Stone Reader is a mystery. In 1972, Dow Mossman’s first novel, The Stones of Summer was released to very good reviews. Filmmaker Mark Moskowitz read it and loved it. Years later Moskowitz looked for Mossman’s other books, but there were none. Mossman had disappeared and left no trail of books behind him. Even that first novel had vanished.
Moskowitz was intrigued. How could this happen? How could a writer with such promise just drop off the face of the earth? How could a book so good be so unknown? He set out to find out about Mossman and the book.
Stone Reader is more than just a mystery story, though. It’s also a meditation on books, on writing, on reading, and on memory. It touches on fame, anonymity, the book industry, writing workshops, and identity. It’s well crafted, and pulls you along with it, making you eager to find out for yourself what happened to Mossman.
And like a good book, I suspect it acts as a mirror. There are so many threads running through it that what is seen in it depends on who’s looking at it. In my case, it showed me, in pretty undeniable detail, why, despite creative writing classes and ideas and experiments and so forth, I never became a writer…and never will.
Because at its heart, it’s a love story to books. It revels in the magical nature of books, the ability of a reader and writer to connect over distance and time, and join together to manifest a tale. A writer cannot be a writer…a good one, at least…without such an appreciation for books. One I don’t have.
I like books, don’t get me wrong. I understand their purpose and power. But I’m not a book lover. I haven’t read most of the classics and, quite frankly, am not overly interested in doing so. I have a stack of books I keep meaning to read but haven’t because something else…almost anything else…gets done first. When I do read, I’m not an overly careful reader. I miss things, forget who characters are, get lost in plots because I don’t read carefully and retain. I just sort of plow through.
I’ve had hints of this before. When I was getting towards the end of my English (Creative Writing) degree, I realized that I was, as a supposedly aspiring published author, meant to be buying fiction reviews and The Quarterly and reading the New York Times’ Book Review. And I knew that there wasn’t the tiniest piece inside me that was interested in doing so.
It’s a strange thing for me to realize. When you’re all brainified like I supposedly am, the assumption is that you also totally dig on books, always have one on you, and devour them voraciously. I don’t, and I never really have. And yet I have an English degree. There are books I love, books I’ve read over and over, but I can’t think of a book that I would have gone through what Moskowitz goes through for. I’ve read Foucault’s Pendulum three or four times, but I don’t feel any special symbiosis with Umberto Eco.
So anyway, to get away from why I’m not who I thought I was and back to the movie, you don’t have to have such a love of books to be entranced, as the mystery itself is pretty interesting. But such a kinship will only help. It’s a really fascinating movie.
