sarahfonseca's reviews
343 reviews

A Basket of Deplorables: What I Saw Inside the Clinton White House by Linda Tripp

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3.0

As Tripp’s own words were published posthumously and not included in the source materials for American Crime Story: Impeachment, I was eager to gain a bit more insight into her interiority. This book initially began as a diary Tripp was maintaining to share her account with her children and grandchildren — progeny who have intimated that Tripp would not have been at all happy with the finished product. Given the need for a copyeditor, the minute differences in journaling and nonfiction, and the overt moments of political posturing in a book written by a whistleblower who argued her actions were not politically motivated, this is understandable! Even the title and cover art are pointedly un-Linda.

In any event, it is nice to find glimmers of Tripp throughout its 200-someodd pages; pages that do — more often than not — offer her personal impressions, challenge longstanding assumptions about her choices, and otherwise offer valuable of anecdotes and asides about the Clinton presidency. The story about Norma Asnes near the end is especially wild...
Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic by Glenn Frankel

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5.0

One of my favorite books of 2021; a nearly-epic history of Hollywood's propriety, 20th century countercultures, and the serendipity that allowed this moving flick to come into being.

Wrote more about Shooting Midnight Cowboy here: https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-maligned-gay-metropolis-on-glenn-frankels-shooting-midnight-cowboy/