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

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."
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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."
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The New York Times Book Review\n"Fascinating. . . . This enthralling work deserves a central spot on the ever-growing shelf of books about Tinseltown."
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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."
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Ploughshares\n"Fascinating."
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Booklist\n"As heartfelt, as tormented, as full of feeling as a love story."
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Alta\n"Extraordinary."
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The Millions\n"Specktor masterfully orients the reader within the West Hollywood landscape."
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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."
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Aquarium Drunkard\n"Its blend of cultural commentary and memoir is never less than beguiling."
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Vol.1 Brooklyn\n"Eloquent. . . . An incisive collection of artist portraits illuminates the tenuous quality of Hollywood celebrity and the price it exacts."
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Shelf Awareness\n"Specktor delivers interesting pieces of criticism, reporting, and self-help in this unique memoir."
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Kirkus Reviews\n"A work indebted to femaleness and its varied incarnations."
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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."
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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