Bruce Wagner – författare

I Met Someone is the story of Academy Award–winning actress Dusty Wilding, her wife Allegra, a long-lost daughter, and the unspeakable secret hidden beneath the glamour of their lavish, carefully calibrated celebrity life. After Allegra suffers a miscarriage, Dusty embarks on a search for the daughter she lost at age sixteen, and uncovers the answer to a question that has haunted her for decades. With masterful suspense, Bruce Wagner moves among the perspectives of his characters, revealing their individual trauma and the uncanny connections to one another’s past lives. I Met Someone plummets the reader down a rabbit hole of the human psyche, with Wagner’s remarkable insights into our collective obsession with great wealth and fame, and surprises with unimaginable plot turns and unexpected fate. Alternately tender, shocking, and poetic, this is Wagner’s most captivating and affecting novel yet.

"The New York Times Book Review" has compared Bruce Wagner's prose to 'some unholy combination of Rick Moody, Anthony Lane, and the gossip columnist Richard Johnson.' Now, this quintessential L.A. storyteller spins his most ambitious and moving novel to date: a philosophical, heartbreaking tale of three friends lost in a California dream gone mad. "The Chrysanthemum Palace" introduces one Bertie Krohn, the only child of Perry Krohn, creator of TV's longest running space opera, Starwatch. Bertie recounts the story of the last months in the lives of his two friends: Thad Michelet, author, actor, and son of a literary titan; and Clea Freemantle, emotionally fragile daughter of a legendary film star. Scions of entertainment greatness, they call themselves the Three Musketeers. As they attempt to scale the peaks claimed by their sacred yet monstrous parents, Bertie chronicles their peculiar predicaments - as well as their futile struggle against the ravenous, narcissistic and addicted Hollywood that claims them.Convulsive and poignant, "The Chrysanthemum Palace" is a tragic tale of friendship and fate writ large - a tour de force by a brilliant writer whose storytelling delivers devastating emotional impact.

“A writer without mercy . . . this book is like a wire stretched across the throat.” —Oliver StoneIn an epic novel that does for Hollywood what Nashville did for Nashville, I’m Losing You follows the rich and famous and the down and out as their lives intersect in a series of coincidences that exposes the “bigger than life” ferocity of Hollywood—and proves that Bruce Wagner is a talent to be reckoned with.  Wagner, author of the novel Dead Stars, examines the psychological complexities of Hollywood reality and fantasy, soaring far beyond the reaches of Robert Stone''s Children of Light and Nathaniel West''s The Day of the Locust.

“Dead Stars is the London Fields of Los Angeles, the Ulysses of TMZ culture—an immensely literate, fearsomely interior novel about people who are neither.”—Tom Bissell, GQ At age thirteen, Telma is famous as the world’s youngest breast cancer survivor until threatened with obscurity by a four-year-old who’s just undergone a mastectomy…. Reeyonna believes that auditioning for pregnant teenage porn will help fulfill her dream of befriending Kanye West…. Jackie, a photographer once celebrated for arty nudes of her young daughter, is working at a Sears Family Portrait boutique…. And Oscar-winning Michael Douglas searches for meaning while his wife, Catherine, guest-stars on Glee. Moving forward with the inexorable force of a tsunami, Dead Stars is Bruce Wagner’s most lavish and remarkable translation yet of the national zeitgeist: post-privacy porn culture, a Kardashianworld of rapid-cycling, disposable narrative where reality-show triumph is the new American narcotic.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Composed of two companion novellas, The Empty Chair is a profound, heart-wrenching piece of spiritual storytelling from Bruce Wagner, the internationally acclaimed author of such novels as Dead Stars, I’m Losing You and Force Majeure. In First Guru, a fictional Wagner narrates the tale of a Buddhist living in Big Sur, who achieves enlightenment in the horrific aftermath of his child’s suicide. In Second Guru, Queenie, an aging wild child, returns to India to complete the spiritual journey of her youth. Told in ravaged, sensuous detail to the author-narrator by two strangers on opposite sides of the country, years apart from each other, both stories illuminate the random, chaotic nature of human suffering and the miraculous strength of the human spirit. A deeply affecting and meditative reading experience, The Empty Chair is an exquisitely rendered, thought-provoking, and humbling new work.

In his most profound and accomplished book to date, acclaimed author Bruce Wagner breaks from Hollywood culture with a novel of exceptional literary dimension and searing emotional depth. Joan Herlihy is a semi-successful architect grasping at the illustrious commission that will catapult her to international renown, glossy décor magazines, and the luxe condo designs of Meier, Koolhaas, and Hadid: the incestuous cult of contemporary Starchitects. Unexpectedly, she finds her Venice Beach firm on the short list for a coveted private memorial -- a Napa billionaire''s vanity tribute to relatives killed in the Christmas tsunami -- with life-changing consequences. Her brother Chester clings to a failing career as a location scout before suffering an accidental injury resulting from an outrageous prank; the tragicomic repercussions lead him through a maze of addiction, delusion, paranoia -- and ultimately, transcendence. Virtually abandoned by her family, the indomitable Marjorie Herlihy -- mother, widow, and dreamer -- falls prey to a confidence scheme dizzying in its sadism and complexity. And unbeknownst to Marj and her children, the father who disappeared decades ago is alive and well nearby, recently in the local news for reasons that will prove to be both his redemption and his undoing. Spiraling toward catastrophe, separate lives collide as family members make a valiant attempt to reunite and create an enduring legacy. To rewrite a ruined American dream. Deeply compassionate and violently irreverent, Memorial is a testament to faith and forgiveness, and a luminous tribute to spirituality in the twenty-first century. With an unflagging eye on a society ruptured by natural and unnatural disaster, and an insatiable love for humanity, Wagner delivers a masterpiece.

The Chrysanthemum Palace introduces Bertie Krohn, the only child of Perry Krohn, creator of TV''s longest running space opera, Starwatch: The Navigators (which counts Jennifer Aniston and Donald Rumsfeld among its obsessed fans). Bertie recounts the story of the last months in the lives of his two companions: Thad Michelet, author, actor, and son of a literary titan; and Clea Freemantle, emotionally fragile daughter of a legendary movie star, long dead. Scions of entertainment greatness, they call themselves the Three Musketeers; between them, as Bertie says, "there was more than enough material to bring psychoanalysis back into vogue." As the incestuous clique attempts to scale the peaks claimed by their sacred yet monstrous parents over a two-week filming of a Starwatch episode in which they costar, Bertie scrupulously chronicles their highs and lows -- as well as their futile struggles against the ravenous, narcissistic, Convulsive and poignant, The Chrysanthemum Palace is a tragic tale of friendship and fate writ large -- a tour de force by a major writer whose narrative delivers devastating emotional impact.

If there''s an even darker side to Hollywood than the one America is familiar with, Bruce Wagner has found it. A twenty-first-century Nathanael West, he has been hailed for his powerful prose, his Swiftian satire, and the scalpel-sharp wit that has, in each of his novels, dissected and sometimes disemboweled Hollywood excess.Now, in his most ambitious book to date, Still Holding, the third in the Cellular Trilogy that began with I''m Losing You and I''ll Let You Go, Wagner immerses readers in post-September 11 Hollywood, revealing as much rabid ambition, rampant narcissism, and unchecked mental illness as ever. It is a scabrous, epiphanic, sometimes horrifying portrait of an entangled community of legitimate stars, delusional wanna-bes, and psychosociopaths. Wagner infiltrates the gilded life of a superstar actor/sex symbol/practicing Buddhist, the compromised world of a young actress whose big break comes when she''s hired to play a corpse on Six Feet Under, and the strange parallel universe of look-alikes -- an entire industry in which struggling actors are hired out for parties and conventions to play their famous counterparts. Alternately hilarious and heartfelt, ferocious and empathetic, Still Holding is Bruce Wagner''s most expertly calibrated work.

Running is the act by which animals, including human beings, move by the power of the feet. Speeds may vary and range from jogging to a sprint. A lot of individuals compete in track events that place participants in a contest to test speed in a sprint or endurance in a marathon. The running mechanics are the same, but additional factors are very different in a marathon versus a sprint. Sprints commonly are tested in track events including 100 m, 200 m or 400 m races. World-class athletes may finish these events in ten seconds, twenty seconds or forty-five seconds, respectively. A marathon is a race that''s 26.2 miles long with world-class athletes completing the race in just over 2 hours. Sprinting isn''t simply a faster version of running. It''s almost a different sort of discipline altogether. It calls for the sprinter to learn another body form and form specific muscle fibers. Consequently, sprint workouts likewise must be specifically tailored to train the legs in a really unique way. The marathon, over 26.2 miles, is among the most respected athletic accomplishments available to the masses. Anybody may line up in the same event as the best distance runners in the world. Training for and finishing a marathon call for considerable physical fitness and purpose. Nearly anybody, from the novice on his first run, to Olympians, can learn to run quicker and better. When you''re beginning, the gains in speed are easier to accomplish by simply getting more fit. As you become a better runner, however, you have to commit workouts to building strength and speed in order to become a quicker runner. Whether your goal is to determine a fresh personal record in your next 5k, win your age bracket at the following charity run or qualify for a state or national contest, you may learn to run faster.

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.

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.

Bruce Wagner weaves together tales of desperation and depravity of the modern age in Dead Stars, his uproarious and sharply critical take on the obsessions of Hollywood.Telma, the world’s youngest breast cancer survivor, is threatened with obscurity by a four-year-old that’s undergone a mastectomy. Reeyonna, a pregnant teenager, believes she will befriend Kanye West by auditioning for pregnant teenage porn. A photographer, Jacquie, rejuvenates her career by turning her lens toward dead babies. And Michael Douglas searches for purpose and meaning when his wife, Catherine, guest-stars on the television series, Glee.Wagner gives a tour through the lowest depths of fame-seeking behavior and idolatry in what The New York Times called a “collagelike picture of Hollywood as a sewer of depravity.”

Bruce Wagner weaves together tales of desperation and depravity of the modern age in Dead Stars, his uproarious and sharply critical take on the obsessions of Hollywood. Telma, the world’s youngest breast cancer survivor, is threatened with obscurity by a four-year-old that’s undergone a mastectomy. Reeyonna, a pregnant teenager, believes she will befriend Kanye West by auditioning for pregnant teenage porn. A photographer, Jacquie, rejuvenates her career by turning her lens toward dead babies. And Michael Douglas searches for purpose and meaning when his wife, Catherine, guest-stars on the television series, Glee. Wagner gives a tour through the lowest depths of fame-seeking behavior and idolatry in what The New York Times called a “collagelike picture of Hollywood as a sewer of depravity.”

An epic novel that brings together a motley crew of characters, including porn stars in love, celebrity chore-whores, plotting dermatologists, masseurs, and shrinks, among many others cast in the debauchery of Hollywood.I’m Losing You follows the rich and famous and the down and out as their lives intersect in a series of coincidences. A masterfully told story of decadence that examines the psychological complexities of Hollywood reality and fantasy, soaring far beyond the reaches of Robert Stone's Children of Light and Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust.

An epic novel that brings together a motley crew of characters, including porn stars in love, celebrity chore-whores, plotting dermatologists, masseurs, and shrinks, among many others cast in the debauchery of Hollywood.I’m Losing You follows the rich and famous and the down and out as their lives intersect in a series of coincidences. A masterfully told story of decadence that examines the psychological complexities of Hollywood reality and fantasy, soaring far beyond the reaches of Robert Stone's Children of Light and Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust.

The Marvel Universe details the lives and deaths of Wagner’s cast of characters: an orphaned billionairess, a black man wrongly convicted of murder, a schizophrenic child obsessed with the comic book character Wolverine, a cancelled TV star, and the love child of Elon Musk. Their intertwining stories take place during the pandemic, a year of tectonic social unrest, ushering in a new reality that surpasses anything any Hollywood franchise could hope to imagine.

The Marvel Universe details the lives and deaths of Wagner’s cast of characters: an orphaned billionairess, a black man wrongly convicted of murder, a schizophrenic child obsessed with the comic book character Wolverine, a cancelled TV star, and the love child of Elon Musk. Their intertwining stories take place during the pandemic, a year of tectonic social unrest, ushering in a new reality that surpasses anything any Hollywood franchise could hope to imagine.

Force Majeure was called a “smashing debut novel” by the Kirkus Reviews upon its original publication in 1991. A sardonic and absurdly dark, yet hilarious take on the “business as usual” of Hollywood’s twisted class system that proved Bruce Wagner was not just an author, but a cultural anthropologist.The perpetually up-and-coming Hollywood screenwriter, Bud Wiggins, drifts aimlessly in and out of the lives of others and from one script idea to another. Moonlighting as a limo driver to pay his bills, he finds himself immersed in a world of vanity and degradation.Wagner infuses his novel with the familiar archetypical characters of Hollywood—a nihilistic producer, an aging film star, an obnoxious mogul—and exposes the madness that drives them all.

Force Majeure was called a “smashing debut novel” by the Kirkus Reviews upon its original publication in 1991. A sardonic and absurdly dark, yet hilarious take on the “business as usual” of Hollywood’s twisted class system that proved Bruce Wagner was not just an author, but a cultural anthropologist. The perpetually up-and-coming Hollywood screenwriter, Bud Wiggins, drifts aimlessly in and out of the lives of others and from one script idea to another. Moonlighting as a limo driver to pay his bills, he finds himself immersed in a world of vanity and degradation. Wagner infuses his novel with the familiar archetypical characters of Hollywood—a nihilistic producer, an aging film star, an obnoxious mogul—and exposes the madness that drives them all. 

Twelve-year-old Toulouse “Tull” Trotter lives with his grandfather on a vast Bel-Air parkland estate and spends most of his time with young cousins Lucy, “the girl detective,” and Edward, a prodigy who was born disfigured by the effects of Apert Syndrome. One day, an impulsive revelation by Lucy sets in motion a chain of events that changes Tull—and the Trotter family—forever.I’ll Let You Go, the third novel of Bruce Wagner, is a Angelino Bleak House that follows a young boy as he searches for his lost father, his beautiful, drug-addicted mother, Katrina, who is still coming down from the disappearance of her husband, and their family’s connection to a street orphan and a homeless schizophrenic. A masterful, modern-day family saga about the valleys between wealth and poverty and reality and fantasy.

Twelve-year-old Toulouse “Tull” Trotter lives with his grandfather on a vast Bel-Air parkland estate and spends most of his time with young cousins Lucy, “the girl detective,” and Edward, a prodigy who was born disfigured by the effects of Apert Syndrome. One day, an impulsive revelation by Lucy sets in motion a chain of events that changes Tull—and the Trotter family—forever.I’ll Let You Go, the third novel of Bruce Wagner, is a Angelino Bleak House that follows a young boy as he searches for his lost father, his beautiful, drug-addicted mother, Katrina, who is still coming down from the disappearance of her husband, and their family’s connection to a street orphan and a homeless schizophrenic. A masterful, modern-day family saga about the valleys between wealth and poverty and reality and fantasy.

"In her astonishing thriller, Sarah Sparrow has joined the ranks of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King. A warning: there is no safe place to read this book."–David CronenbergOriginally Published under the name Sarah Sparrow, Bruce Wagner's A Guide for Murdered Children is terrifying, thoroughly original, and hauntingly written. Ex-NYPD detective Willow Wylde is fresh out of rehab and finally able to find a job running a Cold Case squad in suburban Detroit. When the two rookie cops assigned to him take an obsessive interest in a decades-old disappearance of a brother and sister, Willow begins to suspect something out of the ordinary is afoot. He uncovers a series of church basement AA-type meetings made up of the slain innocents and a new way of looking at life, death, murder—and missed opportunities—is revealed to him.  A Guide for Murdered Children is a genre-busting, mind-bending twist on the fine line between the ordinary . . . and the unfathomable.

"In her astonishing thriller, Sarah Sparrow has joined the ranks of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King. A warning: there is no safe place to read this book." –David Cronenberg  Originally Published under the name Sarah Sparrow, Bruce Wagner's A Guide for Murdered Children is terrifying, thoroughly original, and hauntingly written.  Ex-NYPD detective Willow Wylde is fresh out of rehab and finally able to find a job running a Cold Case squad in suburban Detroit. When the two rookie cops assigned to him take an obsessive interest in a decades-old disappearance of a brother and sister, Willow begins to suspect something out of the ordinary is afoot. He uncovers a series of church basement AA-type meetings made up of the slain innocents and a new way of looking at life, death, murder—and missed opportunities—is revealed to him.  A Guide for Murdered Children is a genre-busting, mind-bending twist on the fine line between the ordinary . . . and the unfathomable.

A new novel by Hollywood’s "master of satire."The myth of an epic, public life—its triumphs and tragedies—is a particularly American obsession. ROAR is a metafictional exploration of such a life and attendant fame of an extraordinary, and completely made up, man. Born in Nashville in 1940 and adopted by a wealthy San Francisco couple, Roger Orr—“Roar”—became an underground stand-up comedian with a cult following while still in his teens, segueing to an acclaimed songwriter in the Sixties. In the decades that followed, his talent spanned the worlds of entertainment, from film directing and books to fine art (paintings, sculpture). His promethean energies expanded to the world of medicine; he became a dermatologist, the first to patent cadaver skin for burn victims. A spiritual seeker who returned to India throughout his life, Roar was also a voracious lover of both men and women. The journey of Roger Orr was a premonition of the cultural earthquakes to come. It wasn’t until his 40s that Roar learned his birth mother was black and it wasn't until his early 60s when he began the hormonal treatment and surgeries that chipped away at the armor covering what he always knew was his true identity: that of a woman. Roar’s saga is best told by a cacophony of voices—family members, critics, historians, and the famous (Meryl Streep, Amanda Gorman, Dave Chappelle, Andy Warhol)—including some heard from the grave. In ROAR, Wagner brilliantly paints a vivid picture of one man, our times, and our culture's enduring obsession with fame.

In I Met Someone—what Wagner has called a “tenderly mutilated companion piece” to his screenplay for Maps to the Stars (the film directed by David Cronenberg for which Julianne Moore won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress)—Oscar–winning Dusty Wilding learns the unspeakable secret hidden beneath the glamour of her carefully calibrated celebrity lifestyle and marriage. With Sirkian grandeur and fearless precision, Wagner scales the heights of his own magnificent obsession: the merciless horrors of destiny—and the shock of courage that often allows human beings to embrace the sacred. I Met Someone has been called “among the most poetic and tragic of all [Wagner’s] work. And perhaps the most deliriously redemptive.”

I Met Someone is the story of an actress named Dusty Wilding, her wife Allegra, a long-lost daughter, and the secrets beneath the glamour of their lavish, yet carefully measured celebrity life. After Allegra suffers a miscarriage, Dusty embarks on a search for the daughter she lost at age sixteen and to face the question that has haunted her for decades. With masterful suspense, Bruce Wagner reveals the individual trauma and the uncanny connections of his characters and connects their intertwining pasts together. I Met Someone plummets the reader down a rabbit hole of the human psyche. Wagner’s remarkable insights into our collective obsession with great wealth and fame offers a tender, shocking, and poetic novel.

In "First Guru," a fictionalized Wagner depicts a Buddhist in Big Sur who finds enlightenment after his child's tragic suicide. "Second Guru" follows Queenie, an aging free spirit, as she returns to India to complete her spiritual journey. These interwoven tales, shared by two strangers years apart, vividly capture the chaos of life and the remarkable strength of the human spirit. The Empty Chair offers a deeply moving and meditative experience that challenges and inspires.