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Stoner, continued

Poor Stoner.  Edith not only is at war with him, she is winning.  She subverts his close relationship with his daughter Grace, pretending to keep Grace away so that he can work. She takes over his studio, relegates him to a miserable room, then takes that away too.  He has a trouble experience with a student (slightly deformed) who is an academic fraud.  He flunks the students, but runs afoul of a powerful man in the English department (also slightly deformed) who champions this student.  Stoner's enemy becomes head of the English department. He can't fire Stoner, but he gives him a miserable set of classes and an even more miserable schedule.

All is going badly, but now a female graduate student who audited one of Stoner's classes stops by his office.  She wants him to read her dissertation (rough draft). He puts it off, then reads at the last minute.  He is so taken that he misses the meeting with the girl--no sense of time.

Excellent sense of melancholy . . . Stoner's academic integrity is convincing . . . the alienation from Grace is both sad and believable.

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