Unexpected reading: "Stoner" by John Williams

It's not often these days that I read a novel cover to cover in one day. And yet this is what happened yesterday, entirely unexpectedly, with this book, Stoner, by John Williams. 

Stoner... who? you might say, as indeed I did. It seems to be a common reaction. I was given the book, in a nice hardback edition, by a very good old friend, but when I picked it up I couldn't remember what, if anything, she had told me about it or why she had decided to give it to me. Only after I had finished did I check online, to find that this was a widely-reviewed 2013 must-read, awarded the Waterstones Prize, no less. Strange though that, for all its eminence, every review of the book starts by remarking on the obscurity of the author and the slow-burning nature of this novel's success. It was first published in America in 1965, and in the UK in 1973. It seems to have been picked up by some critics, particularly in continental Europe, last year and to have enjoyed huge sales. Perhaps fittingly (as we shall see), this is all considerably too late for the author, who died in 1985.

However, I didn't need all those reviews and accounts of revival to register the quality of this book. For one thing, I read it in a day. For another, though I was at a concert in Bozar last night, I heard little of the music, as my mind was stuck on trying to work out how and why this book worked its peculiar power.

Jokily philosophical reading: "Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates", by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein

In the last review on this blog, after a particularly (and unjustifiably) long slog over Bring Up the Bodies, I said:  "I'm pining for a book that grabs me, a page-turner that needs to be read at every opportunity". 

So here I am writing about a book on philosophy as it pertains to death... Not really what I had in mind.

Not the obvious page-turning choice, perhaps, but - d'you know what? - it is a page turner, and I did pick it up whenever possible. Perhaps it's the jokes. Yes, the jokes help a lot... And the cartoons. For this is, to quote the blurb, "like the Intro to Philosophy class that you wanted to take in college but couldn't because it wasn't offered". The authors, Messrs Cathcart and Klein, are the real deal, that is to say they know their philosophy, being Harvard philosophy graduates and having written a lot (not all of it jokes), but feel the need to communicate it in a way which your regular guy (he's called Daryl, by the way) can understand. That means a lot of jokes and anecdotes.

Yet more Tudor reading: "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel

I feel I should be brief. So here goes.

This is once again an extraordinary and outstanding novel, a brilliant evocation of a historical period and the minds and motivations of the characters in its great political drama. It also took me an extraordinarily long time to read it. Though I wanted to dedicate quality time to it, I never seemed quite to manage it. 

In my post about Wolf Hall, best part of a year ago, I mentioned a similar phenomenon: the paradoxical experience of these books as both wonderful novels and rather hard slogs. Many people have since told me they feel the same. On this occasion, there was perhaps less difficulty - after reading Wolf Hall, it is easier to slip into Mantel narrative mode - but also less discovery.

And yet, don't get me wrong, this is a must-read, and when part three of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy comes out (The Mirror and the Light, apparently, expected 2015) I will definitely be reading it.  All the nice things I said about Wolf Hall hold good.

But right now, I'm pining for a book that grabs me, a page-turner that needs to be read at every opportunity. How that works out will emerge in the next review, coming a bit sooner than this one did, I hope.

And that's it. After the length, the brevity.