In 1963 Williams' own publisher questioned Stoner's potential to gain popularity and become a bestseller.[18] On its 1965 publication there were a handful of glowing reviews such as The New Yorker's of June 12, 1965, which praised Williams for creating a character who is dedicated to his work but cheated by the world. Those who gave positive feedback pointed to the truthful voice with which Williams wrote about life's conditions, and they often compared Stoner to his other work, Augustus, in characters and plot direction. Irving Howe and C. P. Snow also praised the novel. However, sales of the novel did not reflect these positive commentaries.[19] It sold fewer than 2000 copies, and was out of print a year later.
It was then reissued as a mass-market paperback in 1972 by Pocket Books, reissued again in 1998 by the University of Arkansas Press and then in 2003 in paperback by Vintage and 2006 by New York Review Books Classics. French novelist Anna Gavalda translated Stoner in 2011 and in 2013, sales to distributors tripled.[15] It was not until several years later during Stoner’s republication that the book became better known. After being republished and translated into several languages, the novel "sold hundreds of thousands of copies in 21 countries".[20]
Williams' novel has been praised for both its narrative and stylistic aspects. In a 2007 review of the recently reissued work, scholar and book critic Morris Dickstein acclaims the writing technique as remarkable and says the novel "takes your breath away".[21][10] Bryan Appleyard's review quotes critic D.G. Myers as saying that the novel was a good book for beginners in the world of "serious literature".[21] Another critic, author Alex Preston, writes that the novel describes "a small life ... in a small, precise way: the dead hand of realism."[7] In 2010, critic Mel Livatino noted that, in "nearly fifty years of reading fiction, I have never encountered a more powerful novel—and not a syllable of it sentimental."[22] Steve Almond reviewed Stoner in The New York Times Magazine in 2014. Almond claims Stoner focuses on the "capacity to face the truth of who we are in private moments" and questions whether any of us is truly able to say we are able to do that. Almond states, "I devoured it in one sitting. I had never encountered a work so ruthless in its devotion to human truths and so tender in its execution."[23] Sarah Hampson of The Globe and Mail sees Stoner as an "antidote" to a 21st-century culture of entitlement. She says that the novel came back to public attention at a time when people felt entitled to personal fulfillment, at the cost of their own morality, and Stoner shows that there can be value even in a life that seems failed.[15] In 2013 it was named Waterstones Book of the Year and The New Yorker called it "the greatest American novel you've never heard of."[24] Writing in The Washington Post in 2015, literary critic Elaine Showalter was less enthusiastic, noting that she, "along with other female readers, [was] put off by Williams’s misogyny" and found fault with Williams' portrayal of Stoner as "a blameless martyr, rather than a man with choices."[25]
