<p>An impassioned, funny, probing, fiercely inconclusive, nearly-to-the-death debate about life and art&mdash;beers included.<br><br>Caleb Powell always wanted to become an artist, but he overcommitted to life (he's a stay-at-home dad to three young girls), whereas his former professor David Shields always wanted to become a human being, but he overcommitted to art (he has five books coming out in the next year and a half). Shields and Powell spend four days together at a cabin in the Cascade Mountains, playing chess, shooting hoops, hiking to lakes and an abandoned mine; they rewatch <i>My Dinner with Andr&eacute; </i>and<i> The Trip, </i>relax in a hot tub, and talk about everything they can think of in the name of exploring and debating their central question (life and/or art?): marriage, family, sports, sex, happiness, drugs, death, betrayal&mdash;and, of course, writers and writing.<br><br>The relationship&mdash;the balance of power&mdash;between Shields and Powell is in constant flux, as two egos try to undermine each other, two personalities overlap and collapse. This book seeks to deconstruct the Q&amp;A format, which has roots as deep as Plato and Socrates and as wide as Laurel and Hardy, Beckett's Didi and Gogo, and <i>Car Talk</i>'s Magliozzi brothers. <i>I Think You're Totally</i> <i>Wrong</i> also seeks to confound, as much as possible, the divisions between &ldquo;reality&rdquo; and &ldquo;fiction,&rdquo; between &ldquo;life&rdquo; and &ldquo;art.&rdquo; There are no teachers or students here, no interviewers or interviewees, no masters in the universe&mdash;only a chasm of uncertainty, in a dialogue that remains dazzlingly provocative and entertaining from start to finish.<br><br><i>James Franco's adaptation of </i>I Think You're Totally Wrong <i>into a film, with Shields and Powell striving mightily to play themselves and Franco in a supporting role, will be released later this year. </i></p>