"Life" in John Williams's Stoner

Known as the greatest American novel you've never heard of, thanks to the New Yorker, Stoner is often thought of as presenting a failed life. But how does this verdict align with the workings of literature? This article examines how Stoner constructs the life of its protagonist, claiming that the novel generates a sense of life more complex and compelling than a life-as-failure judgment permits: one that relates to how we read literature and the significance we enable it to have for living.