Ali Baba's Books: Stone Reader Recommends

Ali Baba's Books: "Stone Reader" Recommends Books and authors recommended by/in Mark Moscowitz' "Stone Reader: The Search for Dal Mossman and The Stones of Summer

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First of all, of course, Stones of Summer, by Dal Mossman, the impetus for the film. For that book, due to be released in September, please go to Mark Moscowitz' site for the film, and click on "store."

The film in its search for Dal Mossman, from the University of Iowa, in the Writer's Workshop, crosses the paths of other authors from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, advisors or facilitators of the workshop, librarians and libraries, and critics. A common theme that emerges is that of the Remarkable One Book Authors and Remarkable First Books

Science Fiction:

Thomas Pynchon, V.

Dan Simmons, Hyperion tetraology

R.A. Lafferty, Fourth Mansions

Kurt Vonnegut,: Cat's Cradle; Mother Night (book Moscowitz read on his trip to Iowa in search of Dal Mossman) -- war memory; Palm Sunday, autobiographical

War-Themed:: Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead; James Jones, The Thin Red Line; Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night; Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Frank Conroy, Iowa Writer's Workshop

: Stop-time; Body and Soul; Midair, Short stories

Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds

Leslie Fiedler, critic: Love and Death in the American Novel; The Stranger in Shakespeare; Waiting for the End

Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading

John Barth, The Floating Opera (Leslie Fiedler's favorite modern American First Novel)

William Kotzwinkle, The Fan Man

Ben Hogan's Power Golf

Claire Bee's Chip Hilton series (children's?)

Ross Lockridge, Raintree County

Thomas Hegan, Mr. Roberts

Colin Wilson

Siri Hustvedt, The Blindfold (1st novel MM likes a lot)

Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (another one-book author)

Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched by Fire (nonfiction book on artistic temperament)

William Cotter Murray, Michael Joe , the wonderful giggling Irishman Greyhound racing fan who was Dal Cotter's advisor at the University of Iowa

Caveat: there is a book out there attributed to him, "Make Today Count," which is a self-help book of dubious connection to him -- I bought one not knowing that it was credited to him and still haven't figured out why it was.: John Legget, Ross and Tom; Tony Tanner, City of Words; Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March; Wright Morris, The Territory Ahead (best bit of literary criticism I read since Love and Death…); Mario Puzo; William Gaddis, The Recognitions; Joseph McElroy, Ancient Paraphrase (another great, forgotten work); Marcus Goodrich, Delilah; F.O. Mathiessen, American Renaissance; John Seelye; The True Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,; The Kid; also many critical works

James Jones, The Thin Red Line, The Merry Month of May

Joseph Heller

Catch-22

Something Happened

Good as Gold

Chaim Potok, The Chosen

Robert C.S. Downs, The Fifth Season

Bruce Dobler

Gail Godwin

John Irving

John Casey, The Half-Life of Happiness

Tom McHale, Farragan's Retreat

John Marquand, Point of No Return (great lost book of the 40s)

Hamilton Basso, The View from Pompey's Head (DM's great lost book of the 50s)

Bernard Malamud, Dubin's Lives

Books I've read because of the film:

Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, referred to several times throughout the film as a notable one-book author book; he wrote the urban immigrant experience through a child's eyes novel and then went off to raise ducks.

Frederick Exeley's A Fan's Notes, again referred to fondly several times throughout the film. One of my favorite quotes about teaching and the "getoutstayalive" that washes over one when the reality of the situation hits home comes from this book:

"Classics" (good books written before the twentieth century, before 1950, before 1968...)

Mark Twain: Puddinhead Wilson; Huckleberry Finn; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court; Autobiography ("ch.14 is the greatest run on memory I ever read" DM)

Ernest Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

F. Scott Fitzgerald: Tender Is the Night; The Great Gatsby

Lord Byron's Complete Works

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Edgar Allen Poe

Emily Bronte

William Faulkner,: Soldier's Pay; Sartoris (a book Mark Moscowitz read because of Dow, and loved)

Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

Casanova's Memoirs ("the most important thing I read since Iowa City"—DM)

The Bible

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ("you can't replace that experience as long as you live" DM)

Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Gibbon, Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

Geoffrey Chaucer

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Devils ("'my pick for greatest novel ever written' --Dal Mossman. If you read it—I have, thanks to Dow—don't blame me, Mark Moscowitz—I prefer Tolstoy")

Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises; A Farewell to Arms; Islands in the Stream (Moscowitz' favorite EH)

Thomas Wolfe

Coming of age stories (if that's your cup of tea)

Howard Mosher, Northern Borders (coming of age story set in Vermont)

James T. Farrell, Studs Lonigan

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

: Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (personally I would not recommend anything by Sylvia Plath and don't know why anyone would. Wallowing in adolescent misery is not how I wish to spend my time -- even as an adolescent, wallowing in someone else's adolescent misery was laughable. As a result, I avoid books by suicides, preferring to read books that will help me to gain more from life, not avoid it. IM-not-so-HO, Sylvia Plath is the most overrated author of the 20th century, ranking somewhere beneath Edgar Guest on my list of "literary figures:" ghastly). It has, perhaps unfairly, made me avoid reading; John Kennedy Toole's, A Confederacy of Dunces, which is a humorous book, not an angst-ridden pity wallow. I believe I saw on the bookshelf also Giants in the EarthSig? Haarsveld. Sig Haansen?and know I saw the whole range of Raymond Chandler -- a writer to whom I return again and again, never tiring of the dialogue and description of the Los Angeles I love.

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe mysteries -- not mentioned but well-represented on the bookshelves in the film:: Farewell, My Lovely; The Big Sleep; The Long Goodbye; The High Window; The Lady in the Lake; Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles
Chester Himes Mysteries: The Big Gold Dream

Children and teens (but certainly not limited to):

Crocket Johnson, Harold and the Purple Crayon

Madeline L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

Franklin W. Dixon's Hardy Boys books

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter (all); hardcover editions:: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Original British title, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, for those fundamentalist muggles out there who judge books by their covers and not their content); Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix released 21 June 2003
and in Spanish (paperbacks) (note original title survives intact):: Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal transl. Alicia Dellepiane; Harry Potter y la camara secreta by J. K. Rowling, et al (Paperback), transl. Adolfo Munoz Garcia y Nieves Martin Azofra; Harry Potter y El Prisionero de Azkaban by J. K. Rowling (Paperback); Harry Potter y el cáliz de fuego transl.Adolfo Munoz Garcia y Nieves Martin Azofra; Harry Potter y el orden del fénix tampoco no tiempo dado por publicarlo.

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Last updated 27 July 2003