The Met Gala & Tales of Saints and Seekers: Two Novellas

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The sacred and the profane come together with visceral force in Bruce Wagners double feature,The Met Gala & Tales of Saints and Seekers.Wagner leads the reader beyond their comfort zone and then pulls them back into the light, performing a literary balancing act in his two novellasone drenched in transgression while the other embarks on a journey of spiritual guidance.

The Met Galafollows 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 unhousedthe ultimate charitable actand her brother, Charlie, transitioned into womanhood at the age of eleven. Their mother and father have long been divorced but still come together to completely traumatize their daughters, ruining their lives, and destroying many others along the way.

Tales of Saints and Seekersis thedigestivo, a collection of stories about the journey to enlightenment and the wisdom given by gurus along the way. WhereThe Met Galapushes past boundaries and steps over the line,Tales of Saints and Seekersknows that there is no line at all, only characters who travel on their own paths, 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 Seekersis something that, once read, you wont stop thinking about.

Reviews

If it was the promise of laughter that first drew me to Wagners 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 Wagners work to my writing students with a caution: Dont try this at home. Sigrid Nunez

"Bruce Wagner is Hollywoods 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

"He is a visionary posing as a farceur."Salman Rushdie

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

"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

Author Bio

Bruce Wagner has written thirteen novels and bestsellers, including the famous Cellphone Trilogy, Im Losing You (PEN USA finalist), Ill Let You Go and Still Holding, Dead Stars, ROAR: American Master, The Oral Biography of Roger Orr, The Empty Chair, and the PEN/Faulkner-finalist Chrysanthemum Palace. He wrote the screenplay for David Cronenbergs film Maps to the Stars, for which Julianne Moore won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. In 1993, Wagner wrote and created the visionary mini-series Wild Palms for producer Oliver Stone and co-wrote (with Ullman) three seasons of the acclaimed Tracey Ullmans State of the Union. He has written essays and articles for the New York Times, Artforum and the New Yorker. He lives in Los Angeles.