
Mrs. ‘Stoner’ Speaks: An Interview with Nancy Gardner Williams - overwhelm
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/20/mrs-stoner-speaks-an-interview-with-nancy-gardner-williams/
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retsibsi
I loved 'Stoner', but wished I could also have read the story from the
perspective of Stoner's wife (Edith). We see her as she appeared to Stoner,
and it would be easy to write her off with adjectives like uptight, frigid,
damaged, belligerent; but from the outside it would probably have been easy to
write Stoner off as an inattentive, unfaithful husband pouring his life into
profoundly unimportant work and going through an undignified mid-life crisis
-- or something similarly reductionist and dehumanising. I bet Edith's inner
life was at least as vivid as his, and whether or not her behaviour could be
rationalised, her pain was certainly just as real as his. That's part of the
genius of the book, though -- Williams shows us enough, and paints even the
somewhat neglected characters richly enough, to stimulate these thoughts.

Anyway, this is an interesting interview, but (fortunately for everyone
concerned) it gives the impression that Stoner and Edith were not modeled as
closely on John and Nancy Williams as I might have guessed. So the title is a
bit misleading.

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cafard
Thank you for posting this. I met the man once--as it happens, over beers. He
was pleasant to talk with, for the hour or so. Yet I gather he was pretty good
at making enemies.

As for "Mrs. 'Stoner'"\--the misogyny in the depiction of Stoner's wife in
that novel is breathtaking. Comparing a woman to that character is the sort of
offense that deserves ostracism. I am amazed at the title.

[Edit: No, I don't think that the Paris Review means to compary Nancy Gardner
Williams to the wife in Stoner; clearly this is short for "Mrs. [the fellow
who wrote] 'Stoner'". Still, it is jarring.]

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klank
I'm not familiar with the book at all.

It's interesting that you took the misogyny to be breathtaking yet it's not
mentioned on the book's wiki page at all despite having a fairly detailed plot
"overview".

Do you think the misogyny is breathtaking because of the cultural differences
between then and now or is the misogyny a n intentional trait of the main
character himself?

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sillypog
She is depicted as a deeply flawed and vindictive character. As a reader, it's
easy to hate her and as I was reading it I imagined the author must have hated
her too. But there are other women/girls in the story who come off in a much
more positive, almost angelic, light so I don't think the author could be
accused of misogyny here. Nor the husband in the book - his mariage seems to
be something unpleasant that happens to him but he never seems to hold his
wife's apparent flaws against her.

~~~
retsibsi
> But there are other women/girls in the story who come off in a much more
> positive, almost angelic, light so I don't think the author could be accused
> of misogyny here.

I don't think this is the best defence. Maybe 'misogyny' is a dangerously
ambiguous word here, but certainly _sexist_ writing can contain positive
portrayals of women. You've also got to take into account how much humanity
and depth the female characters are invested with, the types of traits they
are celebrated or derided for, and so on. (If a book contained only hateful
and angelic women, that would be suspiciously reminiscent of the Madonna-whore
dichotomy, which is a bit of a wanky phrase but I think has some truth to it.)

I think it would be fair to say that we don't get a full portrait of anyone
but Stoner, so the fact that Edith is arguably a bit of a caricature of the
broken, bitter woman doesn't necessarily tell us much about Williams's
attitude to women generally. And there's enough nuance in her portrayal to
leave space for her to be a real person behind the scenes.

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gwbas1c
I thought this was about some kind of new legal marijuana business or
activist.

Fooled me.

