Episode 247 — Matthew Specktor

Otherppl with Brad Listi

Brad Listi

Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.8 • 554 Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2014

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Matthew Specktor is the guest. His novel, American Dream Machine, is now available from Tin House. Mona Simpson says "Joan Didion prophesied this novel. In an essay called 'Los Angeles Days,' published in 1992 in After Henry, she wrote that 'Californians until recently spoke of the United States beyond Colorado as 'back east'. If they went to New York, they went 'back' to New York, a way of speaking that carried with it the suggestion of living on a distant frontier. Calfiornians of my daughter's generation speak of going 'Out' to New York, a meaningful shift in the perception of one's place in the world.' Specktor's American Dream Machine may be first literature I've read in which Los Angeles is assumed as London is assumed by Dickens and Paris by Proust and New York by a host of twentieth century American writers. There is nothing ironic, ambivalent, or apologetic about Specktor's relationship to Los Angeles—as it is and was, as myth and as a thriving capitol city. Los Angeles provides an animate pulse under the lives of these men and boys, a source of permanence that lends their struggles gravity and monument." And David Shields raves "American Dream Machine is the definitive new Hollywood novel. The tone, the pace, the details—everything is just amazingly right. The whole book is charged with the kind of necessity I almost never see in novels anymore. Thrilling." Monologue topics: being boring, doing things, my neighborhood, my neighbors, Jamon, listener voicemail. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, you guys, this episode of other people is brought to you by Stitcher Smart Radio. You can hear this
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0:55.7	computer and don't forget to enter the promo code other people when you register.
1:01.0	This is an app you can apply it, go and get it.
1:05.0	Oh my god.
1:07.0	You are not alone. you have found other people you and i have a friend in common
1:17.0	every stupid thing that a writer could do i've done i think it's really beautiful jesus stated
1:22.5	what i struggle you know it was incredible you know it's like your head exploded seeing what was
1:27.3	really there
1:28.0	and now here's your host brad listing just one person at just one time right okay everybody
1:35.1	here we go again this is it this is other people this is exiting my interior this is entering
1:39.7	your interior thanks for being here thank you for allowing me uh into your headspace is that gross considering me entering your interior my Thanks for being here. Thank you for allowing me into your headspace. Is that gross?
1:46.0	Considering me entering your interior? My name is Brad Listy. I'm the host of this program and I'm sitting
1:51.1	as usual in a chair in Los Angeles. My guest today is Matthew Spector. His latest novel,
1:56.5	American Dream Machine, is out there now from Tin House. It has been causing a stir. Readers have
2:02.2	been responding positively. Hollywood is interested. Showtime has optioned the novel. They are
2:07.5	considering it as source material for a possible television series and whatnot. So things are
	...

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