I just rented The Stone Reader, which is a documentary about trying to find a writer, Dow Mossman, who wrote one great novel, The Stones of Summer, and then evaporated into the ether. More than being about this book–which, by many accounts, is just a sort of average, hip, late 20th century Bildungsroman-type nothing-special yet sort-of-intriguing book–the film is also about reading and being “transformed” (I hate it when people say that–can I just say “affected?”) by literature. Since this is my career, I find this sort of thing mildly intriguing at worst and–heck–engrossing and lachrymosifying at best.
Here are the two best gems of the film (neither of which is the filmmaker’s–though it’s to his credit that he knew them):
“The present moment is unlike the memory of it. Remembering is not the negative of forgetting; remembering is a form of forgetting.” –Milan Kundera, Book of Laughter and Forgetting
“I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such as way as to superimpose one part of the pattern on another. Let visitors trip.” –Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory
I might add, on a similar theme:
“The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.” –William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun
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