[An] engrossing short biography.
~The New Yorker
Shields…hoovers up the available evidence and shapes it into an episodic narrative without giving much sense of what he makes of his subject…Shields's book is a handy corrective for anyone who's nostalgic for the days when American writers and publishers routinely ran up large bar tabs.
~London Review of Books
This rich biography gives new insight into the enigmatic man behind Stoner, a novel quickly forgotten after its 1963 publication but more recently recognized as a midcentury American classic.
~Publishers Weekly, “The Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2018”
The Williams that emerges is not unlike <i>Stoner</i> himself: self-obsessed, given to petty feuds, and insecure about his abilities...It is to Shields’s credit that by the end of this finely crafted biography readers will feel they have some insight into this talented, troubled enigma of a man.
~Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review
Despite obvious parallels with his fictional university protagonist, John Williams is both different and interesting enough to merit a book of his own, Charles J. Shields's The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel. It certainly helps that, like Williams, Shields know how to tell a good story, one that will appeal especially to those interested in the ins and outs of the publishing industry and the ups and downs of a writer's life.
~Los Angeles Review of Books
Charles Shields has done us all a service by pointing up and pointing out the novelist's unyielding ambition and rigor.
~New York Journal of Books
[An] exemplary biography, the first devoted to the life of one of America's most unusual writers.
~Financial Times
[A] sharp-eyed biography.
~Booklist
Through exhaustive research and sharp prose, Shields has composed a portrait of the complicated author and the particular darknesses that drove Williams to write, to overcompensate, to philander, to mansplain.
~The Millions
Brief but compelling...The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel is a welcome reminder that even in the rarefied world of literature, good sometimes prevails.
~Waterbury Republican-American
Shields' writing is captivating and reveals much about the wounded psyches of the GI Bill generation of American (male) authors.
~Shepherd Express
Shields describes Williams's development and motivations and explains persuasively why a writer hungry for fame didn't go in for the postmodernist experiments of his time.
~New Criterion
Shields accomplishes an admirable feat of objectivity in a biography published during our riven age of identity and tribal politics.
~American Book Review
[John Williams's Stoner] has in recent decades become the sort of book that people adore, give to their friends, fiercely identify with, and dub 'the perfect novel.' And full credit to Charles Shields for going behind the scenes to fill in the picture of Williams's own—somewhat similarly miserable—life…Stoner's rediscovery reflects well on the artisanship of John Williams, a novelist whose accomplishments and foibles Charles Shields has brought ably into view.
~Western American Literature
Charles Shields's biography of John Williams invites us to enrich our understanding of Stoner—and Williams's other writings as well—in The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel. Through his accessible style, his scrupulous attention to detail, and his use of source material and interviews, Shields provides us with a balanced study of a writer whose work has the power to transform the unremarkable into the astonishing.
~Journal of American Culture
Charles J. Shields' subtitle accurately captures the scope, purpose, and content of the book. It's a biography of John Williams. It's a description of how Williams's major work came to be, and it's a reflection on the writing life, as lived by John Williams. I found Shields to be fair in his approach to all three.
~Concho River Review
An expert uncovering of an American master who deserves the larger audience this biography will help give him. With his characteristic insight into the ligatures between life and art, and in his own enviable prose, Shields brings Williams into full-color relief. This is a major accomplishment by a major biographer, a gift for which Williams’s admirers will be most grateful.
~William Giraldi, author of Hold the Dark and The Hero’s Body
Charles Shields’s biography of John Williams is every bit as impressive as his subject’s book, the not-so-underground classic (and international bestseller) Stoner, a gripping and compulsively readable tale of an ‘unremarkable man.’ Shields brilliantly recreates Williams’s outwardly ordinary life as an English professor eager to balance his scholarship with a creative writing career, revealing fascinating psychological depths in a man who on the surface doesn’t seem to have any. The reader is carried along by this masterful, finely honed biography.
~Mary V. Dearborn, author of Ernest Hemingway: A Biography
A masterful depiction of the generation of burnt-out alcoholic American writers who survived WWII. Shields comes about as close as humanly possible to recreating the crucible of chance, devotion, genius, and circumstance that produced ‘the greatest novel you have never read.’
~J. Michael Lennon, author of Norman Mailer: A Double Life
