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

by Bruce Wagner

The sacred and the profane come together with visceral force in Bruce Wagner’s 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 novellas—one drenched in transgression while the other embarks on a journey of spiritual guidance.  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 completely traumatize their daughters, ruining their lives, and destroying many others 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 along the way. 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 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 Seekers is something that, once read, you won’t stop thinking about.

Genres: Fiction

328 pages, Hardcover

Published June 4, 2024

About the author

Bruce Wagner is the author of The Chrysanthemum Palace (a PEN Faulkner fiction award finalist); Still Holding; I'll Let You Go (a PEN USA fiction award finalist); I'm Losing You; and Force Majeure. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Matthew Wilder · Rating 4 out of 5]

A transsexual’s fake vagina: plucked from the taint, from teste-skin, and most horrifyingly from intestines—this is Bruce Wagner’s image of 2024. Its half shitty, half necrotic stink, which we are forced to accept as bold-and-brave heavenly pussy nectar, is the dominant motif of THE MET GALA, a classically Wagnerian tale of coincidence and cruelty that, against all odds, nails the moment.

TALES OF SAINTS AND SEEKERS is a collection of quasi-Buddhist parables, set in today’s TikTok, OnlyFans, Emma Roberts-centric world, which very quickly comes to seem like one of Borges’ anthology books. Certain of these yarns constitute his finest writing since MEMORIAL—which is to say, absolutely on the top shelf.

[audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think just not for me! Some factual inaccuracies in the first novella which i know are frivolous but still kind of took me out of it and kind of made the themes and stories feel for naught.

[ANONMENTHOL · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wagner is at his best. Truly. The Met Gala is such a tight and satirically brilliant novella. And the stories in the second half of the book are touching, poignant, and devastatingly sharp.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

🌶️

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Met Gala - 3 ⭐️ Juicy and scandalous. Take a shot every time Wagner name drops a celebrity.

Tales of Saints and Seekers - 1 ⭐️ This did nothing for me.