Wall of Glass: Q&A with Matthew Specktor

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Since the 1970s, when blockbusters such as Jaws and Star Wars began earning astronomical sums at the box office, the future prospects of the movies have been murky. More recently, accelerated by the global COVID lockdown that began in March 2020, the communal experience of movie-viewing in cineplexes has severely declined. Add to this the rise of streaming platforms such as Netflix and Max, and it isn’t difficult to imagine a future when seeing a new film in your local cinema will be considered as quaint as bowling in an alley with hand-set pins. In novelist and cultural critic Matthew […]

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‘Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California’ by Matthew Specktor: Blood Sports

by Paul Wilner

As the Beat poet Lew Welch pithily put it, “More people know you than you know. Fame.” Welch was someone who knew whereof he spoke. He disappeared from his friend Gary Snyder’s house into a nearby mountain range in May 1971, leaving behind a cryptic farewell note that read, in part: “I had great visions but could never bring them together with reality. I used it all up. It’s gone.’’ Matthew Specktor explores the pulls—and perils—of chasing success in Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California (300 pages; Tin House), an eloquent account of […]

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