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For those who continue to revere the novel as the art form of choice in a world teetering on the edge of literary bankruptcy, I recommend the heartfelt award winning film documentary The Stone Reader by Mark Moskowitz. I saw it at the Film Forum in Manhattan, and it's worthy of comment here.

The Stone Reader A Film by Mark Moskowitz

Mark has made a very personal film about his quest for author Dow Mossman who wrote one book, The Stones of Summer, which was well reviewed in the New York Times nearly thirty years ago. Dow was never heard from again as a novelist. The favorable review attracted the attention of Mark as a teenager. He tried to read it, could not finish it, then put it aside.

Years later, he picked it up again, read it avidly, and it became a life-changing, positive personal experience. According to Mark, the author truly spoke to him and offered resonating insights that enriched his understanding. An author had found his reader. Mark became obsessed with the question of why this writer, whose work affected him so deeply, never published another book and of what became of him. He set out to look for him and find the answer to his question.

This quest, which he lovingly filmed and self-financed, brought him into contact with a variety of people who had peripherally touched the life of the author. He interviewed the man who gave it a favorable review in the Times, the Director of the Iowa writer's program where the elusive author studied creative writing, other students in that program, old school buddies of the author, his agent, the designer of the book cover, his old editor and respected former publishers such as Robert Gottlieb and the late literary critic Leslie Fiedler, among others. Most of these people, with the exception of the reviewer, never read the book but did offer their opinions about the state of publishing, literature, the novel and the excruciating business of writing.

Aside from the wonderful ruminations about why some novels and authors live briefly in the public eye, why some succeed and others fail commercially in the marketplace, why some only publish one book and why some endure while others disappear, there was a recurrent theme running through the film as a persistent undercurrent… the obsessive and incurable compulsion of some people to tell a story, especially through the long form of the novel.

Most of those interviewed for the film had written one or more novels - some published, some not published - including the filmmaker. A number of them had published as much as five or six books, and all were, by the usual commercial standards, obscure and largely unknown and unread, and, as hinted by their body language and expression in the film, to varying degrees, disappointed. Note I said disappointed, not failed. There is a difference.

For me, the film was a search for the ultimate unanswerable question: Why do people write novels? With the exception of a few who have found the commercial mother lode, make millions and are briefly famous, most cannot sustain themselves financially as a working novelist. Nonetheless, they soldier on. Why?

Is it because they see the creation of a novel as a potential way to fame and fortune? Or a path to immortality? Or is it a need to create and express themselves and say something they deem important? Or is it simply an incurable compulsive obsession, an addiction never satisfied? As one novelist friend, the late Rod Thorpe once told me, his problem was not his inability to get started writing but in his inability to stop writing. I've always believed he was on to something. 

Just consider the drive, focus, time, imagination, research and concentration required to write a novel. It is, believe me, not a casual commitment. It is a life, a demanding exercise in ego, energy and single-minded purpose, of absolute devotion to the task requiring, in addition to fortitude, stubbornness and persistence, a firm understanding and respect for the subconscious which, as most novelist's know, acts as a mysterious cauldron of creativity.

Yet, there is no end to people who want to write novels, tell long stories, some based on characters of the imagination, others based solely on their own inner lives and experiences. With print on demand and eBook technology, more and more people are making their self-financed novels available for others to read.

Most will be disappointed in their reception and readership numbers, but, despite that, quite happy to see their stories available, at the very least, to close friends and relatives. Even knowing in advance that their fate might be indifference, obscurity and dismissal does not deter them. They are a hardy lot, true believers in their self-perceived talents and in what they have written, contrarians and critics be damned. I salute their courage. The fact is that the gatekeepers of the traditional publishing companies are, arguably, like the movie studios, mostly wrong in their choices.

There are some general but fairly well known conclusions one can draw from the film. The novel, in fact all writing, is a one on one communication system. The writer talks to one reader at a time. Some readers are receptive, some are not. Authors who communicate become good friends and readers are often unhappy when the author, for whatever reason, ceases the dialogue. Like the filmmaker and those interviewed in the film, myself and thousands of others, we have many "author friends" whom we love and revere and consult often. They help us make sense out of our lives, offering insight, wisdom and pleasure as we immerse ourselves in the worlds they have created.

For those who seriously write, the act of writing and creating is the heart of the ecstasy. There is no better life. One can live in the vast precincts of the imagination, visit different locales and meet ordinary and extraordinary people who suddenly materialize and grow in the author's mind. That, to me, is the real reward and the glory of the writer's life. The rest is hubris, mounds of rejections notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, for some authors there is a dark side. In the case of the author Dow Mossman, who is finally found in the film, we learn that his life has been a bummer. The film leaves you with no doubt that the creation of his one novel was his supreme achievement. Everything else came a cropper. He was not a failed novelist, a cliché much abused, but a failed man. There is a hint that the enormous energy required to write his first and only novel, the process of editorial changes demanded by his publishers, and their subsequent failure to find readers, exhausted and discouraged him and induced what he admits was a massive case of writer's block.

Certainly, there are one-novel authors who have not shared his fate, but there is compelling evidence that the novelist's life is fraught with psychological dangers. Why, for example, have some of our writing icons met such tragic fates? FitzGerald dies of alcoholism at forty-four. Hemingway blows his brains out at sixty. Faulkner falls off his horse in a drunken stupor at 65. Jack London commits suicide at forty. Twain dies bitter and alone. On and on…

And yet, for some of us, these novelists have become, along with many others, life-long friends whose dialogue with us continues and, we hope, will continue for others through the ages. Too bad we can't tell them how their friendship has enriched our lives. Maybe that's why they reached out to us through their novels in the first place.

Perhaps Moskowitz wanted to leave us with that thought when he began his labor of love. "Thanks kiddo, it was well worth the trip." 

As promised in my last e-sheet, I was to read Louis Begley's novel to determine how far it strayed from the movie About Schmidt (or visa versa) which won Jack Nicholson a Golden Globe award. Begley had written a glowing report in the New York Times about how wonderfully the movie people had adapted his novel, which I suspected, through anecdotal evidence, was a bit of butt-kissing adoration stimulated by the author's excitement to see his "based-upon-the-novel" credit and name on the big screen. I congratulated the author on getting his title on the flick, which I thought was an excellent story about how a retired actuary from a midwestern insurance company copes with the death of his wife and the marriage of his daughter to an undesirable mate.

After reading the novel, which was beautifully written and wonderfully realized, I am appalled about how the moviemakers bludgeoned - or, as they will put it, "adapted to another media," - the author's great story. What they did was reconstitute the original novel completely, obliterating all characters and plot points, all subtleties and nuances, and most, if not all, thematic material, subject matter and content. In short, the movie has almost nothing to do with the novel.

The fact is that for the moviemakers, the actors and, perhaps Mr. Begley himself, the adaptation had a win win outcome. The movie was a hit, the actor won an award and the author's title will be known in every corner of the world. But once the euphoria has died down and the videos are distributed and the television replays begin, I suspect that Mr. Begley will begin to understand the extent of his folly, or worse, in praising those who trashed his vision, disrespected his work, and mocked his insight and achievement. The creation of a novel is no small thing. It should be honored, not bought off and dismissed.

If you missed the E-Sheet last month, read my last article on About Schmidt.

For your convenience, we now offer an online archive of Warren Adler E-Sheets. See the E-Sheet archives now.

Until next time, happy reading, and we hope to see you soon on the Great White Way!

Warren Adler

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February 27, 2003