"The sadness of John William’s Stoner is of its own particular kind. It is not, say, the operatic sadness of The Good Soldier, or the grindingly sociological
sadness of New Grub Street. It feels a purer, less literary kind, closer to life's true sadness. As a reader, you can see it coming in the way you can often see life's sadness coming, knowing there is little you can do about it. Except, since you are a reader,
you can at least defer it. I found that when reading Stoner for the first time, I would limit myself most days to 30 or 40 pages, preferring to put off until the morrow knowledge of what the eponymous hero, Stoner, might next have to bear."
