American Dream Machine

February 11, 2013
At the center of Specktor’s conventional second novel (after That Summertime Sound) is Beau Rosenwald, a Jewish boy from New York who lands in Los Angeles in the 1960s with nothing and uses his improbable charisma to become a powerful Hollywood agent. Narrated by his son Nate, the novel alternates between Beau’s successes and failures with his talent agency, American Dream Machine, and his son’s attempts during the 1990s and 2000s to find purpose. Nate and his half-brother Severin grow up in the Hollywood miasma and struggle to escape from their father’s shadow, in the process falling into drugs and hedonism. Meanwhile, Beau’s blusterous personality leads to a feud with his conflicted business partner, Williams Farquarsen III, who nurses a destructive secret, and as time goes on, Beau becomes increasingly isolated from the Hollywood of a new generation. The mostly familiar plot meanders with few surprises, but the book is nonetheless filled with aperçus of the cynical and vulgar world of Hollywood executives. While Specktor (That Summertime Sound), a film executive and the founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books, does not quite achieve an epic tone, his novel of the seedy guardians of the mythic American dream succeeds in showing just how unpleasant the film industry can be. Agent: Marc Gerald, The Agency Group.

January 15, 2013
For Beau Rosenwald and his cronies in the talent agency business in the '60s and '70s, the American Dream Machine is alive but not always well. Beau is the quintessential American Dreamer who feels nothing can hold him back from his own success. Despite his disjunctive name (he's physically unprepossessing, in fact downright ugly), he has charm and on his best days, charisma. Since Hollywood is a happenin' place in the early '60s, Beau migrates there from New York, shortly after having gotten Rachel Roth pregnant, with twins no less. After a hasty marriage, Beau leaves Rachel and the kids in New York and heads back to LA, for after all, that's where his future lies. He hooks up with the Talented Artists Group and becomes an agent for Bryce Beller, a hapless actor whom Beau hawks as the next person to kiss Natalie Wood on screen. Eventually, he gets Bryce a role in The Dog's Tail, a "poetic" film Beau is trying to put together. The narrator of the novel, Beau's son by an office fling, caustically summarizes the film: "[The] script was fathomless, yet apart from the shuddersome beginning and the end, not much happened." Needless to say, in a city where you're judged by your last critical success, Beau's stock goes down. Interoffice politics soon cause Beau to break away from TAG and link up with another talent agency, the American Dream Machine, and at least for a while, things go well, for they seem to be signing legitimate talent, but ultimately, ADM becomes a mockery of its own self-naming. Beau's life plays out against the issues of his family woes: the death of his daughter and the emotional wallop of two "friends" discovering they're in fact stepbrothers. A Hollywood version--literally--of how the American Dream continues to con people with its seductive illusion.

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April 1, 2013
In his picaresque sophomore novel, Specktor (That Summertime Sound, 2009) portrays Beau Rosenwald, as seen or imagined through his son Nate's ubiquitous perspective. It's the early 1990s, an era marked by grunge music and slackerism. Through a haze of pot smoke and hangovers, aspiring writer Nate finds himself reflecting more and more on Beau, an overweight but ambitious dreamer who begrudgingly moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1962, a transformative time in cinema's history, determined to break into the business end of the industry. Along with his friend Williams Farquarsen, a southern gentleman and fierce Hollywood-attorney, Beau lunges haphazardly after success. Despite his slovenly appearance, Beau wooed women and celebrities alike, establishing a name for himself as the driven, if not emotionally bared, talent agent who would change the business of film forever. As Nate recounts Beau's passion and sexual escapades, he endeavors to decipher his paternal legacy. With coolness and precision, Specktor comes across as a West Coast Saul Bellow in this sweeping narrative, but his energetic, pop-infused prose is markedly his own.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)