Haunting story by a documentary film producer who discusses his favorite books and goes on a quest to find a great "lost" author
Added 11/21/2009
If you love literature, literary criticism and discussing the art and craft of writing and publishing, watching this fascinating film will be time well-spent. Explores the spiritual role and place of literature and authors in our emotional lives; the price authors pay for leaving bits of their heart and soul in the pages of the books they write; and, the underlying, unspoken theme that luck, or "the roll of the dice" often plays a cruel role in whether a writer's efforts will result in commercial and/or artistic success or abject failure.
The dialogue consists of a series of conversations between the producer and those individuals he interviews. Asking probing questions about favorite books, Mark Moskowitz progresses to a discussion of the impact of one book that he read at eighteen -- titled "The Stones of Summer" by Dow Mossman.
Though the book has been out of print for more than 25-years, Moskowitz becomes obsessed with the idea of trying to figure out why it did not become a commercial success; why there is so little information available to inform readers about the author; and, why no other books ever appeared in print by him. Moskowitz determines that the novel was likely one of the last fiction books published by Bobbs-Merrill before that company went in a more commercial direction. But, it perplexes him that even though the book received excellent reviews -- including one on page four or five of the New York Times Book Review -- Dow Mossman appears to have dropped off the face of the earth.
Moskowitz' obsession turns into a most interesting quest as he goes off in search of anyone remotely related to Mossman's book to interview -- up to Maine, down to Florida, across to Pennsylvania, and then finally out to Iowa. He then offers interviews of Mossman's agent, the book cover designer, literature professors who may have known him, and finally one who taught and mentored him while enrolled at the Iowa Writer's Workshop.
I enjoyed how Moskowitz used the book and author as a medium through which he talked about the impact of books and the spiritual kinship readers often feel toward authors whose works we love. Though the film is really something of a facinating "acting out" by the producer regarding his obsession, the quest to find this author that affected him so deeply so many years ago is an ejoyable jaunt for all.
I won't give away the ending -- but, will, simply say: If you love books and often feel a spiritual bond with the writer whose works you read -- go immediately and buy or rent this beautiful, deeply moving documentary.
R. Neil Scott
Middle Tennessee State University
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Mixed reaction
Added 3/3/2009
I can fully identify with a book that haunts you and even one that it seems you are its only reader in the world. Thus the tracking of this youthful literary passion was one I was fully prepared to follow and enjoy. It was even possible to overlook the fact that there were next to no women writers in the lists of great reads. For many of us this was the sad truth.
However, about a third of the way through this became a film about Moskowitz and not about reading or Mossman or The Stones of Summer. Moskowitz deserves a lot of credit for caring about reading in a way too few do, but when he interviewed people, he was actually often disrespectful, wanting to ask his questions or be focus of attention. Maybe that is the editing. It was particularly disturbing to see how he treated the man who finally connected him with Mossman, William Carter Murray. In my culture, there is be more respect for the older man's wisdom and his role as mentor. Moskowitz insultingly calls his mother and asks her to call Mossman, after Murray has asked to be able to do it. It is clear when Mossman talks to his mentor he is thrilled to do it.
Nevertheless, if it hadn't been for the Murray portion, which was the best part, Moskowitz's interviewing technique could be forgiven - even the times he tries to either put all his books in front of an interviewee or tries to eagerly take things out of their hands. He also paws through things that are not his. He obsesses on finding the contract, which should have seemed odd to Mossman. It is strange that he loses interest in the film, which undermines the seriousness of his passion in a sense, although the cause is a personal loss. Seems odd as well that he should be entrusted with bringing the book back, by both author and agent. And is Harry Potter an appropriate comparison to The Stones of Summer, as we see in the final scene with the boy?
Perhaps this old-fashioned respect for readers and writers makes me wish the reader/director had been a bit less prominent in a very touching, profound tale. That would have kept the reading process and the genius writer more in the forefront.
The topic shines for its devotion to reading and the written word. I will read the book which is out of print and which I ordered online, and will continue to think about the best reads of my own childhood and youth. (Has anybody heard of Dorothy Simpson's The Honest Dollar, about the coast of Maine?)
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Another Documentary Director Who Forgot The Movie Wasn't About Himself!!
Added 3/2/2008
I was eager to view STONE READER as soon as I heard about is since the story of promising writer (Dow Mossmon) who seemingly vanished off the face of the earth after publishing one well received novel (The Stones of Summer) is intriguing. Director Moskowitz takes this fascinating idea however and pads his movie to a two hour plus length with information and lingering shots seemed designed to convince the viewer of the brilliance and specialness of HIMSELF! If this movie had been maybe an hour and a half in length and Moscowitz had stayed on his side of the camera the film could have been great but instead this effort is mediocre and annoying and I'm being generous. Some of the scenes are obviously staged and I am more than a bit incredulous that Moscowitz would have had much difficulty in finding Mossmon in the era of people finding internet search engines. I was also disappointed by how little attention Moscowitz and the other literary people he interviews give to women writers. Even with all that I would have been willing to give the film three stars since parts of it are well made but then I come on the Amazon site and find our friend Moscowitz has been involved in a scheme to get people to write positive reviews of his film even if they have never seen it! No wonder media hog Moscowitz was so fascinated by reclusive Mossmon since they are true polar opposites.
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Too much Moskowitz, too little Mossman
Added 11/24/2006
Although hailed as a great film for people who love reading, this film's first love is clearly filmmaker Mark Moskowitz. His work on political campaigns is painfully evident throughout the troublesomely concocted "storyline" of his "quest" to find one-novel wonder Dow Mossman. He's sometimes visibly distintered in what the subjects of his "interviews" (which he typically dominates) have to say, preferring to use almost everyone as a prop in a story which is more about his own life than Mossman's.
He carefully massages what ought to have been an afternoon's worth of phone calls into a journey which crosses many miles to talk to vaguely related people who often have no knowledge about anything he wants to talk about (he TRAVELS to interview the illustator of the novel's original cover-- who, it turns out, has almost no recollection of the event). It quickly becomes clear that he is staging almost everything for the camera, and, since most of the people he talks to don't know or don't care about the subject of the film, the majority of it focuses on his rudely cutting off experts to get his own opinion on film or just generally dominating the discussion to harp on and on about his supposed love of reading (not to mention a good deal of name-dropping to demonstrate how well-read he is).
This is all hugely annoying, and made even more so, because the acutal subject of the film --dealing with author Mossman and the world of writing and publishing in general-- is actually very interesting. Mossman's book is a very good (though sometimes frustratingly obtuse) read, and his story begs deeper exploration. Instead, even when Moskowitz finally reveals Mossman to the camera (after about twenty minutes of obvious milking the "Mystery" when Mossman's wherabouts should have been about one phone call away) the focus of the film gets right back to Moskowitz's agenda to get the book re-published, shamefully ignoring Mossman's real life after spending the whole film ostensibly tring to discover it. This is after two hours of focusing on Moskowitz telling us about his OWN life.
Still, if you can survive the contrived setup, overlong runtime, and rude and self-interested director, there are easily 30 minutes of extremely interesting interviews with literary figures and with Mossman himself. This alone justified sitting through the film for me, providing real insight into some fascinating and oft-unexplored areas of life.
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A Satisfying Gem of a Film!
Added 9/8/2006
Filmmaker Mark Moskowitz's inspired documentary, Stone Reader, begins with the singular notion of uncovering more of writer Dow Mossman's literary works. Upon discovering that Mossman's body of work began and ended with The Stones of Summer, a highly acclaimed but mostly forgotten first novel, Moskowitz sets out to learn how a writer, and a work of such promise, could have vanished with nary a trace. In the process, Moskowitz treats us to some delightful detective work that introduces us to an engaging cast of characters - critics, writing instructors and literary agents among them - who provide the clues to the puzzle that is Dow Mossman, but ultimately reveals the painful story of Mossman's creative odyssey. The search for Dow Mossman is at the heart of Moskowitz's story, but so is his love of great literature and the sad truth that talent is almost never enough to achieve literary success. It is a story told with sometimes ordinary, even mundane snippets from daily life - mostly Moskowitz's, his family and friends - that is at the same time deceptively complex. Stone Reader reminds us of our own lives and the daily struggle to make sense of the world in which we live. There are no happy endings, just the discovery of good ideas, great literature and the desire to create a thing that has truth at its center. Watching Stone Reader is not unlike receiving a present that, when opened, reveals other, smaller presents within which surprise and delight as we unwrap them, none more delightful than the present that is Dow Mossman himself. See this film.
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