sarahfonseca's reviews
343 reviews

When a beloved blonde bombshell dies curiously during a Hollywood film shoot, life begins to imitate art and an anti-heroic screenwriter finds himself at the forefront of the inquiry. This one is a film fiend's delight, regardless of whether or not they possess an affinity for the 1940s film noir milieu in which the story is set; smug references and thrilling plot-points are motivated by the Un-American Activities Committee, studio system anti-trust legislation, nitrate film's flammability, and even Ronald Reagan's pre-political purity. 'The Fade Out' certainly puts the 'graphic' in graphic novel, yet this feels vital to telling a story about a bygone era that is against nostalgia and alluring. The film industry's most unforgiving qualities - its debauchery run amuck, racism, treatment of women as cattle, and fixation on the almighty dollar - began with the studio system's unchecked power. Eager to read volume two.

A fascinating first person musing, censored for years by the author's own father, about the irreparable consequences of daddy issues and the furiousness of the death drive.

A collection of short essays, poems, and stories -- often contradictory in moral -- penned by the Black lesbian writer Alice Dunbar-Nelson before she was aged twenty. The Gutenberg edition of this text includes an introduction by the Black suffragette Sylvanie Williams, who Dunbar-Nelson presumably encountered during her time in turn-of-the-century New Orleans before moving to Harlem, New York.