ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Matthew Specktor grew up in Los Angeles. He received his BA from Hampshire College, and his MFA from Warren Wilson. He has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and his writing has appeared in Open City, Salon, and various anthologies. His screen adaptation of Shirley Hazzard’s novel, The Transit of Venus, was optioned by Warner Independent Pictures. He worked for many years in film development, running New York offices for Jersey Films and Fox 2000. He is presently completing his second novel.
Matthew Specktor grew up in Los Angeles. He received his BA from Hampshire College, and his MFA from Warren Wilson. He has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and his writing has appeared in Open City, Salon, and various anthologies. His screen adaptation of Shirley Hazzard’s novel, The Transit of Venus, was optioned by Warner Independent Pictures. He worked for many years in film development, running New York offices for Jersey Films and Fox 2000. He is presently completing his second novel.
ABOUT "THAT SUMMERTIME SOUND"
"Matthew Specktor's That Summertime Sound isn't so much a book as it is a door, hinged in memory, and swinging wide to every tenderhearted throb of lust and longing and precocious regret still there where you left it, at the periphery of adulthood. How does the novel perform this trick? By prose as lucid and classical as Graham Greene's in The End of the Affair, yet saturated in detail such that if you'd never had the luck to outgrow an '80's teenage dream in Columbus, Ohio, you'll feel you had after reading it."
-- Jonathan Lethem
"Matthew Specktor’s beautiful and arresting first book, That Summertime Sound (MTV Press, $24), chronicles a different sort of ’tween experience—the obsessive desires and frustrations of a young man caught in the time warp between adolescence and adulthood in the ’80s. Specktor, an L.A. native who has worked for years in film development, has a crisp, evocative style that captures both the nuances of a particular time and the universal themes of any insightful coming-of-age story. We’ve all been there."
-- L.A. Times
"Matthew Specktor's That Summertime Sound isn't so much a book as it is a door, hinged in memory, and swinging wide to every tenderhearted throb of lust and longing and precocious regret still there where you left it, at the periphery of adulthood. How does the novel perform this trick? By prose as lucid and classical as Graham Greene's in The End of the Affair, yet saturated in detail such that if you'd never had the luck to outgrow an '80's teenage dream in Columbus, Ohio, you'll feel you had after reading it."
-- Jonathan Lethem
"Matthew Specktor’s beautiful and arresting first book, That Summertime Sound (MTV Press, $24), chronicles a different sort of ’tween experience—the obsessive desires and frustrations of a young man caught in the time warp between adolescence and adulthood in the ’80s. Specktor, an L.A. native who has worked for years in film development, has a crisp, evocative style that captures both the nuances of a particular time and the universal themes of any insightful coming-of-age story. We’ve all been there."
-- L.A. Times