Rating: 
Summary: "Stone" now a new cluster of words in our lexicon
Review: Moscowitz was right, this is a great book, a beautiful book. Link it, for instance, to another forgotten classic, Ray Bradbury's "Dandelion Wine." Link it
to Thomas Wolfe. Contrast it & link it with Eugenides' two novels, both of which I love. Dawes Williams is now taking up a permanent place in American Literature and everyone is the richer for it. Hurray for Moscowitz and even more so Mossman.
Rating: 
Summary: ** for the book, * for the film
Review: Caught the programme on this book on BBC4 in Dalkey, sentimental rubbish, to be sure. Director /narrator, a speed reader, acted as if books are personal trophies. Most of us rush along while we read, eager to turn the page, conditioned to move in life as relentlessly as factory workers with a drone ethic. But the best readers are not stone readers. The best readers are the slowest. Speed reading, an American invention, turns out to be skimming, which is not reading at all. The book turns out to be unreadable rubbish. I give it two *s because it makes a great doorstop.
Rating: 
Summary: A shame
Review: Into the gobbledeegook go slipper the whipper and the trimtrammaduhdeedo, believing the glubbledubble spewed forth by a madman. What do you think, am I a genius or what? Just send me thirty bucks and I'll send you the next 670 pages.
Here are three words for Dow Mossman that he should have tried to make sense of: Ther-a-py. The guy may have had potential at one point, but he ended up a nut. And this book proves it. And also, since he was such a worshiper of Aristotle's, he should have watched out for the philosopher's famous warning: "No great soul is exempt from a mixture of madness." True enough, but it is the conquest of that madness, not the surrender to it, which makes a great soul remain so. Mossman, in pitiful fashion, lost the battle, descending from a promising wordsmith to a full-blown babbling idiot. It's a shame, really.
Rating:
Summary: Well, I liked it
Review: I picked up this book and couldn't put it down. I
carried it everywhere with me so I could sneek in a
few pages at whatever apportunity aross. I think that
this book is a Love it or Hate It type of book. If you
are expecting to pick it up and have it be like
something else you have read before you, will be
disapointed. It is a great coming of age story. The
charcthers are raw and sometimes crazy, and the
prose are also insane. Mossman is a very passionate
writer, and his passion pulls you in along side Dawes
in his Journey. I am looking forward to re-reading the
book as soon as possible.
Rating: 
Summary: A Modern Classic
Review: Like most people, I saw the documentary. Like most people, I bought the book because of the documentary. I saw the programme on BBC4 and ordered the book through the UK wing of Amazon. Quite frankly, I don't know what is going on with both the reviewers and the people who rate the reviews. There is clearly an orchestrated campaign against this book. How else can a two sentence"review" giving the book one star be rated as helpful by so many people? And yet if someone is positive and gives a detailed and thought-out explanation as to why they think the book has merit they get canned? It is actually quite depressing to see so much ignorance and vitriol aimed at a book. It is particularly depressing that a person can only read 10 pages of a book and think they are therefore in a position to provide an informed critique.There is no doubt that Mossman is a great visionary writer. His mixing of styles and narrative turns present a challenge to the majority of readers who may well be used to reading their book club's recommended read. Whilst the book needs some careful editing to clear itself of some of the more self-indulgent aspects of Mossman's writing, it is without doubt the most important American novel I have read in 5 or 6 years. The downward spiral that Dawes finds himself in is told with great wit, great pathos, with an intellectual vigour that frightens as much as it compels, and, the mark of any great artist, with real truth. I only hope Mossman breaks his writer's block and tries to create something else as worthwhile and important. I only hope he does not have to read some of the poisonous nonsense written about his work. I expect to have lots of negative ratings of my review within the next week. Predictable and tiresome......
Rating:
Summary: Too bad there's no "zero stars"!
Review: I think the review from "island girl" in Concord, MA says it all. Mossman is an INCREDIBLY bad writer. If a book quickly goes out of print and is never heard from again, there's probably a REASON! I disliked his writing style so much I couldn't get past page 10. What a bizarre disappointment after that terrific movie! For heaven's sake, don't buy this book -- try to get it from the library and see if you can stand even 20 pages!
Rating:
Summary: An amazing book! Ulysses meets a Confederacy of Dunces
Review: I, like a lot of people, read this book after seeing "Stone Reader." Basically, I wanted to know what kind of book would inspire such a great movie. The answer to that is complicated, but the upshot is that I enjoyed reading this book very much. The three parts of this book have very different styles from each other. The first part reads more like poetry than prose. There are rich descriptions that leave more of an impression rather than a telling. The second part focuses on dialog with much fewer descriptions. I found the dialogs to be very real. The third part uses out-of-time-line narrative, writings (including the start of a novel) by the main character, letters from other characters, and other techniques. The overall impression is that this novel is like James Joyce's Ulysses: a massive and well-constructed work. I am amazed that a first-time writer could create this book. As to the story, there can be no doubt that the main character has few redeeming values; he is difficult to like. He and his "friends" (does he really form any real relationships with anyone?) do many violent and vicious things to themselves and others. How can you like that? In some ways, though, Dawes Williams reminds me of Ignatius Reilly in "A Confederacy of Dunces". Both characters are quite repulsive. Ignatius has none of Dawes' violent nature. Where Ignatius' life seems to always backfire on him, Dawes' life seems to result from Dawes' explicit attack on it. Repulsive, violent, vicious--what's to like about that? For me, though, I like the book. I find the construction and prose to be incredible. There is a wit and creativity behind this book I admire even if I don't admire the characters in it.
Rating:
Summary: Know the one about the infinite number of monkeys?
Review: {Give them an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time and eventually they'll produce the complete works of Shakespeare...} This ain't Shakespeare, but then again you wouldn't have to wait as long for it. The author could probably write some powerful poetry (I found some of the metaphorical images absolutely stunning) but the rare glimpse of brilliance in this almost random jumble of text only makes the lack of coherence even more frustrating. Unless you have an infinite amount of time to read an infinite number of books, avoid this one. On a scale of 1-5, it gets one banana.
Rating:
Summary: The Worst Writing Award
Review: I loved the review that listed the 5 worst written sentences in this book. I got my own copy and underlined 5 others that are just as bad. Here they are.
1. Dawes thought she was at her most attractive when she was irritated--lips pursed, cheeks flushed, and eyes flashing, though not so much like lightening flashing as like a spark of static electricity from touching a fluffy cat after shuffling across plush carpet in a cold, dark room.
2. He shifted uncomfortably on his stool looking at the topless blonde bombshell on the bar, but the first thing that struck him was the pulchritude of the exotic dancer's lips, which glowed like maraschino cherries, that is, pitted cherries macerated in an almond-flavored syrup then heated to boiling in an alum-containing brine full of carcinogenic red dyes
3. She lay next to him that night, regretting sleeping with another while they were broken up, knowing she had done nothing wrong but feeling vaguely unclean, like freshly washed, once-folded laundry that has been shoved off the bed onto the floor and slept on by the dog.
4. Dawes lay in bed musing at the slight wrinkles in the down comforter was attracted to her like a moth to a flame - not just any moth, but one of the giant silk moths of the genus Hyalophora, perhaps Hyalophora euryalus, whose great red-brown wings with white basal and postmedian lines flap almost languorously until one ignites in the flame, fanning the conflagration to ever greater heights until burning down to the hirsute thorax and abdomen, the fat-laden contents of which provide a satisfying sizzle to end the agony.
5. Which like waves in a gently wind-blown semi-calm sea heaved gently as she moved her legs under the cover and alternately wiggled her toes, causing a rogue ripple to course across the bed and die against the shore of the pillow.
Rating:
Summary: "a place to stone himself off from"
Review: Dow Mossman wrote, in 1972, a creative, original novel using the Vietnam War, then raging to it's eventual, inglorious end, as the backdrop. Any mention of Mossman's nihilism must take into account the devastation of the theory of Americas's unique place in the world...and it's undoing, that to this day, has left its scars on our psyche.
Dawes Williams is the antagonist of this book, and his childhood in middle America (Iowa) is depicted in intimate detail. His family discussions that take place in their car trips to his grandfather Arthur's home and dog farm do not use the words of a ten or eleven year old, but foretell the precocious nature of Dawes...precociousness eventually leading to madness.
Dawes tries to break away from his family's traditional life- style and only his summer neighbor, Abigail Winas understands him. On pg. 53 he believes " In his coming he was left behind. In these stones lie the dreams of my waking. In these dreams lie the stones of my sleep"..yet his grandfather's fields were "his blood". Dawes was looking for a place " to stone himself off from" but he realizes with Abigail's help that he .."won't be able to help himself" On pg. 529 he discovers that " knowledge drawn from structural learning, reason and assimilated research is mostly dangerous bunk..it is not only an illusion in progress...it is recessive in nature" apriori (intuitive) learning is all.
As the book ebbs and flows into Mexico, into the "novel" Dawes is writing, into "history telling" from his imaginary cousin, into madness, Dawes realizes there is no point to life. It becomes..."another summer stone evaporated into dustless cold"
On pg. 364 when he is in an asylum, he states, "there is no sense to be had in the universe. There is only the illusion of meaning" The writing is dangerously over-descriptive and the book is very long (almost 600 pages), however the originality of the work is the compensation..and it worth the sometimes over-wrought style.
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