The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel: John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life

I'd never heard of John Williams before reading a couple of reviews of this book. I read the book, in part, because I lived in Denver when Williams was there and never thought of it as a literary hotbed. I was surprised to learn that it was in fact home to a prize-winning novelist whose works are now considered classics. I also read the book for the discussions of Yvor Winters, J.V. Cunningham, and Alan Swallow. Some decades ago I had an interest in Winters' writing along with that of other "rational" poets such as Cunningham and Donald Davie. And I was curious about the Swallow Press, the Denver publisher.The subtitle of this book alludes to "the writing life". That's an accurate description of Williams' life, because there wasn't much more to it than his writing. He didn't lead a colorful life like, say, Hemingway. He wrote his books, taught his classes, got drunk, had affairs, got embroiled in minor academic politics, etc. But it's mostly about life in the world of literature and publishing. I found it interesting to an extent, not knowing how the world of big-name publishing houses used to operate. But it's not exactly page-turning material.The parts about Winters were good; the author's summary of his esthetic is concise and accurate and I enjoyed seeing Winters through the eyes both of devotees (Williams) and disinterested third parties (the author). I didn't know that Winters had much of a following outside of J.V.Cunningham. I also didn't know what an egomaniacal jerk Winters could be.The author writes with quite a bit a detail about places WIlliams inhabited, even down to street addresses. Some might find that to be overkill but for this former Denver resident it made things more tangible. I would say that in a couple of places the author gets his geography a bit mixed up, but nothing serious.I know that Stoner is supposed to be Williams' magnum opus, and I may get to it some day, but at the moment I think I'm more drawn to Butcher's Crossing, Williams' "anti-Western" that was constantly pigeonholed by publishers as a traditional Western. Anything for a fresh take on life in the Old West.

I loved this book about John Williams and his novels, the balance between the life of the man and the life of each book. Every page interesting and every page written with style and accessibility, like Williams himself. I've read only Stoner, but now I'm going to read all the others. And maybe teach a few of them, too.

I was fascinated by the life of author John Williams as told by Charles J. Shields in The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel. Learning about William's life and influences helps me to better understand and appreciate his work.I discovered William's book Stoner after purchasing a Kindle when I received an email of ebooks on sale. I was drawn to the novel by the cover, a detail of Thomas Eakins's painting The Thinker, Portrait of Louis H. Kenton. And I was drawn by the description of the novel.I loved Stoner and it became one of my all-time favorite novels. It was about this time in 2013 that Stoner was labeled "The Greatest American Novel You've Never Heard Of" by Tim Krieder in the New York Times.On December 23, 2013, I reviewed Stoner on my blog and this past winter I reread the book with my local library book club. I raved about Stoner so much that my son bought me Augustus as a Christmas gift, the book for which Williams won the National Book Award in conjunction with John Barth's Chimera.Who was this man, this John-Williams-not-the-composer, this writer who I never heard about? I read Barth in an undergraduate college class, including his Chimera. Why had I not heard of Williams before?I was very pleased to read the e-galley of The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel by Charles J. Shields, which answered my questions, how Williams was overlooked and later rediscovered, and how readers and book clubs have brought Stoner to its proper place in the canon.Williams shared attributes with his protagonist Stoner; they both came from humble roots and grew up poor and worked in academia. Both were smitten with language and poetry. Both had unhappy marriages and an affair (or more, for Williams). Both stayed true to their ideals. Both died without the recognition they deserved.But in other ways, Williams was very different from his character. Stoner stuck with his one, failed, unhappy marriage; Williams married multiple times. Williams thrived in an academic network based on alcohol and drinking. Williams's father abandoned his family and his stepfather was a drinker who was lucky to snag a New Deal job. And whereas Stoner never completed his thesis, Williams published three novels after several failed attempts.The literary influences on Williams were diverse, from pulp magazines filled with adventure and romance to Thomas Wolfe. Williams was inspired by Eugene Gant in Look Homeward, Angel. (Wolfe was my favorite as well when I first read him at age 16.)Seeing the movie A Tale of Two Cities starring Ronald Coleman impacted Williams also, and he tried to channel Coleman's style and panache, down to the thin mustache.Williams became involved with theater (as did Wolfe before he turned to novels). He then discovered Conrad Aiken and psychological fiction, and then Proust, altering his writing style.Dropping out of college, Williams became a radio announcer and jack of all trades in radio broadcasting. A whirlwind romance sped into marriage. Then, in 1942, faced with the draft, Williams enlisted in the air corps and became a radio technician. He ended up on planes flying over the Himalayas to bring supplies to General Chaing Kai-shek. He received a 'Dear John' letter.In 1945 Wiliams returned to the States and found work at a radio station in Key West, Florida. Here he wrote his first novel, Nothing But the Night, "steeped in psychological realism" and filled with pathologies. He sent the manuscript to Wolfe's last editor Edward Aswell of Harper and Brothers, who rejected it.Alan Swallow of Swallow Press in Denver, CO also found much to critique in the novel but also saw in Williams a spark of genius. Swallow was part of the New Criticism movement. He suggested that Williams come to the University of Denver. Williams was admitted and then was married a second time. His writing still suffered from "a lag between thought and emotion." Marriage No. 2 also ended and soon after Williams married a third time.The work and philosophy of Yvor Winters, who held to a classical style of writing over the modern tendency of self-expression and obscurity, influenced Williams and he declared himself a 'Winterarian." Williams realized his writing was "overwrought" and embellished.Williams turned his attention to the myth of the West and began researching for a novel about a young Romantic who experiences the real West. The book was promoted as a Western, a dismal and fatal choice that upset Williams. It never found its proper audience.John had several affairs, including a woman who became his next, and last, wife. Meanwhile, he was working on the novel that became Stoner. The literary world was going in other directions, but Williams stuck to his ideals. Bestsellers included The Moon-Spinners by Mary Stewart and Daphne du Maurier's The Glass Blowers. Up and comers included Saul Bellow, Ken Kesey, and Thomas Pynchon. Stoner was "unfashionable." It lacked emotion, was too understated. Williams's agent warned his book would never sell well. That wasn't his goal. The novel was quite overlooked for a year when a review finally hailed it.Williams began thinking about "the paradoxes of power" and about Cesar Augustus. By this time, in the late 60s, the counterculture was making its mark on academia. In 1971 Stoner was republished. In 1972 Augustus was finally published and won the National Book Award in 1973. Williams' drinking was becoming a problem but he started on a new novel set during the Nixon years. A lifelong smoker, he was on oxygen. He won awards and his books were brought back into print. In 1986 at a farewell dinner Williams read from his manuscript, a book he couldn't finish. In 1994 Williams died of respiratory failure.But his novels kept popping up as new readers discovered them. In 2006 the New York Review of Books Classics reprinted Stoner and "Stonermania" took the literary world. The novel was first popular in Europe, Waterson named it Book of the Year in 2013. In America, readers began sharing the book with each other.Williams was a complicated man with a complicated personal life. Like his protagonist, he stuck to his ideals. He learned to write the hard way, by writing unsellable novels before writing the novel that would sell a million copies worldwide.I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

If John Williams had written biographies they would have been like this. This book is fantastic.Having read all three of Williams’s main novels, I was keen to learn more about him. I was expecting quite a sad story, a bit like Stoner, of a man never recognised in his lifetime for his literary achievement.In fact this is an uplifting tale. Williams was a smart, self-assured and sardonic man, someone in control of his destiny. As a teenager he wrote and performed in successful plays in his hometown and later turned his back on what could have been a lucrative career in radio. He wrote novels because he liked the challenge and he taught because he felt it was important. He did actually attract quite a bit of literary recognition. But he also gained a national reputation as an academic and a key member of the English faculty at Denver.This bio is just the right length and is an excellent balance between the life and the work. You also feel that if Shields hadn’t written it (while Williams’s widow and his agent’s partner were still alive) a lot of what, thanks to this book, we know about Williams would have been lost for all time.