I just finished this, would love to have a discussion about its

>>8397207
>Do you think there is any significance in Stoner being referred to by his last name the entire time?

Americans do this all the time, apparently

>>8397210
Do other countries not do that? It's specifically a male thing here, females always get referred to by first name

>>8397210
True, but there are passages in which he is referred to by his first name instead, a scene which comes to mind is when he is discussing his marriage with Edith's parents the first time

>>8397210
Lots of people around the world do it with athletes.

There are couple of places where he describes dim light in the the room, and darkness in the corners, e.g. in hotel room, in his study, and in basement classroom, and I think it symbolizes the worst that's about to happen in his happiest moments.

Edith and Finch refer to him as Willy and Bill. I think Lomax calls him Bill until the Walker situation. There's not much behind it, really.

Dave's talk is one of favorites, as is whole last chapter. Also,

Five days before the marriage took place the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor; and William
Stoner watched the ceremony with a mixture of feeling that he had not had before. Like many others
who went through that time, he was gripped by what he could think of only as a numbness, though he
knew it was a feeling compounded of emotions so deep and intense that they could not be
acknowledged because they could not be lived with. It was the force of a public tragedy he felt, a
horror and a woe so all-pervasive that private tragedies and personal misfortunes were removed to
another state of being, yet were intensified by the very vastness in which they took place, as the
poignancy of a lone grave might be intensified by a great desert surrounding it. With a pity that was
almost impersonal he watched the sad little ritual of the marriage and was oddly moved by the
passive, indifferent beauty of his daughter's face and by the sullen desperation on the face of the young
man. (XV)

and

He had, in odd ways, given it to every moment of his life, and had perhaps given it most fully when he was unaware of his giving. It was a passion neither of the mind nor of the flesh; rather, it was a force that comprehended them both, as if they were but the matter of love, its specific substance. To a woman or to a poem, it said simply: Look! I am alive.


What I think is also worth discussing is comparison between Sloan and Stoner, Stoner and Lomax, Lomax and Walker, Edith and her mother, Edith and Grace etc.

>>8397440
>There are couple of places where he describes dim light in the the room, and darkness in the corners, e.g. in hotel room, in his study, and in basement classroom, and I think it symbolizes the worst that's about to happen in his happiest moments.

I think its more than just a couple of places. Its also found it places that aren't bad moments to him; a notable passage comes to mind:

Sometimes, in his attic room at night, hewould look up from the book he was reading and gaze in the dark corners of the his room, where the lamplight flickered against the shadows. If he stared long and intently, the darkness gathered into a light, which took the insubstantial shape of what he had been reading. (I)

>>8397210

it's very impersonal