When I was a kid, I thought the word melancholy sounded all wrong for what it meant. To me, melancholy sounded like a happy word and I thought it should represent a happy feeling. Many years later, by which time I had mostly reconciled myself to the definition of melancholy, I learned about literary traditions of melancholy, wherein it was seen as a mark of genius or a prerequisite to artistic production. This somehow jibed with my old childhood idea of melancholy, and so I've continued to think of melancholy as a sadness that is tinged with joy. The feeling of melancholy for me is similar to nostalgia, or the particular feeling of remembering past happiness in the face of loss, or simply the enjoyment that comes from wallowing in sad songs.
The overwhelming feeling I got while reading Stoner was melancholy. At times while reading it, I would think, "my god, how depressing," but I would read on and as I went I would find it not so depressing after all. What it really felt was normal and true. Stoner reads as the biography of a man who led a life that was more defined by frustration than fulfillment. He is constantly thwarted, but at the same time, you never feel he is all that disappointed in his lot. Which is not to say he's happy with it; it just is. In the end, I didn't even think the sadness quite outweighed the joy in this book, or maybe what joy there was seemed all the more joyful because of the pervasive sadness of the book. And that's what I liked best about the book; you could feel sorry for Stoner (and I definitely did - a lot!), but you could also read it and feel that this is what life is and that it's not so bad.
