The first thing we ask when a book is recommended to us is, "What's it about?" In many ways, a novel is no different than a pop song: one with a good hook that's immediately compelling and easily distilled fares better in the marketplace than one that's obtuse. That may help to explain why John Williams' Stoner was virtually ignored upon its publication in 1965 and has spent many of the years since out of print. Though a later Williams novel shared the 1973 National Book Award, his portrait of the life and death of a reticent, dutiful English professor might appear to be prosaic, pedestrian, and kind of square.

Expanding the synopsis doesn't help much. The book begins as William Stoner leaves his family's rural Missouri farm, on foot, for the University of Missouri in 1910, intending to study agriculture. After an English class with a professor-turned-mentor, however, Stoner changes his major to literature. Upon graduation, the same professor urges him to continue on as a graduate student. Stoner's life thence until his death in 1956 is driven by the soul-affirming power of books and his farm-bred work ethic — both of which manifest themselves in his dedication to teaching. In the end, it is as a teacher that he finds true meaning: teaching is his sanctuary from the vicissitudes of departmental politics, from a loveless marriage and an ill-fated affair, and from a changing culture and a world at war.

It's hard to imagine a novel this "quiet" being published today (at least by an unknown author), but it's even more difficult to imagine how it was written. There's nothing much that happens that the reader can't already see coming; in some sense we are as resigned to Stoner's fate as he is. And yet the work deserves to be called a "perfect novel" — there's not a misplaced word or a trace of contrivance. In its mission to make a hero of an ordinary man who would be a minor character in any other book, Stoner succeeds beyond all measure. So what's it about? It's about life — aren't all the good ones?

-Chris Parris-Lamb