Stoner by John Williams

She was, he knew-- and had known very early, he supposed -- one of those rare and always lovely humans whose moral nature was so delicate that it must be nourished and cared for that it might be fulfilled.  Alien to the world it had to live where it could not be at home; avid for tenderness and quiet, it had to feed upon indifference and callousness and noise.  It was a nature that, even in the strange and inimical place where it had to live, had not the savagery to fight off the brutal forces that opposed it and could withdraw to a quietness where it was forlorn and small and gently still.
Beautiful, tender quiet masterpiece about a poor farm boy who falls in love with literature and works his entire life in obscurity teaching at a Midwestern university.