A blog post that is a review of the novel Stoner by John Williams.

A friend said to me on gchat that he wanted to read a book called Stoner. He said it had an unintentionally funny cover. The person sent me a picture of the book. I thought it was sort of funny too. I think the person on the cover looks like a sad scholar. I think of "stoners," of loose clothing, bloodshot eyes, and underlying personality issues. I saw a movie called "Sunshine Cleaning" and a woman in that movie says she doesn't do drugs or alcohol because she thinks that they will create cracks in her psychology and bad things will enter those cracks and they will never come out.

When I started reading the book I quickly realized that the narrative was unintentionally funny too. Then the book was not so funny. But I always felt that the book could be unintentionally funny at any moment. For example the main character enters a relationship with a woman who becomes his wife. It seems that these characters hate each other after like the first few weeks that they are with each other.

I lost this book. It was the library's. I have only lost two other things in my life in a fashion as mysterious at this. Once I threw a Rambo figurine into my closet filled with toys and went to bed. I went back to the closet for days and days and never found it. In college I left a swiss army watch on the bathroom sink. I went back for it and it was gone. I asked each person individually for the watch. It was obviously stolen.

The book was readable, from what I remember. It described rooms a lot. The appearance of people. It described the thoughts of the main character a lot. The relationships change a lot over time and I feel the changes are well developed. I feel like there is some abstract language but the language for the most part is very concrete. I have done no research on this book. I've read the wikipedia page and there isn't much there. There is one praising blurb.

I have had to buy the book from amazon dot com at a lower price than what the library has asked for the book.