In Stoner's mind: to be John Williams (ePub)

It often happens, at the end of a book which is important to us, to ask ourselves how the idea of that story was born, how and by whom the protagonist that struck us was conceived. Sometimes, when digging up, we can be left disappointed. At other times, a new world ready to be explored opens in front of us with the awareness that the novel does not actually end with the last page, but it continues in the life of its author.
This is the case of John Williams (1922-1994), American writer who remained on the fringes of great literature until after his death and was praised for the rediscovery of Stoner, a novel which had to wait over forty years to turn from a hidden gem into a bestseller. In the folds of the veil seeming to cover the existence of this brilliant, learned and tortured professor at the University of Denver, there appears to glimpse at a reflection of William Stoner, the main character of his most famous book. A reflection that actually, after all, catches just one facet, however pure and sparkling, of the life of John Williams. For decades a cult object and a silent source of inspiration among students, professors, journalists and writers, Stoner is just one of the literary "clues" left by the writer.
The life of the American author could easily inspire a novel of its own: dolorous and dynamic, full of disappointments, but also full of accomplishment built over time and with great difficulty, ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. Through an itinerary also punctuated by unreleased images, this report portrays the author after having followed his tracks in Colorado, in Arkansas and in Missouri, discovering his personal documents, places he knew and the people who knew him.