Director: Mark Moskowitz
Year Released: 2002
Rating: 3.0
Moskowitz reads the lost 1972 novel The Stones of Summer by Dow Mossman and becomes enraptured with it, so he seeks out its author in an effort to discover why he never wrote another book. While the search for Mossman is the core of the picture, this is one of the best films I've seen about the modern publishing world - it strips the industry of its glossy veneer, laments the difficulty in writing after the author's first book is a success (or failure) and shows how quickly something someone spent years of his or her life on could be so easily lost and forgotten. Moskowitz overdoes the shots of nature and clouds and whatnot, and the movie has a plaintive air about it that keeps things sober instead of uplifting (even when Moskowitz helps Mossman get his book back in print he is still unable to heal Mossman's wounds or give him back thirty years of lost life), but it is still required viewing for book nerds and budding authors in need of a stern reality check (Faulkner shoveled coal 12 hours a day? Good God!). Maybe Pennsylvania's own John Updike was right: maybe writing should only be a hobby.
