a study in inaction: a conversation about john william's "stoner"
stoner , by john williams, is the portrait of a man who lives just adjacent to himself. he walks the length of his life like a ghost inhabiting the idea of a person, present but untethered, more spectator than participant. his story is not shaped by action, but by the slow erosion of potential. it is a life built on absence, on everything that might have happened but didn’t. his isolation doesn’t arrive from circumstance alone; it is intrinsic, embedded in the fabric of who he is. william stoner carries himself like someone who believes too much of anything — too much joy, too much ambition, too much love — is an indulgence he has no business claiming. not when there are bills to pay. not when there is the quiet business of surviving. at the university, he is a competent professor. thoughtful. quietly principled. and yet, he never fully steps into his role. he never allows himself the conviction that he has something worth offering. he lectures like a man talking not to his students, b...