Stone Reader

I am not avid reader, but I enjoy watching the film. Mark Moskowitz is actor, director, producer, and screenwriter of the film Stone Reader. Moskowitz talks about various books through his youth in the film, that he remembers reading, but one book he wonders. What happen to the author after writing one book (The Stones of Summer by Dow Mossman)? Moskowitz searches for Mossman through the film and asks why stop after writing one book. An journey of a forgotten book that you never forget.

Stone Reader is unlike any other documentary I've seen. It is funny, passionate, engaging, and challenging. Part home movie and part detective story, Stone Reader follows Mark Moskowitz on his search for the author of a favorite book. Along the way we have the opportunity to look inside the world of literature from the perspective of authors, publishers, agents, and book-lovers. I can't think of another film that explores the world of literature with such unflinching honesty. The interviews with industry pros are riveting. But this film is about more than books--it's about the way books mark our journey through life--the way they shape our thinking and force us to reevaluate ourselves. And for those who write, it's about the rigors and challenges of the creative process: the desire to achieve something great and lasting versus the grim realities of the commercial publishing business.

If you love books (even a little) you must see Stone Reader. You'll learn a lot--I promise. But Stone Reader is a really good _film_, so even if you're not a "big reader" you'll find this film thoroughly entertaining. It's a window into a world that we haven't seen before...definitely worth a look.

This movie will probably be seen by too few people, and those who do see it will be stone bibliophiles, like Mark Moskowitz. I found it absorbing, mostly delightful, and more than a little depressing. It's sad to realize that an obviously gifted artist like Dow Mossman, the author of The Stones of Summer, can be virtually unknown, either in his day or since. Obviously, to devote the kind of energy and commitment to the writing of a serious novel had better be enough of a reward in itself; the high likelihood is that the writer will reap very few more concrete benefits. At least Mossman was fortunate enough to have attracted the attention of a highly-motivated, bibliophilic filmmaker who was able to mark his achievement with this movie. Not least among the pleasures of the film was the chance to sit in on conversations among a literate and personable bunch of people who share Moskowitz's passion for literature. Having never had the opportunity to read the Mossman book, I wish it were more readily available; given the economics and realities of publishing--even bleaker today, I think, than thirty years ago--I am afraid that I may never get the chance to do so. I suspect a lot of movie-lovers might find this less than involving. I'm glad Moskowitz made it, and hope that it gains the recognition it deserves, even though I am afraid that its fate, like that of the novel it celebrates, will be that of a tree falling in a forest with maybe two or three people around to hear the sound.

An e-mail today alerted me to a showing tonight at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, NY of Mark Moskowitz's intellectually seductive documentary, "Stone Reader." My decision to go turned out to be the best choice I've made in a long time where film is involved.

Decades ago, during the Vietnam War, a native of Iowa, Dal Mossman, went to college in his state and then endured, probably the right word, America's Parris Island for aspiring novelists, Iowa University's Writer's Studio. Toughness from mentors and an absence of sympathy, much less coddling, characterized the learning process.

Finishing that training, Mossman produced for publication a manuscript he had clearly been working on for a very long time, a dense, atmospheric, brilliant novel, "The Stones of Summer." Bobbs-Merrill published it, several reviews were very favorable and then after scant sales - despite New York Times Book Review section praise - the novel disappeared as did the author.

Documentarian Mark Moskowitz is a true lover of both books and reading, the two not being necessarily linked. He discovered Mossman's novel and began searching, mostly on the internet, for every available copy (there weren't many but he certainly cornered the market). Earning a substantial living largely by producing political campaign spots for TV, Moskowitz decided to do a film about both "The Stones of Summer" and the author and he set out to discover where Mossman had been for some thirty or so years. Probably he felt confident that with his resources he would soon discover the author's whereabouts or learn of his demise.

Moskowitz entered onto a peripatetic and clue-directed journey in which his quest for Mossman took him by car and plane to seek out any former instructors or friends who could shed light on his post-novel fate. Interestingly and frustratingly, virtually all who might have had contact with Mossman didn't remember him at all. The few who did hadn't followed his life after the novel's publication. His Manhattan former agent remembered his one-shot client but only after being shown a copy of the novel which he then recalled as brilliant but the victim of poor marketing by a second-tier publisher.

As Moskowitz searched for traces of Mossman, his vision and curiosity expanded and while the central goal stayed in focus the filmmaker became increasingly fascinated with the fate of "one novel" authors. The sequences become a study in the nature of literature and the personas of authors whose disappearances after one success turn out to be more common than one might have guessed. Several of the interviewees, highly regarded authors, recount their own bouts with depression and at least transient failure.

Smiling an awful lot, Moskowitz nonetheless is unmistakably an ambush documentarian and he gets some of his interviewees to speak very revealingly, in a few instances foolishly. This is not a guy to underestimate. (Several of his negative campaign shorts were shown after the film and they were effective, two brutally so.)

Eventually Moskowitz locates Mossman, still living in Iowa and now working at night bundling newspapers after a career as a welder. Mossman is remarkably open and forthcoming and his deep intelligence immediately impresses. So the film has its hoped for conclusion but the tale doesn't.

Moskowitz initially screened this film in small art houses including, over a year ago, the Jacob Burns Film Center. He brought Mossman out of his shell for that it was and the two became a dog-and-pony show with Moskowitz determined to bring "The Stones of Summer" back into print. And he succeeded. Where the original release may have enjoyed about 4000 sales, the new hardcover edition underwritten by Barnes & Noble has sold over 46,000 copies and a paperback edition comes out next week. B&N's CEO read "The Stones of Summer" and became an instant apostle for its reappearance.

But the truly extraordinary part of the evening was a long dialogue between New York Times film critic Janet Maslin with both Moskowitz and Mossman interspersed with audience questions. Mossman has clearly emerged from virtually hermit-like obscurity (he refers to himself in the film as an "introvert in residence") and is clever, funny AND very penetratingly smart. He has a firm friendship with the filmmaker but what in the end of the documentary is largely a Moskowitz-fashioned relationship has reached a plateau of respectful equality.

And the two are now committed to a project to bring "Lost Books" back into print. Bravo.

I've attended myriad post-film discussions but for interest and depth tonight's is in the top echelon.

In the lobby following the showing and discussion were DVDs for sale, one just of the documentary, the other a special three-disc set with much added material. I bought the latter which I'll explore this weekend.

"Stone Reader" is first a film for booklovers and committed readers but it's also a rare, perhaps unprecedented, filmic exploration of the pain and tribulations of fiction authorship in America. It deserves the widest circulation.

10/10.

The quest to find the author of a well reviewed but now long forgotten and long out of print novel is the crux of this documentary. This is a do it yourself affair as director Mark Moskowitz chronicles his personal quest to find the author of The Stones of Summer, a book he read 30 years after buying it.

This is a film that any avid or compulsive reader can relate to, especially if one has ever fallen in love with an author and sought to find out everything about the person who has just touched their lives. I'm just not certain that many o us would go to the lengths that Moskowitz goes to to get his man.

For me there are two problems with the film, first is the fact that for a good portion at the beginning of the film we don't really know what is driving the quest. Yes, its a good book, but why that book? Repeatedly we're told that no one has read it and as things unfold we aren't even given a synopsis of "the grail", we're just told that its a great book as we see Moskowitz buy and hand out copies of the book to his friends. There is a lot of talk about books other than Stones of Summer, which would be fine, but they are better defined than the book at the center of our tale.

The second problem is that Moskowitz, while he seems to be a nice guy didn't seem like some one I'd want to hang out with. Granted the film is about his obsession, but thats all it seems to be about at times and I never really warmed to him as a person, which hurts since the movie, ultimately is about him.

My recommendation is to find a library and borrow it. You may like it, you may not. If you aren't a book person I'd stay away since the "fan" aspect seems more rooted in things literary than in universal themes.