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{{Short description|American writer (1922–1994)}}
{{About|the author|other people named John Williams|John Williams (disambiguation)}}
{{Lead too short|date=May 2026}}
{{Infobox writer 
| name = John Williams
| image = John Edward Williams.jpg
| caption =
| birth_date = {{birth date|1922|8|29|mf=y}}
| birth_place = [[Clarksville, Texas]], US
| death_date = {{death date and age|1994|3|3|1922|8|22|mf=y}}
| death_place = [[Fayetteville, Arkansas]]
| occupation = {{flatlist|
* Author
* editor
* professor
}}
| genre = Novel
| movement =
| notable_works = ''[[Butcher's Crossing]]'' (1960)<br>''[[Stoner (novel)|Stoner]]'' (1965)<br>''[[Augustus (Williams novel)|Augustus]]'' (1972)
| awards = {{awards|[[National Book Award]]|1973|Augustus}}
| influences =
| influenced =
| signature =
}}

'''John Edward Williams''' (August 29, 1922 – March 3, 1994) was an American author, editor and professor. He was best known for his novels ''[[Butcher's Crossing]]'' (1960), ''[[Stoner (novel)|Stoner]]'' (1965), and ''[[Augustus (Williams novel)|Augustus]]'' (1972),<ref name=saxon>[https://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/05/obituaries/john-williams-71-a-novelist-editor-and-professor-of-english.html "John Williams, 71, a Novelist, Editor and Professor of English"], Wolfgang Saxon, ''[[The New York Times]]'', March 5, 1994.</ref> which won a U.S. [[National Book Award]].<ref name=nba1973/>

==Life==
[[File:John Edward Williams.png|thumb|Williams in the 1940s]]
Williams was born in [[Clarksville, Texas]].<ref name=saxon/> Shortly thereafter, his family moved to [[Wichita Falls, Texas]], in pursuit of the [[Texas oil boom]].<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life By Charles J. Shields | isbn=9781477317389 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ga9lDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT15|access-date=18 November 2022| last1=Shields | first1=Charles J. | date=15 October 2018 | publisher=University of Texas Press }}</ref> His grandparents were farmers; his father, J.E. Jewell, worked in a feed store. Jewell disappeared in mysterious circumstances when Williams was two years old, and his mother remarried to George Williams, a local shift worker in Wichita Falls. John Williams attended a local junior college for a year but dropped out after failing freshman English, and then worked in media before joining the [[World War II|war effort]] in early 1942 by enlisting in the [[United States Army Air Forces|United States Army Air Force]]. He spent two and a half years as a sergeant in India, China, and [[Burma]]. During his enlistment in [[Kolkata|Calcutta]], he wrote pages of a novel, which later became ''[[Nothing but the Night (novel)|Nothing But the Night]]'', published in 1948 by Swallow Press and later reissued by [[New York Review Books|New York Review Books Classics]].<ref name="robson">Leo Robson, [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/18/john-williams-and-the-canon-that-might-have-been "John Williams and the Canon That Might Have Been,"] ''[[The New Yorker]]'', March 18, 2019.</ref>

At the end of the war, Williams moved to [[Denver, Colorado]], and enrolled in the [[University of Denver]], receiving [[Bachelor of Arts]] (1949) and [[Master of Arts]] (1950) degrees. During his time at the University of Denver, his first two books were published, ''Nothing But the Night'' (1948), a novel depicting the terror and waywardness resulting from an early traumatic experience, and ''The Broken Landscape'' (1949), a collection of poetry. Upon completing his MA, Williams enrolled at the [[University of Missouri]], where he taught and worked on his [[Ph.D.]] in [[English literature]], which he obtained in 1954. In the fall of 1955, Williams returned to the University of Denver as an assistant professor, becoming director of the creative writing program. His second novel, ''Butcher's Crossing'' ([[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan]], 1960) depicts frontier life in 1870s [[Kansas]].<ref name=latiolais>
[http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/butchers-crossing/ "''Butcher’s Crossing'': John Williams, introduction by Michelle Latiolais"]. Retail sales page for NYRB Classics. [[New York Review Books]]. Retrieved 2012-03-30.</ref>

In 1963, Williams edited and wrote the introduction for the anthology ''English Renaissance Poetry: A Collection of Shorter Poems from Skelton to Jonson'' ([[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday]]). The publication elicited a backlash from poet and literary critic [[Yvor Winters]] who claimed that Williams's anthology overlapped with his canon and the introduction imitated his arguments. The publishers agreed to include an acknowledgement to Winters in the publication.<ref name="robson"/>

Williams's second collection of poems, ''The Necessary Lie'' (1965), was issued by Verb Publications. He was the founding editor of the ''University of Denver Quarterly''<ref name=saxon/> (later ''[[Denver Quarterly]]''), which was first issued in 1965. He remained as editor until 1970.

His third novel, ''[[Stoner (novel)|Stoner]]'', detailing the tragic life of a University of Missouri English assistant professor, was published by [[Viking Press]] in 1965. It was reissued in 2005 by [[NYRB Classics]] to widespread critical acclaim.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://lithub.com/how-the-nyrb-chooses-its-reissues-the-story-of-stoner/|title=How the NYRB Chooses Its Reissues: The Story of Stoner|date=2016-04-04|website=Literary Hub|language=en-US|access-date=2019-03-26}}</ref> It was subsequently translated and published throughout Europe and, beginning in 2011, became a bestseller in France, the Netherlands, Italy, Israel, and the UK.<ref name="robson"/>

His fourth novel, ''[[Augustus (Williams novel)|Augustus]]'' (Viking, 1972), a rendering of the violent times of [[Augustus Caesar]] in Rome, also remains in print. In the year of its release, it shared the [[National Book Award for Fiction]] with [[Chimera (Barth novel)|''Chimera'']] by [[John Barth]], the first time that the award was split.<ref name=nba1973/>

Williams retired from the University of Denver in 1985 and died of respiratory failure in 1994 at home in [[Fayetteville, Arkansas]]. He was surrounded by his wife and descendants.<ref name=saxon/> A fifth novel, ''The Sleep of Reason'', was unfinished at the time of his death, but two lengthy excerpts were published in ''[[Ploughshares]]'' and the ''[[Denver Quarterly]]'' in 1981<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Williams |first=John |date=1981 |title=The Sleep of Reason |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40348734 |journal=Ploughshares |volume=7 |issue=3/4 |pages=23–60 |jstor=40348734 |issn=0048-4474}}</ref> and 1986, respectively.

Williams loved the study of literature. In a 1986 interview, he was asked, "And literature is written to be entertaining?" to which he replied emphatically, "Absolutely. My God, to read without joy is stupid."<ref name=mcgahern>
[http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/stoner/ ''Stoner'': John Williams, introduction by John McGahern"]. Retail sales page for NYRB Classics. New York Review Books. Retrieved 2012-03-30.</ref>

==Reception and legacy==
The critic [[Morris Dickstein]] has noted that while ''[[Butcher's Crossing]]'', [[Stoner (novel)|''Stoner'']], and ''[[Augustus (Williams novel)|''Augustus'']]'' are each "strikingly different in subject," they all "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."<ref name=dickstein>[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/books/review/Dickstein-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 "The Inner Lives of Men"], Morris Dickstein, ''The New York Times'', June 17, 2007.</ref> Dickstein called ''Stoner'' "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."

In 2018, a biography of Williams written by [[Charles J. Shields]] titled ''The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel: John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life'' was published by the [[University of Texas Press]].<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life By Charles J. Shields |url=https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/shields-the-man-who-wrote-the-perfect-novel |access-date=3 August 2020 |website=[[University of Texas Press]] |date=2 October 2018 |archive-date=8 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211008153614/https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/shields-the-man-who-wrote-the-perfect-novel |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=18 June 2018 |title=Nonfiction Book Review: The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel: John Williams, 'Stoner,' and the Writing Life by Charles J. Shields |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-4773-1736-5 |access-date=3 August 2020 |website=[[Publishers Weekly]]}}</ref>

In a wide-ranging interview with ''[[The Paris Review]]'' in 2019, Williams's widow, Nancy Gardner, discussed his war service, working methods and alcoholism.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/20/mrs-stoner-speaks-an-interview-with-nancy-gardner-williams/|title = MRS. Stoner Speaks: An Interview with Nancy Gardner Williams|date = 20 February 2019}}</ref>

== Translations ==
''Stoner'' has been translated into many languages, including Arabic, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish, Hebrew and Swedish. The acclaimed novelist [[Anna Gavalda]] translated Williams's novel into French, which has contributed to its enthusiastic reception by the French literary establishment.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/2013/05/19/184770657/decade-later-and-across-an-ocean-a-novel-gets-its-due|title=Decades Later And Across An Ocean, A Novel Gets Its Due|website=NPR.org|language=en|access-date=2019-03-26}}</ref>

==Works==
;Novels
*''[[Nothing but the Night (novel)|Nothing but the Night]]'' (1948)
*''[[Butcher's Crossing]]'' (1960)
*''[[Stoner (novel)|Stoner]]'' (1965)
*''[[Augustus (Williams novel)|Augustus]]'' (1972) —shared the National Book Award<ref name=nba1973>
[https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1973 "National Book Awards – 1973"]. [[National Book Foundation]]. Retrieved 2012-03-30. <br />([https://web.archive.org/web/20091010120926/http://www.nbafictionblog.org/nba-winning-books-blog/1973-1.html An essay by Harold Augenbraum from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.] (from Internet Archive) The Williams essay includes Augenbraum's discussion of the split award.)</ref>
;Poetry
*''The Broken Landscape: Poems'' (1949)
*''The Necessary Lie'' (1965)
;Edited anthology
*''English Renaissance Poetry: A Collection of Shorter Poems from Skelton to Jonson'' (1963)

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
*{{IMDb name|7356684}}
*[http://libinfo.uark.edu/specialcollections/findingaids/williamsje.html John Williams Papers] at the [[University of Arkansas]]
*[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02EFD8113AF936A35750C0A962958260 Obituary]. ''[[The New York Times]]''
*"[https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-greatest-american-novel-youve-never-heard-of The Greatest American Novel You've Never Heard of]". ''[[The New Yorker]]''
*"[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/18/john-williams-and-the-canon-that-might-have-been John Williams and the Canon that Might Have Been]". ''The New Yorker''
*[https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/09/14/john-williams-stoner/ Myers, D.G. "Defeats and Victories Not Recorded in the Annals of History," Commentary Magazine. Retrieved 9 January 2015]
{{NBA for Fiction 1950–1974}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, John}}
[[Category:1922 births]]
[[Category:1994 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century American male novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century American novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century American poets]]
[[Category:20th-century American male poets]]
[[Category:Military personnel from Texas]]
[[Category:National Book Award winners]]
[[Category:Novelists from Colorado]]
[[Category:Novelists from Texas]]
[[Category:People from Clarksville, Texas]]
[[Category:University of Denver alumni]]
[[Category:University of Denver faculty]]
[[Category:University of Missouri alumni]]
[[Category:United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II]]

John Edward Williams - Revision history

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