John Williams' _Stoner_ is the best novel that I've read this year

Isn't this a beautiful cover?

Six years ago, I read this blog post of Matt Cheney's and thought, "Wow, he sure is heaping a lot of praise on what seems like a very dull and cliched book." I mean, here's the plot description from Amazon.

William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state…