Stop-time Body and Soul Midair, Short storiesĪlfred Kazin, On Native Grounds Leslie Fiedler, critic 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 Palm Sunday, autobiographical War-Themed:

Dan Simmons, Hyperion tetraologyĬat's Cradle Mother Night (book Moscowitz read on his trip to Iowa in search of Dal Mossman) - war memory A common theme that emerges is that of the Remarkable One Book Authors and Remarkable First Books 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. For that book, due to be released in September, please go to Mark Moscowitz' site for the film, If you have a pop-up blocker on, right click on the book titles to read the information.įirst of all, of course, Stones of Summer, by Dal Mossman, the impetus for the film. But I also can't really say that I liked or enjoyed it.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 SummerĬlick on book titles below to enter Amazon books and read descriptions and reviews in cases where availability is limited, hardcover, softcover, and sources are linked. It's well-done overall, if perhaps a little broad in its satire. It's an interesting book, but a rather brutal one. Catholicism is a hypocritical display or a quiet, heartfelt stranglehold. Some are terrible in a larger-than-life way - Anna sets up a shooting range in her basement because she's convinced that all the black men in Philadelphia are conspiring to rape her - and some in a quieter, sadder way. All of the characters are sort of terrible at heart.

It's often a funny book, but it's also a darkly cynical and depressing one. When Arthur Farragan's son Simon dodges the draft, escapes to Canada, and writes an apology note to Ho Chi Min, Anna and Jim decide that the only course of action is to send Arthur up to Montreal to murder his only son. Older siblings Jim and Anna are virulently patriotic and virulently racist, and their children have, respectively, lost an arm and a life fighting overseas.

Where they were quiet studies of families and marriages in an Irish-Catholic setting, Tom McHale's novel is filled with satire and absurdist humor and - spoiler alert - two major characters are abruptly blown up by two separate bombs.įarragan's Retreat follows a wealthy Irish-Catholic clan in Philadelphia in the context of the Vietnam War. This was a wild change of pace after the last two Irish-American novels I've read.

Farragan's Retreat by Tom McHale