This novel sings like a spirited, well played rendition of "Dirty Lowdown Blues" on Beale Street: it is authentic, gentile, Southern and soulful. Mesler treats his characters with a gentle hand in their depiction, which perhaps is Southern or just a spirited and eclectic writer giving his characters time and space to dance to the music of time to enable their unique identities to come into play. This novel is about aspiration and the distinction between what is authentic and what is artifice. This novel deals with the ghosts haunting our spirited lives and advising us well by insinuation of instinct and the voice of deep, innate reason to be only what we truly are. This novel is about the absurdity of life and its futility: Samuel Beckett is alluded to more than once but in "Memphis Movie" there exists no lingering despair, no bitter edges, no fearsome abyss. Mesler calmly builds characters who live and breathe, whom we come to know and care about, and whose lives intersect with comedy and tragedy in either case to enrich and inhabit a truly immersive reading experience. We become engaged in the storyline because the characters are engaging and beckon us to enter their lives and understand their hopes and dreams and ambitions. Mesler takes the aspirations of his characters and they become a springboard to the action of their lives, leading them on, egging them on or, as Scott Fitzgerald wrote in "Gatsby", they become "boats beating against the current." The well dressed set of Memphis in his movie is inherently essential in the telling of this rich, Southern tale: it is not only Southern but it is also American and, at times, even Biblical. Going back to the Pyramid and a poet bearing the Memphis mojo of movie script named Camel. At times, the Mississippi might just as well be the Nile. Memphis becomes an Eden after the Fall and, after all, it's germinal that Memphis is certainly East of both Hollywood and Eden, the latter of which is the first name of the film's producer. Mesler's writing is sure-footed and even throughout the novel and mesmerizing with inventive twists and credible turns in an imaginative storyline which Mesler plays against all the triangles of character like a chess master. The mature writing is calm and simple and glorious with a narrative in which the dialogue limns for its reality and beauty and resonant qualities of readership. One senses a quiet dignity and a subtle sense of beauty in the language by a writer who knows himself and his gifts implicitly. The writing's simplicity and honesty and beauty beguile and entice and evoke an eagerness to see what comes next. So one's interest is piqued, not because of conventions used to build suspense in lesser thrillers, but rather because the writing is exquisite and elegant so we care what happens next as the characters draw us into their lives by virtue of their foibles and their unique gifts. Mesler leads us ably through the haunts of his native city of Memphis: clearly, this is a town that Mesler knows inside-out and worships and adores. Like many great novels there exists a subtle Faustian tale resident in "Memphis Movie" and it is a novel which, as such, should also become a great movie. In the end, life is really just a feature film with images, created on fickle, flickering, insubstantial light playing on thin, luminous film, in which we star, direct and shoot among a cast of thousands with a script of indefinite direction leading to joy and heartbreak and ultimately a bewildering ending. Ah, but what a ride and what an ecstasy comes from this journey as the camera rolls to take in and capture lost time as unique human experience edited by the discretion of memory. Well worth the price of admission, I genuinely loved this great American novel of the South and can't recommend enough that you lose yourself in the 3D cinema of Corey Mesler's brilliant "Memphis Movie." ( )