Despite receiving little attention upon its publication in 1965, Stoner has seen a sudden surge of popularity and critical praise since its republication in the 2000s, championed by authors such as Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Bret Easton Ellis, and John McGahern.
World War I begins, and Gordon and Dave enlist, but despite pressure from Finch, Stoner remains in school.
Stoner feels compelled by his conscience to fail a student named Charles Walker, a close protégé of a colleague, Professor Hollis Lomax.
The student is clearly dishonest and cannot fulfil the requirements of Stoner's course but, despite this, the decision to expel or retain Walker is put on hold.
After his promotion to head of the department, Lomax takes every opportunity to exact revenge upon Stoner throughout the rest of his career.
A collaboration between Stoner and a younger instructor in the department, Katherine Driscoll, develops into a romantic love affair.
Stoner and Driscoll agree it best to end the affair so as not to derail the academic work they both feel called to follow.
Eventually, Stoner, older now and hard of hearing, is becoming a legendary figure in the English department despite Lomax's opposition.
The following year, Grace announces she is pregnant and marries the father of her child--but he enlists in the army and dies before the baby is born.
Deeply unhappy and addicted to alcohol, Grace halfheartedly tries to reconcile with Stoner, and he sees that his daughter, like her mother, will never be happy.
Edwin Frank, the editor at NYRB Classics responsible for the 2005 reissue of the novel, suggests that Stoner contains many existential elements.
"I don’t think it’s a mistake to hear Camus behind it," Frank suggests, "this story of a lone man against the world choosing his life, such as it is.
I sometimes say the book[']s a bit like an Edward Hopper painting, wooden houses casting stark shadows on blank green lawns.
"[12] John McGahern's Introduction to Stoner and Adam Foulds of The Independent praise Williams' prose for its cold, factual plainness.
[14] Sarah Hampson of The Globe and Mail writes that Williams' "description of petty academic politics reads like the work of someone taking surreptitious notes at dreary faculty meetings.
[18] On its 1965 publication there were a handful of glowing reviews such as The New Yorker's of June 12, 1965, which praised Williams for creating a character who is dedicated to his work but cheated by the world.
Those who gave positive feedback pointed to the truthful voice with which Williams wrote about life's conditions, and they often compared Stoner to his other work, Augustus, in characters and plot direction.
In a 2007 review of the recently reissued work, scholar and book critic Morris Dickstein acclaims the writing technique as remarkable and says the novel "takes your breath away".
"[7] In 2010, critic Mel Livatino noted that, in "nearly fifty years of reading fiction, I have never encountered a more powerful novel—and not a syllable of it sentimental.
She says that the novel came back to public attention at a time when people felt entitled to personal fulfillment, at the cost of their own morality, and Stoner shows that there can be value even in a life that seems failed.