American Dream Machine

Literature & Fiction

Specktor, Matthew

Genre Fiction

ABACUS +

Little Brown Ome

SPHERE

From Melville to Madoff, the Confidence Man is an essential American archetype. George Roy Hill’s 1973 film The Sting treats this theme with a characteristic dexterity. The movie was warmly received in its time, winning seven Academy Awards, but there were some who thought the movie was nothing more than a slight throwback. Pauline Kael, among others, felt Hill’s film was mechanical and contrived: a callow and manipulative attempt to recapture the box-office success of Robert Redford and Paul Newman’s prior pairing, Butch Cassidy &amp; The Sundance Kid. Matthew Specktor’s passionate, lyric meditation turns The Sting on its head, on its side, and right-side-up in an effort to unpack the film’s giddy complexity and secret, melancholic heart. Working off interviews with screenwriter David S. Ward and producer Tony Bill, and tacking from nuanced interpretation of its arching moods and themes to gimlet-eyed observation of its dizzying sleights-of-hand, Specktor opens The Sting up to disclose the subtle and stunning dimensionssexual, political, and aestheticof Hill’s best film. Through Specktor’s lens, The Sting reveals itself as both an enduring human drama and a meditation on art-making itself, an ode to the necessary pleasure of being fooled at the movies.

The Sting: A Novel Approach to Cinema (Deep Focus)

Dramas & Plays

Catapult

The story of two talent agents and their three troubled boys, heirs to Hollywood royalty; a sweeping narrative about fathers and sons, the movie business, and the sundry sea changes that have shaped Hollywood and, by extension, American life. American Dream Machine is the story of an iconic striver, a classic self-made man in the vein of Jay Gatsby or Augie March. It's the story of a talent agent and his troubled sons, two generations of Hollywood royalty. It's a sweeping narrative about parents and children, the movie business, and the sundry sea changes that have shaped Hollywood, and by extension, American life. Beau Rosenwald―overweight, not particularly handsome, and improbably charismatic―arrives in Los Angeles in 1962 with nothing but an ill-fitting suit and a pair of expensive brogues. By the late 1970s he has helped found the most successful agency in Hollywood. Through the eyes of his son, we watch Beau and his partner go to war, waging a seismic battle that redraws the lines of an entire industry. We watch Beau rise and fall and rise again, in accordance with the cultural transformations that dictate the fickle world of movies. We watch Beau's partner, the enigmatic and cerebral Williams Farquarsen, struggle to contain himself, to control his impulses and consolidate his power. And we watch two generations of men fumble and thrive across the LA landscape, learning for themselves the shadows and costs exacted by success and failure. Mammalian, funny, and filled with characters both vital and profound, American Dream Machine is a piercing interrogation of the role―nourishing, as well as destructive―that illusion plays in all our lives.

United States

Tin House Books

Product Description 
Los Angeles Times Bestseller 
"[An] absorbing and revealing book. . . . nestling in the fruitful terrain between memoir and criticism." ―Geoff Dyer, author of Out of Sheer Rage 
Blending memoir and cultural criticism, Matthew Specktor explores family legacy, the lives of artists, and a city that embodies both dreams and disillusionment. 
In 2006, Matthew Specktor moved into a crumbling Los Angeles apartment opposite the one in which F. Scott Fitzgerald spent the last moments of his life. Fitz had been Specktor’s first literary idol, someone whose own passage through Hollywood had, allegedly, broken him. Freshly divorced, professionally flailing, and reeling from his mother’s cancer diagnosis, Specktor was feeling unmoored. But rather than giving in or “cracking up,” he embarked on an obsessive journey to make sense of the mythologies of “success” and “failure” that haunt the artist’s life and the American imagination. 
Part memoir, part cultural history, part portrait of place, Always Crashing in the Same Car explores Hollywood through a certain kind of collapse. It’s a vibrant and intimate inspection of failure told through the lives of iconic, if under-sung, artists―Carole Eastman, Eleanor Perry, Warren Zevon, Tuesday Weld, and Hal Ashby, among others―and the author’s own family history. Through this constellation of Hollywood figures, he unearths a fascinating alternate history of the city that raised him and explores the ways in which curtailed ambition, insufficiency, and loss shape all our lives. 
At once deeply personal and broadly erudite, it is a story of an art form (the movies), a city (Los Angeles), and one person’s attempt to create meaning out of both. Above all, Specktor creates a moving search for optimism alongside the inevitability of failure and reveals the still-resonant power of art to help us navigate the beautiful ruins that await us all. 
 Review 
"Remarkable. . . . Writing through his troubles, Specktor offers consolatory beauty." 
 ― 
The Los Angeles Times\n"A novelist and critic with a sharp eye for Hollywood blends memoir and cultural critique in this study of classic American failure narratives." 
 ― 
The New York Times Book Review\n"Fascinating. . . . This enthralling work deserves a central spot on the ever-growing shelf of books about Tinseltown." 
 ― 
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review\n"Compelling. . . . [an] intimate investigation of one man’s imperfect life, the successes and failures, and most importantly, the realization that who we are now is everything." 
 ― 
Ploughshares\n"Fascinating." 
 ― 
Booklist\n"As heartfelt, as tormented, as full of feeling as a love story." 
 ― 
Alta\n"Extraordinary." 
 ― 
The Millions\n"Specktor masterfully orients the reader within the West Hollywood landscape." 
 ― 
Los Angeles Review of Books\n"A blend of absorbing autobiographical vignettes and incisive cultural deep dives. . . . Specktor [is] a masterful observer of the weird tragedies and creative blocks that regularly befall artists in L.A." 
 ― 
Aquarium Drunkard\n"Its blend of cultural commentary and memoir is never less than beguiling." 
 ― 
Vol.1 Brooklyn\n"Eloquent. . . . An incisive collection of artist portraits illuminates the tenuous quality of Hollywood celebrity and the price it exacts." 
 ― 
Shelf Awareness\n"Specktor delivers interesting pieces of criticism, reporting, and self-help in this unique memoir." 
 ― 
Kirkus Reviews\n"A work indebted to femaleness and its varied incarnations." 
 ― 
BOMB Magazine\n"Specktor has captured the LA I know, the one all around me and the one in my head, a city of invention and grit, surface and underbelly." 
 ― 
Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown\n"Haunting, powerful, riveting, unforgettable―I could go on (and on) about Matthew Specktor's astounding new book about failure, writing, Los Angeles, and the movies. With scholarly rigor and tenderhearted sympathy, Specktor excavates the lives of artists forgotten (Carol Eastman, Eleanor Perry), underappr

Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California

Humor & Entertainment

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Specktor, Matthew. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Specktor, Matthew