Description

The sacred and the profane come together with visceral force in two novellas by Bruce Wagner, The Met Gala & Tales of Saints and Seekers.

The Met Gala follows a prominent family of influencers and would-be philanthropic socialites in the Hollywood hills as they spiral ever further away from reality. Candida is a young actress who sleeps with the “unhoused”-the ultimate charitable act-and her brother, Charlie, transitioned into womanhood at the age of eleven. Their mother and father have long been divorced but still come together to torment their children, mutilating and destroying friends and enemies along the way.

Tales of Saints and Seekers is the digestivo, a collection of stories about the journey to enlightenment and the wisdom given by gurus. Where The Met Gala pushes past boundaries and steps over the line, Tales of Saints and Seekers knows that there is no line at all, only characters who travel on their own path, sometimes straying and other times going completely off the map. Wagner is able to hold the dichotomy of the sacred and profane in one book, smearing them together, and ripping them apart. The Met Gala & Tales of Saints and Seekers is an illuminated manuscript of Heaven and Hell.

Publisher Review

“Devilish. Dizzying. Masterly . . . Wagner shines.”-Publishers Weekly

“He is a visionary posing as a farceur.”-Salman Rushdie

“If it was the promise of laughter that first drew me to Wagner’s work, it is his language that has kept me hooked… Marveling at his comic and linguistic gifts, at his sheer storytelling verve – his ability to handle large ensembles of characters and keep numerous narrative balls in the air while at the same time shooting flames from his mouth and balancing a naked lady on his nose – I nevertheless introduce Wagner’s work to my writing students with a caution: Don’t try this at home.” -Sigrid Nunez

“Bruce Wagner is Hollywood’s master of satire.”-Sam Wasson, author of The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood

“Wagner is the James Joyce whose Dublin is Hollywood.”-David Cronenberg

“Bruce Wagner writes really wonderfully about that whole milieu [of Hollywood] and its gothic vanity.”-Emma Cline

“I’m a big Bruce Wagner fan.”-Father John Misty

“Bruce Wagner’s stories about Hollywood are the best I’ve read since F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West.”-Terry Southern

“Wagner writes like a wizard. His prose writhes and coruscates.”-John Updike