Movie (Monday March 22)

Stone Reader Blog for Monday March 22, 2010

I was anticipating this part of the movie since last Friday. I really wanted to know how it ended up. Whether Dow would be crazy or perfectly normal. This really interested me because there had been so much build up to the end of the movie.

We find that Mark is still trying to learn more about Mossman before he actually goes to meet him. Mark meets with Dan, one of Dow’s old classmates. Dan shares that Dow was consumed with the book and would work on it for 20 hours straight at times. Dan shares how he may have had some influence in the book because he was mentioned several times. Particularly about how we wrote to Dow when he was in Vietnam. Dan believes that this book is a very good read for people in this time of age.

Mark’s next move is to go and see Mossman in Iowa City. During this first meeting we don’t actually see Dow. But Marks shares how it was sort of awkward in that Dow answered the door then left to go upstairs without saying a word. He returned with a copy of the stones of summer.

Next Mark meets with Dow’s old agent for the book. His agent remembers Dow’s book and tries to explain why it failed to gain much attention. Mark states that he would like to get Dow’s book back into print and wonders if that is a possibity.

Mark again meets with Dow to discuss the book. Dow shares how he stopped writing after the book. And he was taken to a hospital because he had acute anxiety. He states that it took him ten years to get over it. One part that I really like is how he thought of the book. He considers it unfinished and open ended. This is very interesting to me. I can kind of understand that, he worked so hard on something that it became his life and his life is still going and therefore the book is still going. All of this is in his mind. He compares this to Shakespeare in that he always writes his book in his mind and has it memorized. Maybe he has another novel in his mind that he would like to write someday. I think of my life that way sometimes. It is like an ongoing narrative in my head and I can remember almost all of it.

The movie ends and we find that because of this movie the stones of summer is now in print through Barnes and Nobel. I hope that Dow sees some of the profit from this rebirth of the book. Mark spent a lot of time working on this movie and I was very glad that it came to fruition.

I don’t know how many books are out there that need “rediscovering”. This is a very admirable thing to do for someone and society. There are probably thousands of books out there that were written but never got the right attention.

In conclusion I really enjoyed this movie, even though the beginning was kind of boring and slow. I would recommend it to others.