IN THE GAME:

His season in the sun: Dow Mossman wrote 'The Stones of Summer' 31 years ago, but his book tour has just begun (David Mehegan, Globe Staff, 11/29/2003, Boston Globe)

He grew up in Cedar Rapids, went first to Coe College, then finished his bachelor's degree at the University of Iowa. While still in his teens, he wanted to be a novelist. By the time he went to the prestigious Writers' Workshop, he says, "I was totally driven. . . . My idea of writing a novel is, you get the biggest pile of clay you can and start carving. It's like sculpture." Some readers have found the result to be a challenging read. The book is long -- 586 pages -- poetical, and relatively plotless.

Like many writers "totally driven" to write a first novel, he couldn't write another. He was married and living in New York, and in 1978 he and his wife (they were divorced eight years ago) moved back to Cedar Rapids to start a family. Mossman got a job as a shop welder. He kept that job for 20 years, shaping, forging, and fabricating heavy equipment. "I loved welding," he says, until the work became more of a mindless assembly line. Before that happened, he was truly building things: "stainless-steel scale systems, bucket elevators, all kinds of conveyers."

He dabbled at writing but published nothing, and turned increasingly to reading. After 1975 he began to read more nonfiction, especially social history, though he was steeped in such classic authors as Shakespeare, Balzac, and Conrad.

"He was extremely literary," says mystery novelist Ed Gorman of Cedar Rapids, one of Mossman's close friends for 40 years. "If somebody said to him, `Do you watch this TV show?' No. `Ever read any popular novels?' No. He only wanted to read first-rate art. Over the years, I introduced him to such writers as Charles Bukowski, John Fante, and Graham Greene. In turn, he introduced me to writers such as Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Giacomo Casanova, and Emile Zola. He's the brightest guy I've ever known and certainly the most talented." [...]

"I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me," Mossman says. "It's a happy tale. I was frustrated for a lot of years, but I was reading. Writer's block doesn't mean you're trading your brain in. I was in the game, in my own way."

The story here about how Barnes and Noble revived the book itself is quite neat.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 29, 2003 11:10 AM