The saddest novel you'll ever read? - & one of the best: Stoner

Readers of this blog have seen my series of posts in praise of John Williams's Stoner (1965); you'll also have seen many of my posts about novels that start off w/ promise but never deliver. Stoner is the real thing and I was not only continuously engaged w/ every aspect of this deeply sorrowful narrative but I think the narrative got more assured and stronger as we draw toward the inevitable conclusion - I don't think I'm giving anything away in that this is obviously the story of a life, and it ends in a death. Williams handles the death scene as well or better than any writer I can think of or recall - on a par with Tolstoy, in fact. Stoner's slow demise at the end had me nearly in tears - not only for the pathos of his death but in particular for his reflections on his life: what had he accomplished?, what meaning did his life have?, what meaning, what purpose does any life have? Like so much in this novel, and in all great fiction, there is much ambiguity and much to ponder - we know a little more about Stoner than he does about himself - so even as he dismisses his life out of hand (or does he?, not quite, he finds some solace in his final moments) we can understand that his life may have had greater effect on others than he could think or imagine. But so much of life slipped through his fingers - his lack of spirit, his many compromises, his failure to stand up for himself - in contrast w/ most protagonists - even up to the last moment, when the man who ruined his life holds a tribute dinner party and gives a speech full of bromides and hypocrisy - and what does Stoner say? Pretty much: thanks for giving me the opportunity to teach. We wish he would have ripped into Lomax - but then, he wouldn't be the character, the person I almost want to say, that he is. This is a truly trenchant, thoughtful, and beautifully written novel beginning to end, and it's also among the saddest books you'll ever read - so perhaps not for everyone, but it's a mystery and a disgrace that this novel should have lived in obscurity for so long - till NY Review of Books press reissued.