{"product_id":"always-crashing-in-the-same-car-on-art-crisis-and-los-angeles-california-9781951142629","title":"Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePart memoir, part cultural history, part portrait of place, \u003cem\u003eAlways Crashing in the Same Car\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMatthew Specktor\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of the novels \u003ci\u003eAmerican Dream Machine\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThat Summertime Sound\u003c\/i\u003e; a nonfiction book, \u003ci\u003eThe Sting\u003c\/i\u003e; and the forthcoming memoir \u003ci\u003eThe Golden Hour\u003c\/i\u003e (Ecco\/HarperCollins). His writing has appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Paris Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Believer\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTin House\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eVogue\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eGQ\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBlack Clock\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eOpen City\u003c\/i\u003e. He has been a MacDowell fellow, and is a founding editor of the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e. He resides in Los Angeles. www.matthewspecktor.com\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Tin House Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51831621550354,"sku":"9781951142629","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_1365349e-2279-448e-9952-882e05163432.jpg?v=1767007038","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/always-crashing-in-the-same-car-on-art-crisis-and-los-angeles-california-9781951142629","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}