Back in 1972, as a teenager, Mark Moskowitz read a book by first-time author Dow Mossman called The Stones of Summer. He didn't get past the first chapter. Three decades later, now an independent video producer, he picked it up again and fell in love. Eager to read more of Mossman's work, he discovered that not only had the book been out of print for thirty years but that Mossman hadn't published a thing since.

In this first-person documentary, Moskowitz sets out the find out the reasons why. He begins with John Seelye, author of the New York Times review that interested him in the book and forges on, talking to anybody at all connected to Mossman and the publishing industry: critics, editors, agents, authors and classmates, and even the jacket designer. His quest takes him from Maine to Florida to the University of Iowa and Mossman's delightful mentor, Bill Murray (not the actor, of course), and Dow Mossman himself.

Moskowitz begins each interview with two questions: Do you know Dow Mossman? Have you read his book? His eagerness to arrange interviews without knowing the answer and the constraints of shooting with a single 16mm camera lead to the film's one persistent quirk, his habit of reblocking scenes in the middle of the shot. But once he steps back behind the 4th wall, his second question--How does somebody write a great first book and never publish again?--provides for plenty of fascinating material.

This is the best documentary I've seen about writing and writers and why they do what they do (or don't). It is an unabashedly bibliophilic paean to "great" books that slights neither Harry Potter nor the Hardy Boys. Stephen King has praised the film as a "love sonnet to books and reading," which is no overstatement. When Robert Ellis confesses to playing hooky as a kid just so he could sneak off to the library and read, you know these are the kind of people you want to hang out with for a few hours.

Even Mossman's account of the scarring editorial battles that drove him into authorial reclusiveness doesn't disappoint, despite the tenuousness of the denouement. Yet it is a cautionary tale as well. Moskowitz's roster of literary luminaries dispense the kind of hard-nosed advice that should form the foundation of any serious writing class, challenging writers to think about why they write in the first place and what they honestly expect to get out of it.

The follow-up featurette on the supplemental DVD provides a more upbeat resolution to the story, as well as a rich potpourri of additional interviews, excerpts and shorts, including Roger Ebert and Janet Maslin, and a mini-bio of Henry Roth. Required viewing is the complete broadcast of a 1974 Firing Line with William F. Buckley, during which Leslie Fiedler vigorously defends popular literature and science fiction and even soap operas against the "solemnity" and "joylessness" of modern literary criticism.

Though at times his experts seem to be echoing William Goldman's warning about Hollywood, "Nobody knows anything," taken altogether Mark Moskowitz has created the equivalent of your own personal writing workshop in a box. I spent four bucks at Blockbuster and got four graduate credit hours in the bargain. Best educational deal ever.

Eugene Woodbury