John Edward Williams

Author profile

born

in Clarksville, Texas, The United States

August 29, 1922

died

March 03, 1994

gender

male

genre

Literature & Fiction

About this author

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John Edward Williams was born on August 29, 1922, in Clarksville, Texas, near the Red River east of Paris, Texas and brought up in Texas. His grandparents were farmers; his stepfather was a janitor in a post office. After flunking out of junior college and holding various positions with newspapers and radio stations in the Southwest, Williams enlisted in the USAAF early in 1942, spending two and a half years as a sergeant in India and Burma. Several years after the war, Williams enrolled in the University of Denver, where he received his B.A. in 1949 and an M.A. in 1950. During this period, his first novel, Nothing But the Night, was published (1948), and his first volume of poems, The Broken Landscape, appeared the following year. In the f...more John Edward Williams was born on August 29, 1922, in Clarksville, Texas, near the Red River east of Paris, Texas and brought up in Texas. His grandparents were farmers; his stepfather was a janitor in a post office. After flunking out of junior college and holding various positions with newspapers and radio stations in the Southwest, Williams enlisted in the USAAF early in 1942, spending two and a half years as a sergeant in India and Burma. Several years after the war, Williams enrolled in the University of Denver, where he received his B.A. in 1949 and an M.A. in 1950. During this period, his first novel, Nothing But the Night, was published (1948), and his first volume of poems, The Broken Landscape, appeared the following year. In the fall of 1950, Williams went to the University of Missouri, where he taught and received a Ph.D. in 1954. In the fall of 1955, Williams took over the directorship of the creative writing program at the University of Denver, where he taught for more than 30 years. Williams's second novel, Butcher's Crossing, was published by Macmillan in 1960, followed by English Renaissance Poetry, an anthology published in 1963 by Doubleday which he edited and for which he wrote the introduction. His second book of poems, The Necessary Lie, appeared in 1965 and was published by Verb Publications. In 1965 he became editor of University of Denver Quarterly (later Denver Quarterly) until 1970. In 1965, Williams's third novel, Stoner, was published by Viking Press. It has been recently been re-issued by The New York Review of Books. His fourth novel, Augustus, was published by Viking Press in 1973 and won the prestigious National Book Award in 1973 and remains in print.

The critic Morris Dickstein has noted that, while Butcher's Crossing, Stoner, and Augustus are "strikingly different in subject," they "show a similar narrative arc: a young man's initiation, vicious male rivalries, subtler tensions between men and women, fathers and daughters, and finally a bleak sense of disappointment, even futility." Dickstein called Stoner, in particular, "something rarer than a great novel -- it is a perfect novel, so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving, it takes your breath away."

After retiring from the University of Denver in 1986, Williams moved with his wife, Nancy, to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he resided until he died of respiratory failure on March 3, 1994. A fifth novel, The Sleep of Reason, was left unfinished at the time of his death.(less)

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Average rating: 4.27 · 4,892 ratings · 1,019 reviews · 6 distinct works · Similar authors

	Stoner 4.33 of 5 stars 4.33 avg rating — 3,706 ratings — published 1965 — 29 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Butcher's Crossing by John Edward Williams, Michelle Latiolais (Introduction) 4.16 of 5 stars 4.16 avg rating — 684 ratings — published 1960 — 16 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Augustus 4.04 of 5 stars 4.04 avg rating — 550 ratings — published 1972 — 16 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Nothing But the Night 2.83 of 5 stars 2.83 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 1948	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Necessary Lie 0.0 of 5 stars 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1965	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Broken Landscape: Poems 0.0 of 5 stars 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1949	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by John Edward Williams

“To read without joy is stupid.”
― John Edward Williams

75 people liked it

“Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.”
― John Edward Williams, Stoner

42 people liked it

“In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another.”
― John Edward Williams, Stoner

14 people liked it

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Polls

What book would you like to read for April's group read? The theme is poetry.

Matchedby Ally Condie

22 votes 22.9%

The Standby Stephen King

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Soldby Patricia McCormick

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If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

5 votes 5.2%

Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation by Roger Housden

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Stoner by John Edward Williams

5 votes 5.2%

My American Kundiman by Patrick Rosal

2 votes 2.1%

96 total votes

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John Edward Williams

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