The Stones Of Summer

Rating:
Summary: Style over substance...but too bad his career ended here.
Review: Every serious reader of serious literature has personal favorites that aren't accepted in the general canon...which may even be hard to defend on conventional critical grounds. I myself love Luke Rhinehart's "The Dice Man" and Jean Stafford's "The Catherine Wheel"--novels that (among many others) have a certain cult following but otherwise haven't really gained any stature with time, or managed to stay in print.

This is offered as preamble to another (mostly) negative review of Dow Mossman's long-out-of-print magnum opus (his only opus, in fact). The documentary "Stone Reader" created extraordinary expectations around this epic debut, because the filmmaker's enthusiasm about it and finding its creator after 30 years was so inspirationally passionate.

So, it turns out "Stones" (which I happened to get in a first edition hardcover from a local library system--but only because all the recent reprints were checked out) is one of those garrulous, unfocused, under-structured gasps of "writerly" excess that were not uncommon in the 60s and early 70s. Back then those qualities were taken for evidence of unfettered creativity. When they occur now (see: David Foster Wallace), they can signify the same, or just an editor who's asleep at the wheel. (The latter is apparently an industry-wide problem at present--and the brilliant but undisciplined Foster Wallace is its worst-case-scenario.)

"The Stones of Summer" is the sound of a youthful writer in love with the propulsion and lilt of his own words. Those qualities don't necessarily translate for a reader, however, and there's no question that the forced lyricism and digressive indulgence here overwhelm whatever small narrative force/character-psychological insight Mossman has to offer. Barely a sentence passes without the author describing something simple as "like" something meaninglessly fancier--"the sun dying before them like the insides of a stone melon, split and watery, halving with blood," to quote from the book's very first paragraph. All this filigree comes at the cost of anything more involving. The author doesn't seem much interested in direct reader contact, anyhow. He's too busy trying to dazzle us.

That said, "Stones" reveals a genuine writer--too bad he never got further chances to hone his craft. For all its indulgence, the bloated, barely interesting novel still suggests Mossman might've created great things had he stuck to it--and had the publishing industry stood behind him after this first critically-acclaimed, commercially-dire effort.

Rating:
Summary: "Stones of Summer" vs. "Stone Reader"
Review: I'm tired of reading of people who "saw the movie and couldn't WAIT to read the book..." The book stands apart from the documentary and they have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

To judge this novel based on what 'Stone Reader' fans think would be a crime. 'Stone Reader' is a love letter to all literature, to be shared with all people who love to read. 'Stones of Summer,' on the other hand, is not for everyone; it is a book of ideas and will be treasured by those who love ideas, and by those who will not be scared away after a mere 100 pages.

Easily one of the best books I've ever read. But don't create expectations that have anything to do with the 'Stone Reader' documentary.

Rating:
Summary: Great read!
Review: I found this book very interesting and enjoyed Mossman's prose. I can't wait for his next novel. From the reviews that have already been posted about this book, I'm reminded of how political books are rated by individuals ... there either 5-stars or 1-star ... depending on your viewpoint.

Rating:
Summary: Stones of Suffering
Review: I too was caught in the web of hype that surrounding this lost work. Since I started this book back in November, I have suffered through it while hoping for some thread of a story with some thread of something interesting. Instead it is just one incoherant scene after another. At around halfway through, I had to bail out as it seemed to get worse.

My advice is "Don't waste your time with this!" It was lost for a reason.

Rating:
Summary: Ultimately unfulfilling, but not without its moments
Review: I'll admit to being fascinated by the marketing campaign for this reissue. Who wouldn't want to be part of a rediscovery of a "lost American novel" that had been out of print for so long? To anyone who's even just toyed with the idea of writing something, this is a warm thought: "Even if I crash and burn on my first attempt at the bookstores, I might be reborn a generation or two later as a lost classic!"

My interest went beyond just the display table and the glorious praise. I actually sampled the first few pages in-store and decided I loved the imagery, the surreal metaphors that evoke, rather than describe. I'm all for this type of challenge from a reading experience. Unfortunately, 581 pages later, this is still the very best thing that I can say about The Stones of Summer: it's often evocative.

I really cannot recommend this novel to most readers. It has its moments, and most of them are in the first part of the book, as far as I'm concerned, where Dawes is a young boy of about 8 or 9. Themes such as piety, the absurdity of history, and the tyranny of "breeding" (applied to dogs as well as to humans) are explored through the eyes of young Dawes Williams. It's explained that "Dawes" himself is named after a city in Iowa, which itself seems to embody all of these themes, in spite of its own supposedly proud American heritage. I thought this was a great way to start off a huge novel like this, and set up a lot potential for a story of discovery and of conflict for Dawes, and America, for the rest of the book.

But, somewhere very early in the second part of the book (adolescence), I began to "lose" Dawes Williams. By the third part (adulthood), he was totally gone. I'm aware that this was the "point", sort of. But, it just doesn't work for me. As a teen and a young adult, Dawes may indeed be coming to terms with many of these themes, and more, but he doesn't let us in on it. But, worst of all, neither does Mossman. Mossman keeps describing scenery and feelings and elusive moods passing among people and things and air, but the story needs more. Dawes Williams doesn't want you to get to know him, and neither does the narrator, which is ironic considering how much psychological "stuff" is spilled out over these many pages. Either Dawes or the narrator needed to take charge of this story for us at some point, and neither did. They both seem to want you, the reader, to be just as bewildered as they were/are. Again, I just don't think that works as a novel.

By the third part of the book we are plunged into the diaries of a madman, so to speak; the proper narrative text is often interrupted by long passages from Dawes's "novel", or journal, as well as letters from friends, most (all?) of which are not real, but were rather written by Dawes as a way for him to understand his strange reality: as fiction. This is where the book becomes really frustrating at a point where it should be enlightening. Dawes seems determined to analyze his world as a drama, or a narrative, even if this is only his cynical side making a mockery of the society he's forced to live in. But, there's obviously too much senselessness for him to make sense of, and this is part of his anguish. It's the late 1960's, the country is in turmoil, so we may "understand" what Dawes is going through in a very general sort of way, but it's too impersonal. Again, I felt I didn't know him at all after all of those pages. This actually applies to many of the characters in the story.

In real life, people sometimes drift off into strange corners of their mind, and we indeed feel like we don't recognize them anymore. But, this is a novel, not real life. I guess it's supposed to be poignant that the protagonist couldn't recognize the difference, but the author HAS to. For this reason, I cannot give this novel a full recommendation.

P.S. In light of Mark Moskowitz's experiences with this book, as explained in "Stone Reader", I do reserve the right to change my mind about this novel 20 years later.

Rating:
Summary: You CAN be lukewarm about this book
Review: Reading this novel was like swimming upside down in a vat of peanut oil. Everything seems like it's inverted and moving in slow motion. If a book were ever measured by its weight, then Stones of Summer would be a masterpiece. Unfortunately, you may want to read the book. Once you open it and try to sit down to enjoy it, you realize you are not reading a masterpiece, but instead a long-winded, boring tale about characters that you really could care less about. I really want to meet the person who has read this all the way to the end. He/she probably also competes in "iron man" triathalons and peruses the tax code for pleasure. The most torturous element of the book is the collection of wholly unlikeable characters. By the middle of the book I didn't care what happened to any of them - in fact I would have liked the book more if they had all died in a fiery car crash.

Rating:
Summary: Third-rate!
Review: The admirers of this book form a cult, as I think even they would admit. Like any other cult, they hold certain beliefs that make perfect sense to them, yet strike the uninitiated as, shall we say, nuts. The author, Dow Mossman, was once asked why the protangonist was missing his hair and several other useful things. Mr. Mossman replied, "Because everything is lost." If this strikes you as a pearl of Zarathustrian wisdom, I suppose these 560 pages of "oceanic" prose, ebbing and flowing away with a charmingly disregard for such stodgy concerns as structure and narrative momentum, just might be your meat. If it seems instead the self-caressing delusion of a profoundly third-rate word-spiller, you might want to pass by the brightly-clad strangers shaking their tambourines in your face and make your way to a church with a more substantial following.

Rating:
Summary: This book is an acquired taste, like coffee with chicory
Review: If you like the tightly written prose and page-turning stories of books like the Da Vinci Code, this novel is probably not to your taste.

Chances are good you'll form a strong opinion about "The Stones of Summer" before you finish the first page and those feelings, pro or con, will be engraved in stone before you finish the first chapter.

And, if you stay the course through all 586 pages, you may well damn the book and its hype or praise the documentary and the reviews that led you into its labyrinthine universe.

Yet, if you're a dreamer or a writer, your ability to consciously create and describe worlds can only be enhanced by experiencing the words and images in Dow Mossman's novel from its opening on an Iowa road in 1949 to its ending along the Mexican coast in 1968.

Language forever strains against its bridle. From Hilgard Avenue to West Wood Street to Randolph Circle, the latest slang both includes and excludes while dynamically altering reality from the smile or frown on our faces out past the far horizons. Even so, many writers are content to work within a static "Same Words, Different Book" level of consciousness, forever clinging to their old safe language like a holy pacifier. Mossman, however, turns both consciousness and language inside out and I expect he knows the risks.

Mossman's novel has been characterized as both epic and plotless, his protagonist as both self-absorbed juvenile delinquent and sensitive sage, and his language as both floridly hallucinatory and haunting with emotional depth.

In the large universe of this compelling book, all of these statements are simultaneously true and false. Paradox itself is the motive power of this novel.

Caution-Mossman's themes, stories, characters, references, and omnipresent symphony of metaphor may be hazardous to your health. Do you accept the risk?

Then drop the reins of conventional reading and allow the galloping words to carry you through the dangerously beautiful landscape of stones where, at journey's end, you'll emerge transformed by the infinite potential of language and/or stunned senseless by its addictive insanity.

Rating:
Summary: Hype of Summer
Review: I've been a book-buyer all my life; this is the only book I've ever returned for store credit.

Rating:
Summary: I kept glancing at the page numbers
Review: There is no shortage of novels like this, usually on bookshelves fewer weeks than yoghurt in grocery stores before they're shifted to remainder tables. These babies are immensely long, mind numbing and suck the reader into a vortex of verbige. "Miss MacIntosh, My Darling," which came out a few years earlier than "Stones," comes to mind. "Runaway Soul," "The Tunnel," "Harlot's Ghost." Books that are best skimmed because life's just too short to read every self indulgent sentence.
You pick up "Stones" and start to read...and read...and read..and then you realize you're only on page 15. You calculate "Hmmm...this is going to take awhile." Then you think, "Well, there must be more to it.." And indeed, some of the language is quite magical, guardedly compensating for an absence of plot and non-existent character development.
And so I finally ground to a halt on page 504, convinced that the paper following page 505 was now weighing in at about 20 lbs a sheet. I felt like a character out of Beckett "I can't go on..I must go on..I can't." And so I didn't.
All in all, Mossman and his editors should have followed Fred Astaire's rule (applicable to both vaudeville and novels, and paraphrased): get your act down pat and chop it in half.