I just finished this. Bawled my fucking eyes out. Why was Edith

Because she was raised to get whatever the hell she wanted. Look at the character of her parents.

Poor Grace

>>9081567
Seriously now, what the fuck was Lomax' problem? He seems evil for no real reason at all or at least no motive

>>9081749
Might be remembering wrong because I read it so long ago, but didnt Lomax start being a dick after Stoner tried to fail the cripple kid?

>>9081749
he was a fruit

>>9081757
Yes, but with good reason. He was an arrogant, asocial, pseudo faggot.

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>>9081760

>>9081757
Yeah he does but what's up with that? The kid should have been kicked out, he was a faggot. Why did he hate stoner so much after that

>>9081772
>Yeah he does but what's up with that?
its not that strange dude

Lomax obviously saw himself in that kid and so took serious offense to Stoner's treatment of him, however justified it might've been.

>>9081772
lomax was a fruit for the kid, plus they were cripplebuddies

he was reeeeeing over perceived bigotry in stoner

>>9081776
Was he actually gay? I don't think this was ever implied. I think he just felt sorry for the kid.

>>9081779
no, im making it up

>>9081781
Uh, okay then

>>9081783
made ya think

>>9081757
I thought it started after he got drunk at stoner's party and made, what seemed to be, a pass at his wife.

>>9081567

I think Edith had borderline personality disorder

>>9081749
he saw himself in walker and therefor tried to protect him

>>9082097
This. I thought that was pretty obvious.

Also, side-note. Despite Walker's pretensions, he seems smarter than most undergrads today. Smarter than most professors even. Certainly smarter than I am. Is Stoner supposed to be the last of a dying breed? Most ambitious students/ teachers I know at University engage in a kind of incestuous back-patting ritual with a motive of gain. i.e. they'll host a literary event with themselves or their peers as speakers, and the only students to attend will be those hoping to rub shoulders with the speakers and get some influence. TL;DR: Are most modern academics, Walkers?

The whole Lomax and cripple kid situation was really weird. Was there nobody else who could see that the kid was a bad student? Why not have the interview again with three different professors and look at the inevitably poor (for the cripple kid) outcome?

Fantastic book though. John Williams is my all time favourite author. I'd rank his books as such:

1. Augustus
2. Butcher's Crossing
3. Stoner
4. Nothing But The Night

They're all masterpieces though, don't let the ranking discourage you from reading them all.

>>9081779
it was kind of implied, i thought, when stoner is talking to his friend (the dean, forget his name), and they both say what the hell, why is lomax doing this shit, probably don't want to know...

>>9082115
nice thought, and that's probably true to a large extent

>>9081567
a part of the book, i think, is stoner's inability to act on his own behalf, but especially with edith

he should have stopped her from being such a cunt, if nothing else than for his relationship with his daughter, he should have told edith they're moving so he didn't have to put up with lomax's gay ass bullshit, etc.

>>9081567
use spoiler tags, you fucking monkey

>>9081567

Agreeing with this guy >>9082186

I think Edith was more of a challenging personality, and when pressed against Stoner's overall passivity and submission, it would irritate her and only inflate the toxicity regarding how Edith would think of—and interact with—her husband. She was just feeding her own bitterness into a feedback loop, while Stoner lacked a will to burst from his inhibitions/complacency, and they both became more and more miserable.

That said, I haven't read it for five years, but this is the feeling I remember. I had just pulled the trigger on a divorce from a marriage that reminded me all too much like the Edith/Stoner dynamic, and this book really cemented a determination in my head to watch myself and pay attention to when I may be settling in life, and when I should take a risk for something better.

>>9082348
>spoilers/reading for plot
And you wonder why you aren't patrician

>>9082186
That made me so furious. I feel that maybe David Masters could have knocked some sense into him. Did anyone get the sense that Dave was a Hemingway type who died before he could write the great American novel?

>>9082186

He should have just raped her when she started denying him sex. During those times he would have gotten away with it. Who would she even complain to? Hell people would even think he were in the right back then, sex being an important part of marriage and all.

>>9083831
Yeesh

>>9081567
Finished what, a painting?

>>9082388
that'sexactlywhatI call moving book

>>9083987
Try reading the thread, oh wait I forgot nobody reads here, i'm on /lit/

>>9084044
It's obviously Stoner you cuck, it's just incredibly poor form the way OP started. It would be like starting a thread about Thus Spoke Zarathustra with just Wanderer above the Sea of Fog and referring to nothing but "it".

>>9084065
>pretend to not know what it is
>tell you how obvious it is
>I was just pretending to be retarded
everytime

>>9084070
>pretending you don't understand sarcasm
>was just pretending to be retarded
>shitposting hurr durr

>>9084070
Kek

>>9084065
dumb.

>>9084026
>that'sexactly

>>9081567
She was either sheltered(which is undoubtedly true since she was from a bourgeois family), or she was mentally ill.

Either way, it didn't seem like it ran that deep consider the book ended the way it did.

>>9081749
He identified with ol' crippled Walker and was probably ashamed/regretful about his behavior at the party and his opening up to Stoner

It's actually concerning that almost everyone is on Stoner's side in the Walker problem. Wasn't Walker one of the brightest in the class? He was not a good student to Stoner's eyes and I get the conflict, but the book clearly shows a passionate, maybe too edgy, smart guy, with the ability to improvise (up to a certain level) and to relate concepts easily.
Don't universities want more Walkers than Katherines (let's just accept he was idealising her)? If it was me I'd surely prefer being a sort of Kierkegaard than a boring good enough Locke.

ALL RIGHT GUYS, WHAT'S SO GOOD ABOUT THIS BOOK? WHAT WOULD YOU COMPARE IT TO?

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>>9085129
Your greatest fears