Patrick Nathan launches "The Future Was Color," with Isle McElroy

Join us to celebrate the publication of this dazzling novel about the inextricable link between the personal and the political set against the decadence of Hollywood and postwar Los Angeles.

Author Patrick Nathan will be joined by author and critic Isle McElroy for a reading, conversation, signing, and reception.

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About the book

As a Hungarian immigrant working as a studio hack writing monster movies in 1950s Hollywood, George Curtis must navigate the McCarthy–era studio system filled with possible communists and spies, the life of closeted men along Sunset Boulevard, and the inability of the era to cleave love from persecution and guilt. But when Madeline, a famous actress, offers George a writing residency at her estate in Malibu to work on the political writing he cares most deeply about, his world is blown open. Soon Madeline is carrying George like an ornament into a class of postwar L.A. society ordinarily hidden from men like him.

What this lifestyle hides behind, aside from the monsters on the screen, are the monsters dwelling closer to home: this bacchanalia covers a gnawing hole shelled wide by the horror of the war they thought they’d left behind and the glimpse of an atomic future. It’s here that George understands he can never escape his past as György, the queer Jew who fled Budapest before the war and landed in New York, all alone, a decade prior.

Spanning from sun-drenched Los Angeles to the hidden corners of working-class New York to a virtuosic climax in the Las Vegas desert, The Future Was Color is an immaculately written exploration of postwar American decadence, reinventing the self through art, and the psychosis that lingers in a world that’s seen the bomb.

Advance praise for The Future Was Color

Literary Hub, A Most Anticipated Title
LGBQT Reads, A Most Anticipated Title of 2024
The Rumpus, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
The Millions, A Most Anticipated Book of Spring

“This complex, compassionate novel is an impressive achievement for a young author who has a promising career ahead of him.” —Daniel A. Burr, The Gay & Lesbian Review

“If Fellow Travelers has you curious for more in-depth historical fiction on the McCarthy era and the lavender scare, look no further than Patrick Nathan’s new novel, set in 1950s Hollywood.” —Tiernan Bertrand-Essington, Queerty

“Nathan writes with the eloquence of a nimble mind working at the height of his powers. Gripping from the first sentence. . . . Profound, life-affirming, and splendidly seductive, The Future Was Color deserves to become a new lodestar in the ever-expanding constellation of gay literature.” —Dave Wheeler, Shelf Awareness

“This portrait of an artist in the making dazzles.” —Publishers Weekly

“Ambitious, perspicacious, and humane.” —Kirkus Reviews

About the author

Patrick Nathan is the author of Image Control and Some Hell, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The New Republic, American Short Fiction, Gulf Coast, The Baffler, and elsewhere. He lives in Minneapolis.

About Isle McElroy

Isle McElroy's writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, The Cut, GQ, and other publications. Their first novel, The Atmospherians, was named an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times and their second novel, People Collide, was a New York Times Critic's Pick and a book of the year by Vogue, NPR, Vulture, Them, and other outlets.