Born the child of a poor farmer in Missouri, William Stoner [the author] is urged by his parents to study new agriculture techniques at the state university. Digging instead into the texts of Milton and Shakespeare, [he] falls under the spell of the unexpected pleasures of English literature, and decides to make it his life. [He] is the story of that life. The sorrows of William Stoner are tempered, somehow, by the demands of the daily routine. His own ordinary story is one that reflects a deep, and deeply American, loneliness. Deciding to become an academic, his career inevitably distances himself from his parents, although his position in the department is compromised by a quarrel with a more ambitious professor. His marriage to a girl from a middle class family is loveless, while a midlife love affair with a younger colleague - evoked with painful poignancy - is exposed and forced to end from outside pressures. Williams depicts the quiet existence of a lonely man with a subtle yet ruthless honesty. The book's triumph is to make us feel this forgotten man is a hero - not out of pity or for any deed he has done, but simply for being the man he was - and he does this without a trace of sentimentality