On Thursday, July 29, 4 pm Pacific, 7 p.m Eastern, I’ll be in conversation with the ultimate literary gentleman, Matthew Specktor, on his new book, a memoir in criticism, ALWAYS CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR, a story of a peculiar kind of failure which haunts his life and art, the Hollywood failure. The chapters take up the stories of certain writers, directors, actors and musicians whose career arcs and plummets haunt Specktor, and through whose stories he tries to get a grip on his own sense of failure and his difficult relationship with his mother, who like Specktor, violated the family success story with her own downfall. Contact McNally Jackson Books for link.