Links & notes: 'Stoner'

Thank you to everyone who attended this month's conversation of John Williams' 1965 novel Stoner. This marked our first discussion back in person at Books Inc. Opera Plaza since early 2020.

Links and notes from the discussion:

• From The New Yorker: "The Greatest American Novel You've Never Heard Of" and "John Williams and the Canon that Might Have Been"

• The Poetry Foundation's profile of Yvor Winters, the "sage of Palo Alto," whose theory of literature influenced Williams

• The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel: John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life by Charles J. Shields (a biography published in 2018)

• "The Fall and Rise of William Stoner" (LitHub article)

• Is there a film adaptation? Not yet.

• The Act of Becoming, a documentary about the novel

• Local arts events that may be of interest:

  • Litquake concludes this Saturday with the Mission District-centered Litcrawl. (No cost.)

  • Open Studios begin this weekend and continue for the following three weekends. Find the schedule and details here.

Our November Discussion

For November, we turn to Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen.

Sunday, November 20, 2022

11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Pacific Time

In person at Books Inc. Opera Plaza and online.