John Williams – Stoner – Comment.

First published in 1965, to then appear in Great Britain in 1973, to finally be published in 2024 by Vintage Classics, this astounding novel suddenly caught my attention in 2026. While online, and perusing actual bookstores, the book continued to pop-up, grabbing my attention, as if politely requesting to be read. After many weeks of this repeated phenomenon, I finally broke down and bought a paperback. On the front cover under the title reads, ‘The greatest novel you’ve never read.’ Guardian. This statement cannot be truer. 

We enter the life of a young man from a poor farming family in Missouri. William Stoner’s father insists that he attends university to study agriculture, to better the prospects of the family business. At the end of his freshman year, he signs up for an English class. On one auspicious day, where a particular Shakesperean sonnet is being read and interpreted. Professor Sloane reads the entire piece, repeating the last two lines:

‘This thou perceivest, which makes thy love 

 strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.’

Sloanes eyes came back to Willian Stoner, and he said dryly, Mr. Shakespear speaks to you across three hundred years, Mr. Stoner, do you hear him?’

The young man doesn’t respond immediately and realizes he’s been holding his breath through the entire reading. But in this instant of the moment, Stoner feels what the American philosopher, William James, describes as a religious experience. The soul of the young man has shifted, and it is here that he changes his major to English studies, to attain his undergraduate degree, his Masters, and finally his PhD, where he’s offered a job as a teacher, remaining in this job for over forty years. 

During his teaching career, Stoner lives through two world wars and feels the sadness and waste of the first one, and great anger during the second. 

Stoner believes he has fallen in love with a girl who he pursues and marries within months of the courtship. Edith turns out to be not what she appears and reveals herself to be a selfish and vindictive woman, ensuing years of marital pain and unhappiness. 

There are two central antagonists in Stoner’s life: another vindictive individual, a charismatic cripple, Dr. Lomax, and of course, Mrs. Edith Stoner. Because of a disagreement about a student, a matter of principle for Stoner, Lomax goes to war with our protagonist that lasts forty years. 

This novel is a beautiful rendering of a simple life of a man devoted to his job of teaching. He views his students with care and diligence and constantly endeavors to improve his skills and knowledge. Although the story touches on many themes, above relationships, his one and only experience of real love, and the varied conflicts with small minded and harmful people, the man’s devotion and responsibility for teaching, a job he truly loves, stands as his greatest quality. 

Many readers and critics have described Stoner as a sad account of an uneventful life filled with mundane conflicts in a loveless world. Life is full of unspoken ‘heroes’ who move through this existence without the fanfare of celebrity. Though William Stoner’s life appears insignificant, we see great significance in an individual life well lived. 

The greatest novel you’ve never read. 

Wandering Rant on War and Legacy Media.

 

It’s becoming much more difficult to watch legacy media continue to lie about the current war with Iran. In Australia, the Murdoch cabal has no shame repeating President Trump’s on-going barrage of BS, and other warmongering “news” outlets stoking hatred and the looming threat of war with China. Murdoch media is a hateful, racist propaganda machine and their “journalists” merely wannabe celebrities, lusting after clicks and followers. It comes down to ensuring their audience is brainwashed into believing all Muslims are terrorists, and Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian's is justified because they have the “right” to defend themselves. Indeed, anyone with half a brain knows this to be utter rubbish. The most disturbing aspect to this barrage of propaganda nonsense is that many people believe it. Every time I watch Australia’s ABC, particularly when they “report” on the US/Iran war, several brain cells die, never to return. 

The cancer of Zionism has infiltrated all aspects of Western culture. The UK over the last three years has become a totalitarian state. Even their once admirable justice system is tainted with Zionist bacteria, where 80-year-old ladies go to jail for protesting the murder of thousands of Palestinian children. This is never reported by the Murdoch goons, because they’re much more interested in Prince Harry’s latest antics and his wife’s next cooking show. But of course, these distractions are necessary to ensure we don’t notice are civil rights flushing down the proverbial toilet. Australia is rapidly following suit. 

The Zionist infiltration of Australian society is a cancer that has metastasized in culture and our politics. If Australia doesn’t wake up soon, we’ll end up like Venezuela, recolonized by the US and the Israel/Zionist parasites. If this has not happened already. As Australia has been a loyal member of the 5-eyes-network of intelligence agencies – US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and I believe deeply infiltrated by Mossad, any hope of removing this deeply psychotic ideology, is now near impossible. Currently the US government voted to merge their military with Israels military and Intelligence, which I believe is unconstitutional and an act of treason. The UK, too, is clearly compromised and as always, Australia will follow in line like a good little colony.

The Iran war is the most unpopular war since the US’s invasion of Vietnam. This is a war of aggression started by the US and Israel. This is most certainly Israel’s war. Ironically, and not surprising, Israel refuses to engage in the conflict, using American money, bullets, bombs and the blood of US soldiers. One would think that US citizens would be up in arms about this cowardly arrangement, but generally there’s only silence. When the war escalates, and it will, and American soldiers begin falling in droves, there will be a reaction. Over the next month, when the economies around the planet begin to tank, and the cost of living explodes, there will be a reaction. It’s only a matter of time. 

There has never been so much uncertainty in the world since the turn of the century. Fascism is rearing its reptilian head; the US and Israel are mass killing across the globe and justifying it like it is just another Tuesday. We’ve become desensitized to genocide, and the ‘genocidaires'’ are running out of excuses, resorting to infantile name-calling as their central arguments. World leaders are threatening to use nuclear weapons, and the legacy media merely shrugs. 

These are uncertain times, even interesting times, but seemingly more dangerous than ever before. 

Something needs to change. 

Albert Camus – Committed Writings – Comment.

 

The French Algerian philosopher, Albert Camus, (1913 – 1960) is more widely known for his novel’s The Stranger (1942) and The Plague (1947). In French philosophical circles his writings on Absurdism, expressed in his novel, The Stranger, was seen as a direct refute of French Existentialism, brought into the mainstream by French philosopher, J.P Sartre. Camus was a prolific writer of essays and plays, and won world acclaim for Caligula, The Just, and the theatrical adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Possessed. Famous as a left-wing activist, his actions in The French Resistance during WWII were extensive. In 1957, at the age of 44, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Contained in Committed Writings are ‘Letters to a German Friend’, that inform his loyalty to France and criticisms of the Nazi regime, ‘Reflections on the Guillotine’, arguments against Capital punishment, and his Nobel Prize speeches, expressing his views on politics, writing and the engagement of art as a form of resistance. 

The more persuasive piece is “Reflections on the Guillotine” arguing against the use of capital punishment by the state. The state does not have the right, either morally or socially, to execute its citizens. To argue that imposing the death penalty on a convicted criminal to any extent poses as a deterrent against future crimes has proven over time simply not to be true. Public executions as spectacle acted more as entertainment for the mob rather than a warning for people not to kill. Currently executions are performed in private with only a few acting as witnesses. Camus argues that waiting for one’s eminent execution while on death row is worse than the execution itself. As our western justice system is far from perfect, juries get it wrong, and the state ends up killing the innocent. Camus proposes many other arguments that are all similarly persuasive. 

In the essay, ‘Create Dangerously’, he proposes that artists and writers, in their efforts to reveal reality, have become writers of consumer society, hiding away from communal misery, hiding behind mere works of entertainment. The movement of “arts for art's sake” was a justification as an artist to express “beauty”, when in fact it was an act of cowardice, a denial of social and political responsibility. The writer must speak for those who cannot speak for themselves, avoid the ego, and engage in solid brotherhood. Camus writes: 

Art develops between two chasms: frivolity and propaganda. Along the high ridge where great artists keep moving forward, every step is dangerous, extremely risky. Yet it is within that risk, and only there, that true artistic freedom lies...Like all freedom, it is a never-ending risk, a grueling experience, and that is why today we flee from such risk, just as we flee from freedom, which demands so much of us...

We live in dangerous times, and the artist must face political repression, war, genocide and bloodshed, and use them with ‘careful consideration’ in the creative process. 

The artist’s days of irresponsibility are over. 

These essays, despite being written over 70 years ago, are arguments that are relevant today. The rise of arrogant fascism that claims righteousness based on spurious ideals and violence. Does the State have the moral right to execute its own citizens? Art as ‘entertainment’ created merely for a consumerist society, has lost its meaning, and must now take risks, moving beyond received wisdom. 

Those interested in these subjects will find Camus’ Committed Writings educational and a desire for further investigation.