Download or read book Always Crashing in the Same Car On Art Crisis and Los Angeles California written by Matthew Specktor and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Best Book of the Year at The Atlantic 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.
Download or read book Always Crashing in the Same Car written by Lance Olsen and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A prismatic, imaginative exploration of David Bowie's last days An intricate collage-novel fusing and confusing fact and imagination, Always Crashing in the Same Car is a prismatic exploration of David Bowie through multiple voices and perspectives--the protean musician himself, an academic trying to compose a critical monograph about him, friends, lovers, musicologists, and others in Bowie's orbit. At its core beat questions about how we read others, how we are read by them, how (if at all) we can tell the past with something even close to accuracy, what it feels like being the opposite of young and still committed to bracing, volatile innovation. Set during Bowie's last months--those during which he worked on his acclaimed final album Black Star while battling liver cancer and the consequences of a sixth heart attack--yet washing back and forth across his exhilarating, kaleidoscopically costumed life, Always Crashing in the Same Car enacts a poetics of impermanence, of art, of love, of truth, even of death, that apparently most permanent of conditions.
Download or read book Ashes to Ashes written by Chris O'Leary and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 597 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive exploration of the final four decades of David Bowie’s musical career—covering every song he wrote, performed, or produced In Ashes to Ashes, the ultimate David Bowie expert offers a song-by-song retrospective of the legendary pop star's musical career from 1976 to 2016. Starting with Low, the first of Bowie's Berlin albums, and finishing with Blackstar—his final masterpiece released just days before his death in 2016—each song is annotated in depth and explored in essays that touch upon the song's creation, production, influences and impact.
Download or read book American Dream Machine written by Matthew Specktor and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Zero Zone written by Scott O'Connor and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A literary thriller about an infamous desert art installation, the cult it inspired, and the search for a missing young woman that is “cinematic . . . readers will be compelled to start again at page one to discover how O’Connor pieces together his suspenseful, incredibly well–written narrative” (Library Journal, starred review). Los Angeles, the late 1970s: Jess Shepard is an installation artist who creates environments that focus on light and space, often leading to intense sensory experiences for visitors to her work. A run of critically lauded projects peaks with Zero Zone, an installation at the once upon a time site of nuclear bomb testing in the New Mexico desert. But when a small group of travelers experience what they perceive as a religious awakening inside Zero Zone, they barricade themselves in the installation until authorities are forced to intervene. That violent showdown becomes a media sensation, and its aftermath follows Jess wherever she goes. Devastated by the attack and the distortion of her art, Jess retreats from the world. Unable to work, Jess unravels mentally and emotionally, plagued by a nagging uncertainty as to her culpability for what happened. Three years later, a survivor from Zero Zone comes looking for Jess, who must move past her self imposed isolation to face down her fears and recover her art and possibly her life from a violent cult intent of making it their own.
Download or read book David Bowie s Low written by Hugo Wilcken and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2005-08-19 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One day I blew my nose and half my brains came out." Los Angeles, 1976. David Bowie is holed up in his Bel-Air mansion, drifting into drug-induced paranoia and confusion. Obsessed with black magic and the Holy Grail, he's built an altar in the living room and keeps his fingernail clippings in the fridge. There are occasional trips out to visit his friend Iggy Pop in a mental institution. His latest album is the cocaine-fuelled Station To Station (Bowie: "I know it was recorded in LA because I read it was"), which welds R&B rhythms to lyrics that mix the occult with a yearning for Europe, after three mad years in the New World. Bowie has long been haunted by the angst-ridden, emotional work of the Die Brucke movement and the Expressionists. Berlin is their spiritual home, and after a chaotic world tour, Bowie adopts this city as his new sanctuary. Immediately he sets to work on Low, his own expressionist mood-piece.
Download or read book Stuntman written by Hal Needham and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2011-02-09 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic no-holds-barred memoir from Hollywood's most legendary stuntman -- an inspiration for Brad Pitt's character Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- is "full of incredible stories as told by a real man of action" (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Yep that's me, Hal Needham, on the cover doing a fire stunt. When you're on fire you don't dare breathe because if you do, you'll suck those flames right down your throat. I was Hollywood's highest paid stuntman so I should know. I wrecked hundreds of cars, fell from tall buildings, got blown up, was dragged by horses, and along the way broke 56 bones, my back twice, punctured a lung and knocked out a few teeth...I hung upside down by my ankles under a bi-plane in The Spirit of St. Louis, jumped between galloping horses in Little Big Man, set a world record for a boat stunt on Gator, jumped a rocket powered pick-up truck across a canal for a GM commercial, was the first human to test the car airbag-and taught John Wayne how to really throw a movie punch. Life also got exciting outside of the movie business. I had my Ferrari stolen right from under my nose, flew in a twin-engine Cessna with a passed out pilot, rescued the cast and crew from a Russian invasion in Czechoslovakia, and once took six flight attendants on a date. I owned the Skoal-Bandit NASCAR race team, the sound-barrier breaking Budweiser Rocket Car and drove a souped-up, fake ambulance in a "little" cross-country race called The Cannonball Run, which became the movie I directed by the same name. Oh yeah, I also directed Smokey and the Bandit, Hooper and several other action/comedy movies that I liked a bunch. I was a sharecropper's son from the hills of Arkansas who became a Hollywood stuntman. That journey was a tough row to hoe. I continually risked my life but that was the career I chose. I was never late to the set and did whatever I had to do to get the job done. Hollywood's not all sunglasses and autographs. Let me tell you a few stories...
Download or read book Vehicle Crash Mechanics written by Matthew Huang and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2002-06-19 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governed by strict regulations and the intricate balance of complex interactions among variables, the application of mechanics to vehicle crashworthiness is not a simple task. It demands a solid understanding of the fundamentals, careful analysis, and practical knowledge of the tools and techniques of that analysis. Vehicle Crash Mechanics s
Download or read book There Are No Accidents written by Jessie Singer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journalist recounts the surprising history of accidents and reveals how they’ve come to define all that’s wrong with America. We hear it all the time: “Sorry, it was just an accident.” And we’ve been deeply conditioned to just accept that explanation and move on. But as Jessie Singer argues convincingly: There are no such things as accidents. The vast majority of mishaps are not random but predictable and preventable. Singer uncovers just how the term “accident” itself protects those in power and leaves the most vulnerable in harm’s way, preventing investigations, pushing off debts, blaming the victims, diluting anger, and even sparking empathy for the perpetrators. As the rate of accidental death skyrockets in America, the poor and people of color end up bearing the brunt of the violence and blame, while the powerful use the excuse of the “accident” to avoid consequences for their actions. Born of the death of her best friend, and the killer who insisted it was an accident, this book is a moving investigation of the sort of tragedies that are all too common, and all too commonly ignored. In this revelatory book, Singer tracks accidental death in America from turn of the century factories and coal mines to today’s urban highways, rural hospitals, and Superfund sites. Drawing connections between traffic accidents, accidental opioid overdoses, and accidental oil spills, Singer proves that what we call accidents are hardly random. Rather, who lives and dies by an accident in America is defined by money and power. She also presents a variety of actions we can take as individuals and as a society to stem the tide of “accidents”—saving lives and holding the guilty to account.
Download or read book If He Had Been with Me written by Laura Nowlin and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If he had been with me everything would have been different... I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial. So let me tell you...
Download or read book Car Crash written by Lech Blaine and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of a traumatic event, a young man navigates small-town gossip, grief and recovery amidst a culture of toxic masculinity. “A heart-soaring act of literary bravery,” Car Crash is a hopeful, raw coming-of-age story for our times (Trent Dalton). “Bruisingly insightful.”—The Guardian • “Delivers from the first arresting page.”—Inside Story • “Moving, lyrical, warmly told and very funny.”—Brooke Davis, author of Lost & Found • “Shines with a fierce intelligence.”—Kristina Olsson, author of Shell Why did he get to live, and not them? This question has plagued Lech Blaine ever since he was a teenager, when he got into a car that never arrived at its destination. Of his crew of friends who were in the car, Blaine was the only passenger who made it out unscathed. In the aftermath of the accident that sent shockwaves through his small town, Blain was thrust into the local spotlight, fielding questions from journalists, police, and feeling pressure to perform his grief in public and on social media. In a community where men were expected to be strong and silent, Blaine felt that he had no one to turn to with his complicated emotions. In Car Crash, Blaine offers an intimate, brave account of what it’s like to survive a tragedy that others didn’t––and a moving portrait of a young person struggling to define his own masculinity. Blaine was raised to believe that being masculine meant projecting toughness, stoicism, and dominance, and this belief leads him to alcohol and disordered eating to cope with his pain. But as Blaine finally learns to open up with family, friends, and a therapist, he comes to realize the meaning of true strength, and the power of vulnerability to bring hope and healing. “Some books just have to be written. And some books just have to be read.”—Trent Dalton, author of Boy Swallows Universe
Download or read book Crashing Through written by Robert Kurson and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2008-08-19 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mike May spent his life crashing through. Blinded at age three, he defied expectations by breaking world records in downhill speed skiing, joining the CIA, and becoming a successful inventor, entrepreneur, and family man. He had never yearned for vision. Then, in 1999, a chance encounter brought startling news: a revolutionary stem cell transplant surgery could restore May’s vision. It would allow him to drive, to read, to see his children’s faces. But the procedure was filled with gambles, some of them deadly, others beyond May’s wildest dreams. Beautifully written and thrillingly told, Crashing Through is a journey of suspense, daring, romance, and insight into the mysteries of vision and the brain. Robert Kurson gives us a fascinating account of one man’s choice to explore what it means to see–and to truly live. Praise for the National Bestseller Crashing Through: “An incredible human story [told] in gripping fashion . . . a great read.” –Chicago Sun-Times “Inspiring.” –USA Today “[An] astonishing story . . . memorably told . . . May is remarkable. . . . Don’t be surprised if your own vision mists over now and then.” –Chicago Tribune “[A] moving account [of] an extraordinary character.” –People “Terrific . . . [a] genuinely fascinating account of the nature of human vision.” –The Washington Post “Kurson is a man with natural curiosity and one who can feel the excitement life has to offer. One of his great gifts is he makes you feel it, too.” –The Kansas City Star “Propulsive . . . a gripping adventure story.” –Entertainment Weekly NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Download or read book Smash Crash written by Jon Scieszka and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-01-24 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jack Truck and his best friend Dump Truck Dan are spending the day doing their favorite thing... Smashing and Crashing throughout the whole town! Along the way the meet up with their friends and give us a rollicking tour! But when a mysterious shadow falls and a strange voice calls, is the duo in trouble? Or has a new friend come to town to join in all the smashing fun.
Download or read book Crash and Burn written by Artie Lange and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this follow-up to his memoir Too fat to fish, the comedian and radio personality focuses on his drug addiction and life-threatening depression with an unflinching eye and his signature wit. A veteran comedian and radio personality, Lange was addicted to heroin and prescription drugs. He details his very public meltdown, and explains how he turned his life and career around.
Download or read book Riding in the Zone written by Ken Condon and published by Motorbooks. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Riding motorcycles is fun, but author Ken Condon maintains that there is a state of consciousness to be achieved beyond the simple pleasure of riding down the road. Riding in the Zone helps riders find that state of being. It's the experience of being physically and mentally present in the moment, where every sense is sharply attuned to the ride. Your mind becomes silent to the chatter of daily life, and everyday problems seem to dissolve. You feel a deeper appreciation for life. Your body responds to this state of being with precise, fluid movements, you feel in balance, your muscles are relaxed, and it seems as though every input you make is an expression of mastery. This is "the Zone." Condon identifies all of the factors that affect entering the Zone and addresses each one individually, from the development of awareness and mental skills to mastering physical control of the motorcycle. At the end of each chapter are drills designed to transform the book's ideas into solid, practical riding skills. Riding in the Zone takes riders to the next level in their skill set.
Download or read book The O Henry Prize Stories 2018 written by Laura Furman and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018 contains twenty prize-winning stories chosen from thousands published in literary magazines over the previous year. The winning stories come from a mix of established writers and emerging voices, and are uniformly breathtaking. They are accompanied by essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites, observations from the winning writers on what inspired their stories, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction. "The Tomb of Wrestling," Jo Ann Beard, Tin House "Counterblast," Marjorie Celona, The Southern Review "Nayla," Youmna Chlala, Prairie Schooner "Lucky Dragon," Viet Dinh, Ploughshares "Stop ’n’ Go," Michael Parker, New England Review "Past Perfect Continuous," Dounia Choukri, Chicago Quarterly Review "Inversion of Marcia," Thomas Bolt, n+1 "Nights in Logar," Jamil Jan Kochai, A Public Space "How We Eat," Mark Jude Poirier, Epoch "Deaf and Blind," Lara Vapnyar, The New Yorker "Why Were They Throwing Bricks?," Jenny Zhang, n+1 "An Amount of Discretion," Lauren Alwan, The Southern Review "Queen Elizabeth," Brad Felver, One Story "The Stamp Collector," Dave King, Fence "More or Less Like a Man," Michael Powers, The Threepenny Review "The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies," Jo Lloyd, Zoetrope "Up Here," Tristan Hughes, Ploughshares "The Houses That Are Left Behind," Brenda Walker, The Kenyon Review "We Keep Them Anyway," Stephanie A. Vega, The Threepenny Review "Solstice," Anne Enright, The New Yorker Prize Jury for 2018: Fiona McFarlane, Ottessa Moshfegh, Elizabeth Tallent
Download or read book Clark and Division written by Naomi Hirahara and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Best Mystery Novel of 2021 Set in 1944 Chicago, Edgar Award-winner Naomi Hirahara’s eye-opening and poignant new mystery, the story of a young woman searching for the truth about her revered older sister's death, brings to focus the struggles of one Japanese American family released from mass incarceration at Manzanar during World War II. Chicago, 1944: Twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, where they have been detained by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life in California the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled two thousand miles away in Chicago, where Aki’s older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier and moved to the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family’s reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train. Aki, who worshipped her sister, is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose’s death a suicide. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life. Her instinct tells her there is much more to the story, and she knows she is the only person who could ever learn the truth. Inspired by historical events, Clark and Division infuses an atmospheric and heartbreakingly real crime with rich period details and delicately wrought personal stories Naomi Hirahara has gleaned from thirty years of research and archival work in Japanese American history.
