The novel chronicles the obscure career of a professor of English literature.
William is the only son of a modest farming family.
At the cost of great sacrifices, his parents sent him to study agriculture, in the hope that he would one day return with what he had learned to improve the management of the land.
At university, the young Stoner falls in love with literature, and with books.
Above all, he chooses the shelter of the university’s secure walls.
As a friend once told him:

in the world you would have always been on the brink of success, but you would have been destroyed by your failures.
So you chose, you were chosen; providence....
snatched you from the clutches of the world and placed you safe here, among your brothers...
Who are you?.
A simple son of the soil, what do you expect of yourself?

These words prove prophetic of what will be a mundane life: a gradual retreat into mediocrity, shrinking into a corner, accepting defeat before even fighting, demanding little from existence.
He marries only to discover immediately that he is not loved, yet he does not rebel; he takes on an exorbitant debt for his modest salary, simply to buy the house his wife desires; and it is she, once again, who decides to get pregnant, giving him a daughter whom William, however, cannot love as he would like and who soon becomes a stranger to him.
Our protagonist accepts everything for the sake of an easy life, for a sluggish peace of mind.
He falls in love with a young teacher, who reciprocates his love.
But when the dean of the faculty urges him to bring the affair to a resolution, what does our “courageous” William do?

He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the low, dark ceiling that had been the sky of their world.
He said calmly: if I threw it all away, if I quit and went away, you’d come with me, wouldn’t you? Yes, but you know I won’t do it, don’t you? Yes, I know....
Because then, Stoner explained to himself,...
we would both become something else, something other than ourselves.
We would be nothing

.
And like all those who bury “their heads in the sand,” William is quite glad that his young lover left without telling him and that

she left him no farewell note to say things that could not be said

.
It is better to live within the walls of the University of Columbia, where William had entered as a student, had become a professor, and would retire, as late as possible.
No matter if, in the meantime, epochal events unfold in real life, overwhelming the lives of millions of individuals: the First World War, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Second World War, and the harsh postwar years.
As happens with many intellectuals, it is enough to contemplate them, not to live them.
It comes as no surprise, then, that he touches a book on his deathbed.
Books gave him that security he sought all his life, and for which he renounced truly living.

In his introduction, John McGahern states that Stoner is “a real hero” because

he bore witness to values that are important...
The important thing in the novel for me is Stoner’s sense of a mission.
Teaching for him is a mission....
his mission gave him a particular kind of identity and made him what he was

.
For teaching, Stoner renounced everything.
But are we sure one can be a good teacher by refraining from fighting for the people one loves, from defending one's country, from staying close to the land of one's parents—in other words, educating others without living oneself? And did not William think so as well? At the end of his life, he indeed acknowledges that

he had wanted to be a teacher, and he had become one; yet he knew, he had always known, that for most of his life he had been an indifferent man...
Dispassionately, rationally, he contemplated the failure that his life must appear to have been...
What did you expect? he asked himself.

The academic setting must not mislead us.
The real story of the novel is the timeless tale of someone who prefers a mediocre life to an intense existence, habitual and quiet relationships to turbulent yet profound emotional bonds.
In short, someone who chooses indifference and withdrawal into oneself (an escape into books?) rather than allowing themselves to be swept away by events and affections.

The novel is deemed a masterpiece today, fifty years after its publication.
Could the copyright have expired? For it is difficult to fathom what reasons there might be to consider it a masterpiece.
To be sure, the writing is exceedingly elegant and grammatically flawless, worthy of a fine professor of English.
Yet it is banal, just as the plot proves tedious.
This petty academic world is particularly irritating.
It is not a slice of the world.
It is like reading about the serene life of a medieval monastery while the barbarians rage outside: a useless microcosm.
Granted, we live in the era of anti-heroes, but for God’s sake—give us some real stories and characters rich in personality!

Why read it? It reads well, but leaves little behind.