The ghost script

Eighty-nine-year-old Jules Feiffer delivers the tour de force of his illustrious career in this epic finale that dares "to try things that film noir could only dream of" (Chris Ware). In The Ghost Script, Feiffer plunges us into the blowzy, boozy world of Blacklist Hollywood, circa 1953: witch hunts and Reds and pinkos and starlets and a mysterious, orchid-growing mastermind, the renamed "Cousin Joseph," running a back- channel clearinghouse for victims of the entertainment world's purge. Stumbling his way through this maze is private eye Archie Goldman, a tough-talking good guy, always a step or two behind in this fast-moving story of plots, counterplots, and goon violence. Meet Lola Burns, the buxom Blacklistee, desperate to get back into pictures, and O. Z. McCay and Fay Bloom, the booze-swilling, hard-living communist screenwriters. In this satiric assault on our past and present, Feiffer shows how the arc of American history evolves from starry dreams to thwarted and sold- out dreams.