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07.22: Matthew Specktor & Jodi Angel
2013-06-13 22:35:34| Powells Books Events Calendar
Matthew Specktor's American Dream Machine (Tin House) is the story of two talent agents and their three troubled boys, heirs to Hollywood royalty. It's a sweeping narrative about fathers and sons, the movie business, and the sundry sea changes that have shaped Hollywood and, by extension, American life. 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. Jodi Angel's second story collection, You Only Get Letters from Jail (Tin House), chronicles the lives of young men trapped in the liminal space between adolescence and adulthood. From picking up women at a bar hours after a parent's overdose to catching rattlesnakes with gasoline, Angel's characters are motivated by muscle cars, manipulative women, and the hope of escape from circumstances that force them either to grow up or give up. Haunted by unfulfilled dreams and disappointments, and often acting out of mixed intentions and questionable motives, these boys turned young men are nevertheless portrayed with depth, tenderness, and humanity.
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