Matthew Specktor, author of the novels “That Summertime Sound” and “American Dream Machine,” was working on a TV pilot when he realized he just wasn’t enjoying the process.
But he knew what did sound appealing: Writing about other creative people, like the artist and writer Eve Babitz and a list that eventually included director Hal Ashby, singer-songwriter Warren Zevon and actress Tuesday Weld among them.
“On a particularly depressing day when I was slogging along with the pilot, I thought, ‘I want to do more of that,’” Specktor recalls by phone from his home in West Hollywood. “I realized that the idea of writing a book that was both a memoir and an investigation of the artists who had experienced silences or crises in their careers was attractive to me.”
The result is “Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis and Los Angeles California,” which will be published July 27 by Tin House. In the book, Specktor, a founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books whose work has appeared in The Paris Review, Vogue and other publications, intertwines memoir with cultural criticism to tap into universal themes.
“Everyone knows what it’s like to have experiences being stuck, or experiences of loss or difficulty,” he says, adding that the format allowed him to approach those themes without necessarily focusing on a narrative.
Specktor began with an “endless spire” of filmmakers, writers and musicians that he considered covering in the book. “That list started to boil itself down,” he says. “Once I had reached about a dozen, I realized that if I started writing, I would figure out what it was that felt most important to me.”
The late screenwriter Carole Eastman, whose Wikipedia entry offers scant information beyond the fact that she was nominated for an Academy Award for her work on the 1970 film “Five Easy Pieces,” was the first figure that Specktor gravitated towards. He notes the number of women who were “under-credited” in that era and intertwines what he learns about Eastman’s life with the story of Specktor’s own relationship with his mother, herself a screenwriter. Specktor says that in writing about Eastman, for whom there is so little information available, he might be able to touch on broader themes that have primarily impacted women artists.
In another chapter, Specktor reflects on a friendship while digging into the cinematic legacy of Tuesday Weld. “I might add that she’s the one figure in the book who is both still alive who I don’t know,” says Specktor of the actress, who hasn’t appeared on screen in 20 years.
Specktor says that his decision to write about Weld initially posed a “conundrum” for him: Did he want to try to interview her or did he want to strictly reflect upon her work? He chose the latter route.
“I wanted to honor Tuesday Weld’s work without invading the person’s privacy,” he says. In doing this, he prompts the reader to think about the perception that fame and success go hand-in-hand.
“One thing I will say is that I’ve known a reasonable number of very famous people over the years and it rarely seems like a very comfortable bargain for some of them,” says Specktor. “You end up with some problems. Those problems are, in many cases, there before the fame and are probably part of the things that lead a person to want to be that famous in the first place, but, I think there’s a certain wisdom in wanting there to be a limit to how much attention you need or want.”
That’s a sentiment that might ring particularly true to folks existing in the era of internet fame and influencer culture. “Where people in the 20th century sort of aspired to their 15 minutes or more of fame, it might be more desirable in this particular moment to want 15 minutes of security or peace and quiet or privacy, just straight privacy,” says Specktor. “That’s a very valuable thing.”
Elsewhere, Specktor considers Warren Zevon, while recounting a neighbor who had a connection to the singer best known for the hit “Werewolves of London,” as well as the author’s own relationship to the music. It’s a complicated chapter. As Specktor notes in the book, Zevon’s behavior might have gotten him canceled today.
“I knew that, at some point, I would have to take on an artist whose behavior wasn’t the best,” he says. “If I was writing about people from that era, and I was writing about male artists, that topic was going to creep in.”
While the lives of others make up a good chunk of “Always Crashing in the Same Car,” it’s Specktor’s own experiences that tie everything together, becoming what he calls the “emotional spine” of the book.
Finding the balance between those elements proved to be his biggest challenge.
“I didn’t want to be just writing assessments of artists that I like,” he says. “I wanted it to have a personal dimension and an emotional dimension and, at the same time, to not just be a memoir.”
This post first appeared on ocregister.com
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