About a year or so ago, I picked up a documentary from the library called Stone Reader which was about a guy who bought a book in 1972 based on a positive New York Times book review. The book was written by a freshman author named Dow Mossman who had graduated from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop MFA program (during the time that Vonnegut was there I might add). For those who never swam in deep end of the collegiate literary pool, the Iowa Writer’s Workshop is like the Mecca of American University Creative Writing programs. Mossman had taken ten years to write the book and despite the initially positive reviews, he disappeared from the world completely never to be heard of again until Mark Moskowitz tracked him down in the film and discovered that the writing of the book actually drove Mossman mad and he was unable to pick up the pen again after it was completed.

Now, I don’t know about you but any book that drives someone mad to write it is a book worth reading in my mind. So, daddy bunting went a hunting the other night and found a copy for a cool $0.40 plus shipping and handling. Less than five bucks and two weeks later, I’ve got a hard copy of The Stones of Summer sitting next to me as I type and it’s in fairly good shape. I only read the first paragraph but I already know this is one hell of a special book. It’s amazing what you can tell about a book or short story by the first paragraph. In fact, I’ve almost honed my tastes to be able to ascertain if a story is worth reading after finishing the first paragraph.

Here’s the opening of the novel:

When August came, thick as a dream of falling timbers, Dawes Williams and his mother would pick Simpson up at his office, and then they would all drive west, all evening, the sun before them dying like the insides of a stone melon, split and watery, halving with blood. August was always an endless day, he felt, white as wood, slow as light. Dawes shifted about in his seat, uncomfortable, watching the land slide past. It was late, a steady progression of night; the conversations inside the car were like great wood eyes and, driving west over Iowa, the evening was always air vague with towns, blue fences, and crossroads vacant of cars. He watched the deserted country porches slide by like lonely pickets guarding the gray, outbreaking storm of sky; like juts of rock.

Folks, we have a real writer on our hands here. Mossman even said in the movie that because he was taught by poets, he paid desperate attention to the placement of every word and treated every page like a long prose poem. I can’t wait to get further into this book; it’s sure a stark contrast from listening to Stephen King and Peter Straub’s The Talisman in the car (one of my favorite books of all time).

So what the hell are you all reading and if you’re not reading don’t you know that the individual who can read but chooses not to is more ignorant that the one who can’t and longs to?

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