Film: A star is just a stone...

Sometimes one stumbles upon a work for which one is, above all, grateful. Even as I was watching Stone Reader, I wanted to clasp Mark Moskowitz’s hand and thank him profusely for his gift. Moskowitz’s real life quest for Dow Mossman the author of The Stones of Summer turned into the film Stone Reader. I for one am unable to separate Moskowitz’s quest from the film and feel indebted for one as the other. I went to the bookstore today to find The Stones of Summer, a book no longer out-of-print or lost thanks to Moskowitz’s film and his endeavor Lost Books Club.

Upon reading The Stones of Summer, Moskowitz sets out to find other books by Dow. When nothing turns up he decides to go looking for Mossman. For those of us who have gone looking for the writers behind the books we love, this quest is intuitive. Analyzing this desire, dissecting it, subjecting it to psychiatric topology is another matter and mercifully Moskowitz steers clear of this road. What he does do is honor Mossman’s work by producing his own work of art. Very soon into the film Moskowitz says, "I began to understand that what I was looking for was not just Dow which of course only made me want to find Dow that much more."

In his hunt for Dow, Moskowitz encounters other writers from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop who took classes with Dow, professors, literary agents, editors, and even the man who originally designed the jacket for Mossman’s book as a freelancer. Moskowitz’s love for the book is so pure and infectious that the men he meets discuss the books they love in turn. These discussions inevitably involve talking about writing, its meaning, and the toll it sometimes takes on the writer. Many writers have disappeared after producing just one book. Some of the writers Moskowitz finds are obsessed with why.

Bill Murray at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop worked closely with Mossman when he was working on The Stones of Summer. Mossman in turn dedicated his book to Murray. When Moskowitz shows up to interview Bill he tells him nothing about what he is seeking but poses questions that lead quickly to a mention of Dow. Murray says of Dow: It was so traumatic for him to go through the experience of writing a novel, it was a big novel too…I tried to help but you know there are times you can’t help. You need the guys in the white coat and the jacket and he needs sedation to be put away for a while because the novel…you live it. It’s an obsessive thing.

Most of the men Moskowitz interviews in his search for Dow are writers and as they speak about the books they love one has the sense of looking up at the night sky full of stars. Familiar shapes and structures begin to emerge. Stars joined by jotted lines that form constellations. Constellations that our ancestors named and recognized many hundreds of years ago. One writer leads to another and another. From Mossman to Faulkner and Henry Roth, to Isaac Bashevis Singer. To Dickens and Shakespeare via Balzac and Proust.

Frank Conroy the author of Stop-time who runs the Iowa Writers’ Workshop says, "It’s like food. There are some pleasures that never run out and books are one of them….you feel the pleasure of another human soul on the other side of the book and that makes you feel less alone and less trapped in your body and less isolated. You feel that you are the brother of the author and the two of you are working together. It’s a very profound and moving experience it’s almost spiritual." It is the same urge that led the Vedic Indians four thousand years ago to plot the night sky and maintain records of passing comets, eclipses, stars. The Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, all the way until Copernicus were propelled by a desire to feel less isolated, somehow immortal. As the universe turns geometrically flat and fills with cold dark matter and our perceptions shrink to fit our latest science and its theories, we are no longer sure for how long we will have our beloved Cassiopeias, Dippers, and Bears. Moskowitz’s film is a testament that we still have our books and our writers.