Stoner truly is about shoveling shit against the tide and believing at death that you somehow beat the odds. “…we have our pretenses in order to survive. And we shall survive – because we have to.” (p. 32). ”

And of that useless book, his thoughts in the moments before life is extinguished: “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.” The novel and his life end while he his fondling the book.

This isn’t a spoiler because the plot will have nothing to do with your enjoyment. It’s all in the language, the economy, the precision, how haunting it is in its portrayal of a “normal” life. And it is a normal life. We will all find ourselves here, with Stoner, not forever, and maybe not for very long, but at some point(s), for no one lives without doubt about what it all means and why we have to suffer so.

In the end, Stoner is about the reality of life, the pain of the soul exposed by the erosion of almost all things that might protect it with meaning, the things we might have left behind, the connections with others which might live on, but will also end, and how we must rise above it all to keep on, because we must.

“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.”

[I have to add here that the lyrics at the end of the Moody Blues song, “The Balance” (from A Question of Balance), appeared as I read the ending two weeks ago and those words have not left my head since. “Just open your mind, and realize…the way it’s al–ways been, just open your heart…”]

And so maybe it is because I live in Missouri now, but lived in NYC for many years, and read The Transcriptionist back to back with Stoner, that I pair them in a single blog post. It’s probably not fair. This is Amy Rowland’d debut novel. It also is about the solitary life, in similar ways to Stoner, the discarded life.

Lena, the protagonist, transcribes stories for a major New York Newspaper (assumed to be the Times because Rowland herself was a transcriptionist for the paper). She’s the only one transcriptionist left and occupies an old room once filled with many toiling at the same function.

She lives the life you’ve read about, heard about, seen movies about, the single female in Manhattan -poor, lonely, creeping towards middle age, on the edge. Mercifully, through a pigeon on the ledge of her office and a woman more on the edge than Lena, whom Lena encounters briefly on a bus, Rowland leads Lena to salvation, away from the edge (and more accurately, the ledge) and exposes for us her new-found dignity as a member of the human race, a member who no longer needs the newspaper.

The woman, Arlene Lebow, is a blind court reporter (get the connection to Lena?) who takes her own life swimming in the moat at the lion’s den in the zoo.

Lena’s colleagues at the newspaper don’t fare well. They serve as stereotypes solely to heighten Lena’s sensitivity to what’s happening around her (the aftermath of 9/11, for one thing). There’s just something off about all these characters. They are too one-dimensional. As an example, a speech by Ralph, the paper’s head honcho, goes like this: “…we are gathered here today to issue escape hoods to our valued staff. It is true that our country is at war. And we, the voice of the people, the voice for the people, we are under attack as well. As I’m sure you know, one of our most esteemed colleagues, Katheryn Keel, received personal threats this week, along with an envelope containing white powder…”

Banal is probably being kind here.

I noted at the top that it wasn’t a great book. It’s not a bad novel either. I am a sucker for novels about NYC, any time period. But this was a rare case when my understanding of, and experience with, the city got in the way of my enjoyment of the story. The ending doesn’t work. Just doesn’t. But I have sympathy. Endings are so difficult. But I could see what the author was striving for: How the craziest things, wanting to save a pigeon (a pigeon?? this ex-New Yorker asks) and demanding an obituary in the “paper of record” for Arlene (Lena essentially holds the paper hostage to achieve this), help you find the meaning in your own life and give you the strength to disrupt it for the better. Depressing, yes. Poignant? Almost. But there’s a lilt to Rowland’s style, a naivete to her protagonist, a minimalist sensibility, and a genuine desire to lampoon modern journalism. These elements work well together.

I’m going to bet Rowland’s second will be worth reading.