I often have friends ask me what I’m reading or ask for book/author recommendations. So in “What I’m reading now” I’ll simply be posting on, well, what I’m reading! Don’t expect much off the NYT or LAT best seller lists, though. There’s enough out there about those books, plus I usually buy used books or check them out at the library. Occasionally, I’ll do something newish. Like next time I’ll probably tell you about this book I’m reading on how to increase your psychic abilities (it’s gotten a lot of press). Anyhow, for this week, it’s the novel Stoner by John Williams. It was first published in 1965 and it’s a meticulously written story about William Stoner and university life from about 1910 to 1956. Stoner is sent to the University of Missouri by his farmer father to study agriculture. Ultimately, he’s smitten by literature, dumps the farm and becomes an undistinguished assistant professor of English (he also gets married, has a daughter, a mistress, etc. etc.). The “undistinguished” part, though, is key. This is a story about an average guy getting by. It’s a quiet book. The author’s writing style is direct and plain but his descriptions are beautiful and, moreover, his take on the inner life is beyond illuminating. Here I should give you a sample but my feeling is that you can pick up the book and randomly point to any passage and it will be brilliant. So, wait, I’m going to do that…Well, I pointed to the part where he’s getting with his mistress. It is a great passage but I don’t want you to think that’s what the book is really about. Instead, here’s a good Williams description:

It was winter, and a low damp midwestern mist floated over the campus. Even at midmorning the thin branches of the dogwood trees glistened with hoarfrost, and the black vines that trailed up the great columns before Jesse Hall were rimmed with iridescent crystals that winked against the grayness.

And here Williams describes Edith, who would become Stoner’s wife:

Her moral training, both at the schools she attended and at home, was negative in nature, prohibitive in intent and almost entirely sexual. The sexuality, however, was indirect and unacknowledged; therefore it suffused every other part of her education, which received most of its energy from that recessive and unspoken moral force.

Stoner is a somewhat lonely and sad book. If you like Dan Brown, for instance, you might not like John Williams. However, is you’re up for something that operates on a higher level, you’ll appreciate it.