I am not generally in favor of content warnings. It’s not that I have any problem with them per se; it’s just that if you start doing them, you have to list everything that could possibly upset anyone. Which could really be anything. My mother knows a woman who is afraid of kittens. Kittens!

But this book should come with a warning. It is incredibly depressing. So depressing that, as I was reading it, the thought occurred to me that it could actually be in some sense dangerous. I am not prone to depression or melancholy, and yet even I was filled with a profound sense of gloom after reading this. I would say if you do read it, you should be sure you have someone you can talk to about it, because otherwise it might get just too damn bleak. For myself, I re-read a Zachary Shatzer book after finishing it, as a sort of satyr play.

What, you ask, is Stoner about? Not a drug enthusiast or the famous firearm designer, as you might have thought, but a man named William Stoner born on a small Missouri farm, back when the West was young… oh, wait, no; that’s Frank and Jesse James. Stoner is born on a small Missouri farm in 1891. Farm life is bleak and hard and miserable, and so, in 1910, Stoner’s father suggests he take classes at the University of Missouri, an institution set up to educate rural youths such as himself and mold them into productive citizens. (Their motto is salus populi suprema lex esto: “the health of the people shall be the supreme law.”)

Stoner enrolls at Mizzou, but finds the agricultural science classes boring. English literature catches his fancy, and he seeks a graduate degree in it, much to his parents’ disappointment. From there, he goes on to a career teaching at the same university. He meets a woman named Edith, whom he marries for no particular reason, and their marriage quickly proves to be an unhappy one. Despite this, they have a daughter, whom they name Grace. Stoner bonds with Grace when she is young and Edith is frequently absent, but then Edith begins manipulating her to keep her away from her father.

Meanwhile, Stoner’s professional life is the dreary, repetitive drudgery of teaching the same classes over and over, intermixed with the petty factional squabbles common to academia. Anyone who has ever been connected with a university for an extended period will recognize familiar types: the scheming faculty members with their intradepartmental political jockeying, and the malingering, dishonest students who put more effort into gaming the system than into studying their assignments.

All of it makes Stoner miserable, but only in a very detached sort of way. Frequently, we are told he views his problems as if he is watching them happening to somebody else. Some might call this stoicism or perseverance. But to me, it called to mind a line from a Monty Python skit: “He doesn’t know when he’s beaten, this boy! He doesn’t know when he’s winning either. He has no sort of sensory apparatus!”

Stoner is just a non-entity. A vaguely sad non-entity, but when it seems as if he himself can’t be bothered to care that his life sucks, well, why should I?

Stoner was more or less ignored when it was published in 1965, and only recently rediscovered in the age of the internet. This book has over 18,000 reviews on Amazon, most of them positive. It’s also tagged with something called “Best of #BookTok”, which means it’s popular on social media. Which amazes me, because it seems like exactly the sort of book that wouldn’t interest the TikTok crowd, what with its slow pace, historical setting, and lack of sparkling vampires. In a way, I view it as a good sign that a book like this can still find an audience today.

But not that good of a sign, because it’s still an unbelievably grim slog. A lot of reviews say that, basically, that’s the point. Stoner’s entire life is drab and uninteresting, like so many people’s lives, and yet the author was able to weave a narrative out of a completely dull non-story.

I have my own theory as to why the book is more popular now than it was upon its original publication. I suspect Stoner is most interesting to people who are familiar with the inner-workings of academia. In the 1960s, this was a smaller share of the population. But as access to college has increased, and especially as more students have sought post-graduate degrees, the percentage of people who can relate to Stoner has grown as well.

Which is a rather ominous message, given that the theme of the book seems to be that academic life is gloomy and wretched. Then again, it doesn’t suggest that Stoner’s agrarian parents were living the Life of Reilly, either. Basically, there are no happy endings here. All that was missing was a Barry Lyndon-esque epilogue in case we hadn’t gotten the point already: “It was in the reign of Franklin Roosevelt that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled…”

So, the big question: should you read the damn thing? Well… it’s hard to say. It’s well-written, and given the aggressively tedious subject matter, I have to give the author credit for making it fairly readable. I kept going after all, with morbid curiosity, wanting to know what awful thing Stoner would have to deal with next, and what his new excuse would be for not making his own life better.

Probably any young person just going off to college should read this. Then they can decide for themselves if they want to risk ending up like Stoner. But I don’t think many college-age kids read this blog. So for my typical readers: if you love well-written and crushingly depressing literary fiction, sure, give it a shot. Otherwise, steer clear.