The Empty Chair: Two Novellas

by Bruce Wagner

The Empty Chair, a collection of two poignant novellas by acclaimed author Bruce Wagner, explores the depths of human suffering and resilience. 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.

Genres: Fiction, Buddhism, Novels, Spirituality, Literary Fiction

274 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 20, 2013

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

[Antigone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I once took a class from a noted playwright. It was mid-course and he'd already culled his students the way influential artists do - not through critique but by teaching beyond them. (When footholds are tough to locate, people find reasons to leave.) He'd winnowed his acolytes to less than a dozen and to these few he gave an assignment. We were to come up with the most frightening thought we could conceptualize. The scariest thing we could think of. Have it by the next session. And when that session arrived he asked if we'd completed our task. Did we have our frightening thought? Yes, we did. He nodded and said we would not be discussing it. Nor would we be writing about it. He simply wanted us to know.

Now understand, doing this to a group of struggling writers is very much like handing a fifty dollar bill to a five-year-old and escorting him directly to a bank. Not pleasant for the five-year-old. Frustration swells. Tears are not out of the question. This is some psychically painful stuff. It's also fairly dangerous. Yes, of course, you've just been presented with a freshly-informed place to write from and hurray-hurray but...you are also in sudden, cognizant possession of a very well delineated personal fear. A fear worth offering to a man who knows his fear. Something you found twitching restlessly at the alpha/omega root of your brain. Something starkly existential. Swords don't come more double-edged than that.

Bruce Wagner is currently charting this territory with back-to-back novellas outfitted in Buddhistic raiment. Generically titled First Guru and Second Guru, they present as interviews Wagner has collected in his travels - not with recognized sages but with two human beings whose lives upended within the Buddhist domain. Charles, a gay man mangled in his youth by a priest's sexual abuse, valiantly charges through a thickly-referenced fog of denial and disconnection to relay the story of a later and more profound tragedy that altered the course of his existence. Queenie, a former wild child who barely escaped a violent end, conscientiously reconstructs the story of her lover's disenchantment with his faith and how, once saved, then changed, she found herself lost again.

This material captures the immediacy of recollection-in-progress. Charles and Queenie refer to "Bruce" and are keenly aware of their audience, bringing pressure to bear on the need to tell it right. Tangential forays are fraught with tension and defensiveness; the pure and thoroughly troubling ordeal of attempting to explain, in full, what one fears is inexplicable. Wagner takes it upon himself to supply the eventual connections - and reaches a bit by the end. Credulity strains, even by the California standard. Still, that empty chair is a highly-charged symbol and one I have encountered directly for far too long a time in this life. But why gift you with the nightmare of that particular piece of knowledge? It's what we have Bruce Wagner for.

[Andrew]

The interview-subject weirdo has always interested me as a device in fiction, whether written or audiovisual, as perfected by DFW among others. Freaks, weirdos, grotesques, beautiful losers, anyone on a long strange trip… gotta love a fictional interview with them, especially when they are given all the empathy they are due. And Wagner’s are no different in these not-so-brief interviews with the hideous. I vastly preferred the first half for whatever reason, but this is worth picking up in toto all the same.

[Ron Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Religion usually doesn’t have a prayer in literary fiction. From novels, you’d never suspect that tens of millions of Americans attend services every week and pray every day. Sure, there are lots of religious books published in the United States, from sacred texts to inspirational tracts and even sizzling Christian romances, but ascend into the heavenly realm of Serious Fiction, and you’ll find that Nietzsche was largely right about God. Marilynne Robinson, Alice McDermott, Bob Shacochis — the authors who take matters of the spirit seriously could barely fill one pew.

Bruce Wagner is a parishioner at the holy church of Hollywood. He’s written and directed screenplays, and his name-dropping novels, such as last year’s “Dead Stars,” sacrifice the Beautiful People on a glitzy altar of satire. He’s also long been drawn to mysticism, both for his own enlightenment (he was a disciple of the late Carlos Castaneda) and, weirdly, for his acidic comedies (see “Still Holding”).

“The Empty Chair,” his new book, has nothing to do with Clint Eastwood’s speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention (although it’s easy to imagine that unhinged moment of our political history as something Wagner would dream up). Instead, “The Empty Chair” is a pair of thinly conjoined novellas presented as two long, unabridged interviews with practitioners of “diet Buddhism” — “seekers slouching toward spiritual redemption.”

The first novella — by far the better one — is a monologue delivered by a 50-year-old gay man at a monastery in Big Sur. Wagner forces himself and us to adhere to the book’s fictive form: The interview wanders, skips and misfires in a way that reminds us that, in contrast, almost all the interviews we see on TV, hear on the radio or read in the newspaper have been trimmed and arranged as artfully as this Sunday’s floral display. For many pages, Wagner’s narrator chats around, offering up his mildly assuming patter of literary allusions and self-deprecating asides: “If the Buddhists call sitting meditation ‘zazen,’ I call my theosophy ‘vanzen’ because I live in my van,” he says. “I can’t conceive of a life without the ol’ Greater Vehicle.”

It’s the illusion of rambling that makes this section so remarkable. But what seems like witty digression about his beatnik idols is really self-conscious delay, the nervous stalling of a man skating around something too painful to approach headlong. Soon we learn that he was sexually abused as a child by a Catholic priest, an ordeal that sent him searching for peace in Buddhism. But even darker traumas lurk in this extraordinary confession. As he begins to describe the woman he married and the spiritually precocious little boy they raised together, the story slips into unimaginably tragic territory.

Wagner’s real subject here is spiritual pride among the devout struggling toward Nothingness to prove who shall be least. His narrator has a wry sense of humor about this world of competitive enlightenment, but there’s no smirking when he finally arrives at what it costs a child to be infected with his parents’ metaphysical shtick. Can a young boy subsist on “the wheatgrass and tofu of passive-aggressively homicidal Zen platitudes”? No matter where you are in the 31 Realms of Existence, you’ll feel shaken by this devastating story.

Speaking of nothingness, don’t bother with the second novella of “The Empty Chair.” It’s the maundering tale of a woman recalling her affair with a wealthy criminal who was determined to find his guru in India. Tedious and convoluted, this story offers no emotional impact whatsoever, and, worse, its last-ditch effort to connect with the first novella feels like an act of desecration.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...

[Larry H · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd rate this 2.5 stars.

"If it were possible to hold all of the people's stories all of the time in one's head, heart and hands, there is no doubt that in the end, each would be unvanquishably linked by a single, religious detail."

In The Empty Chair, Bruce Wagner tells of the Buddhist spiritual journeys taken by two utterly disparate people. Both stories, which happens years apart from each other, are linked in a tenuous way which might strain your memory a little bit, and are told to a fictional Bruce Wagner.

The first novella is the story of an aging gay Buddhist in Big Sur, California. He has led a difficult life, having been repeatedly molested by a priest in his local church, which led him to experience panic attacks as an adult. But he pursued a somewhat romantic relationship with a woman who was enchanted by Buddhism, and had a son, who was the center of their universe. As his wife taught a basic form of Buddhism in prisons (including San Quentin) and then in schools, he raised their son as a stay-at-home father. But their lives were rocked when their 12-year-old son committed suicide, and he has been unable to settle down since that tragedy, traveling in a Volkswagen bus.

The second novella follows Queenie, a larger-than-life woman who was a wild child, sleeping around with dangerous men and taking drugs. She met Kura, a criminal who longs to become a saint, when he saved her life after she was attacked by a boyfriend outside of a nightclub. Kura rescued her, took care of her, and brought her to India on his search for his spiritual guru. Although she ultimately left Kura to follow his own spiritual journey, she always thought of him, and when he calls her 27 years later to ask her to join him in finding the guru again (who has disappeared), she doesn't blink an eye.

I just didn't get this book. Admittedly, I don't know much about Buddhism, but while the book is upfront about its subject matter, I expected the religion to be touched on in a more superficial way, more an Eat, Pray, Love-type of journey than one that delves so deeply in its details. Buddhist terms and figures are used repeatedly without any real background—I honestly felt like the book should have come with a prerequisite that you know a certain amount first.

Wagner's literary device of a narrator recounting the stories he is told as if they're being told to him at that moment didn't work for me either. The narratives were tremendously stream-of-consciousness, which made them difficult to follow. In the first novella, for example, the main character went on extended riffs about the Beat poets and his relationship with the widow of Beat figure Neal Cassady, which detracted from the meat of the plot. And while his son's suicide was tragic, the way it was told, and the details he used, made me uncomfortable at times.

I've never read any of Wagner's books before, but I recognize his ability to give his characters strong voices, so I may try a different one. All of the reviews I've seen of this book have been tremendously positive, so it may be my lack of spiritual awareness buffered me from the book's appeal.

[Splashconception · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are interested in Buddhist philosophy, especially the zen/koan parts and intellectual traps, tapistries and interlocking puzzles of self-realization that populate the intricacies of its intellectual side as well as the more religious aspects that take on the flavor of a particular culture, in this case the Marahashi guru culture of India then this is a book I recommend. The first piece which is actually, the second piece, is one long beat koan with a tragic twist that is enlightening. The characters (basically there are two, as well as two interlocking stories) are fleshed out and very convincing, nothing artificial or contrived about them from my point of view and the meta Bruce is so far in the background during each interview that one would hazard to guess that either consciously or subconsciously he was aping that zen style of landscape painting with the immense cragily mountains and waterfalls taking up the whole scene with the tiny little insignificant, barely recognizable hermit in some obscure area near the corner of the frame. The first character's flighty spontanious and digressive monologue fits the central action of the story perfectly, indeed as there seems to be layers upon layers of metaphorical-symbolic mind games going on in this puzzle piece, one could say the first piece touches on one of the central Buddhist concepts associated with the wheel of samsara and the nature of the dukkha it generates.

A little Buddhist refresher course if you will: dukkha has been mistranslated in the general west as suffering, though corrections as to a more precise translation are now slowly leaking into the culture at large. There is definately a tendency in the west to perceive Buddhism as a variation of a cynical, nihlistic philosophy partly because of the old translation which signifies dukkha as primarily suffering so that Guatama's first Noble Truth comes out somewhere along the lines of "all life is suffering," indeed quite a few of the first English buddhist texts I purchased during my junior/senior of high school listed the first noble truth as all life is suffering. Pretty fucking negative right and then all that focus on emptiness, I just didn't get it, it sounded so lame and dull to say that nothing existed, all was illusion and one should renounce desire and so I couldn't really get into it, which is why it wasn't until the metaphorical depths of buddhist thought were opened to me later that I saw the beauty of it.
A more accurate translation of dukkha is unsatisfactory or unease, so that the first noble truth reads that there is a sense of pervasive dissatisfaction to life. You get the promotion at work and its great for a while, but eventually it wears off and you feel the same old grind, you fall in love and spend an amazing sunset dinner picnic camping trip with your lovely, amazing, smart, creative lover and every moment seems gorgeous but within a year the bickering and fighting and nagging starts up, you have a wonderful vacation in the tropics but the thought of going back to the job your sick of keeps popping up and making you anxious about how quickly the time is disappearing when you are enjoying yourself and craving more, something you can hold onto from the vacation a part of that happiness you can carry with you like an object and because you can't an underlying sense of sadness mixed with joy pops up. And there are obviously many more basic examples: getting what you don't want, not getting what you want, old age, sickness, injury, death, people leaving your life in one fashion or another. According to buddhist philosophy a central facet to human suffering is that we have a consciousness that can imagine and thus desires, something permanent and stable in a universe where everything from stars to fingernails is impermament, here for a moment and then gone, recycled back into the everything/nothing. And we want consistency and perceive this stable consistency in terms that separate all things, creating in our minds a world of duality and thus division, which in turn generates tension and conflict. One of the reasons we do this is so that we can attempt to escape from the inevitable negative pole, the unpleasent, the suffering that is inherently part of life. If we are seperate from it and can see it coming or be warned perhaps we can prevent it. But the problem is there is really no separate, consistent and stable thing in the universe, that is to say, there are no objects or subjects really, there are object-subject-actions, processes, waves and pulses, one continual flowing of this into that, inter-being, universe as in one song, one symphony with billions of instruments playing their parts as individuals but only in there flowing blendedness is the lovely music generated...pick you metaphor...we are all parts of other parts, even a few molecules of the air I am breathing now may one day flow through your nostrils and into your lungs despite the fact that you may be thousands of miles away...if we could understand and accept these things for what they are, Buddha says, not only accept but embrace the freedom and compassion generated by the limitless openness that completely understanding these two concepts with all of your being entails, then that pervading sense of disquiet, incomplete fulfillment would dissolve because we are already everything we are mean to be, that is, we are everything. But the paradox is we can't see, our brains our designed specifically not to see it because it would overwhelm many who are not ready to see it and in our foolish attempt to escape dukkha instead of facing it head on and thus growing an understanding of its nature in all its forms (fear, angry, irritation, discomfort ect) we generate more dukkha. That is the catch in the first story, the flitting away from the subject, the whole flightiness of the language represents the self on this trip of self-generated ignorance in the form, not so much of denial as the knowledge is there, but avoidance due to fear. The second story is almost like the flower sutra, where the buddha before a crowd of followers at the Jeta Grove, simply held up a flower and Ananda was instantly enlightened. That is, the second one is simple, like enlightenment or this understanding of cosmic consciousness, but it requires so many turnings or revolutions of self to arrive. It can be summed up with the last phrase the Buddha was reported to have ever said, "be a light onto yourself as you are the only one responsible for your own salvation."

[Gary D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the second line of his interview, the fifty-year-old male is either shown to be an unreliable narrator, or no one edited this book.

[Jesse Hilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

VANISHING POINT

Bruce Wagner’s book The Empty Chair starts out strong but like a defective sparkler it fizzles out in the second half. Clarity in the plotting gives way to a narrative hash and boredom sets in. It was disappointing because other books of his, like Dead Stars and The Marvel Universe, have been riveting and moving carnival rides, you were bolted in and scared within an inch of your life by the awfulness and negative transcendence.

Maybe it was because the first half did show you the Wagnerian horror in all its repellent fascination that it worked. The book is split into two parts, ostensibly called “novellas,” and it is up to the reader to see how they are linked. In each novella, a different person touched by “diet Buddhism” tells a story to the writer Bruce Wagner. Buddhism as a trendy religion of the New Age is shown to have its pitfalls, beset by falsehood, emptiness, and self-deception specific to the faith.

The first story, entitled “First Guru,” is told from the point of view of Charley, a gay Buddhist lifelong learner living in Big Sur, California, who marries a woman for convenience and eventually fathers a child with her. The kid’s mom, Kelly, fancies herself an edgy “Buddhist in the trenches,” going to prisons to teach child murderers about how to meditate and give one’s self over to the impermanence and nothingness. She fills her son’s head with shallow, flippant lessons about Buddhism too, and, wishing to embody the impermanence, the boy hangs himself. The grieving parents are left to try to salvage their gullible schtick of their lives in the wake of this confused act.

This story worked, and was very frightening and moving. The impact of suicide on those who remain—when family members are left with what are revealed to be gestures and talk to cling to—seemed to be registered with inescapable realism. Wagner strikes again.

The second half, “Second Guru,” fell apart. This speaker, an old hippie wild child named Queenie, tells a long convoluted history of how she was drawn into the orbit of several gurus in India over the decades. It starts okay but then as the chronology jumps around like a spastic lizard it loses me. What year is this happening, and who’s speaking? The unity and clarity of the first half is lost into the ether of the second half.

It seems like Wagner was trying to make a point out of the hazards of following a religion or philosophy that western minds are perhaps not ready for. Seekers from the west bring their own inner contradictions and shallowness to the situation. Yawning death and emptiness are indicated by the “empty chair” of the title; in one case the tipped over chair that the suicidal boy leapt from when he hanged himself, in the other case the chair left by a dying guru whose followers must figure out what to do in the wake of his absence: the dilemma of movements with strong yet mortal spiritual leaders since time began. “The ape’s need for figureheads is profound and enduring. But the trouble begins—and it always does!—when one confounds figurehead with Godhead.”

This book of “metaphysical ruckus” should have had a better editor to focus the second half. Those seeking Wagner’s writing should go to other books first and tackle this one only for the sake of completeness, and mainly for the first act. It’s unfortunate that this book, which might have served as both a more direct spiritual inquiry than his other works and a geographic break from Wagner’s bleak masterpieces set in Southern California, didn’t work as well, because you get the impression that Wagner wants to break out of his given mold.

[Raylene Weber · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story of Winona and what happens when you start losing control of yourself. When it slips away from your husband, as he is isolated from other family and friends. She discovered her library card, which led to her reading, and now she knows that it is financial control. Now she must decide if she is strong enough to put it behind her.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

[Kallie · Rating 4 out of 5]

These voices express a 70s gestalt with which I am intimately familiar. Was that silly and gullible at times? Yeah. And yet, who can fault the yearning for meaning in one's life? Wagner captures all the contradictory qualities of that: navel-gazing, yet reaching for the stars; self-punishing self-indulgence; getting lost in the trappings and accessories while seeking simplicity. Wagner knows whereof he speaks yet gives voice to characters, not himself.

[Ben Rosamond · Rating 3 out of 5]

take a seat

[Donald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Equal parts great and annoying. Guess that's why it's 3 stars.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read a lot of Bruce Wagner’s work. His brutal dark satires of life in Hollywood are tremendously entertaining. Wagner journeys to a more spiritual world in these two novellas which crisscross across Zen mysticism and guru adulation in America and India. Despite the change in venue all of Wagner’s satiric talents are readily present in these two stories which strangely connect at the end of the second story. I read this book in the aftermath of the Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain suicides and without any spoilers these deaths made these stories of spiritual searchers stumbling down blind alleys resonated with me. Another great Bruce Wagner book

[Rebecca M · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted very much to love this book. I love the idea, the concept, but for me the telling left something to be desired. I would be fascinated one minute, then the next I'd have to force myself to keep reading, hoping that the next time I got sucked in it would stick.

The idea of the characters telling their story to an interviewer who then transcribes the stories to page is an interesting one, but in practice I felt it got a bit too bogged down with stream of consciousness diatribes. This interfered with my absorption of their often quite profound individual tales, and again, I occasionally had to struggle to continue reading. As for the detail that linked the two stories... I found myself vacillating between thinking it was brilliant and contrived.

Maybe three stars is a bit harsh. I often have trouble giving books a concrete "rating".

[Cindy Choi · Rating 3 out of 5]

You probably have to be somewhat of a dharma bum to fully appreciate the humor and sharp satire of the cringing-inducing unself-awareness of those trying to become self-aware, as well as his sensitive and insightful portrayal of people who are really trying to walk the path (which include the cringe-inducers and all of us human beings) and the inevitable pitfalls along the way.

You can also skim through a lot of the stream of consciousness ranting which you don't find entertaining without missing anything, which I consider a positive attribute of the book :-)

I had to look up a whole lot of words too, which I also consider a positive attribute of the book :-)

One thing that jarred me was that it seems like there was a plot hole about a sticker at the end. But otherwise, I enjoyed the book and I didn't think it worthwhile to investigate the plot hole.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book to be ... OK. It certainly name-checks and concept-checks some interesting figures in Buddhism in the U.S., and other new age stuff. Of the two interconnected stories, which occur in reverse chronology for dramatic effect, I rather preferred the first one. The second one was a bit wordy and tedious, although it started out strong. I don't come upon many literary treatments of eastern religion that actually work very well, but the author does seem to get the concepts he's throwing around. Even so, it's quite the dog's breakfast. I can't say I would recommend this for everyone.

[Michael Baranowski · Rating 2 out of 5]

He writes so well, but there's something about fiction written by Boomers about the whole '60s scene that leaves me cold. Now, The Empty Chair isn't really about the '60s, exactly, but that decade resonates so strongly it amounts to the same thing from where I sit. Maybe I'm just a grumpy Gen Xer sandwiched in-between two generational groups that get far (too) much coverage, but whatever the cause, I couldn't enjoy this book.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Empty Chair by Bruce Wagner is a very interesting look at how two seemingly separate people are both searching for some type of religious experience, yet suffer great loss trying to find those experiences. While the book is mostly focused on the firsthand accounts of these two spiritual trekkers, the stories are also brought together in a very strange and sad way, intertwining these two stories that one just cannot be told without the other. It was an interesting set of stories, and I enjoyed reading it very much.

[Bill M · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had difficulty throughout this book. I do have a fairly strong background in Buddhism but found the stream-of-consciousness pot-infused style of the first story convoluted and rather pedantic. The second story was easier to read/follow, but I find it hard when so much detailed dialogue is recounted by someone (Queenie) who wasn't present to hear the dialogue. The connection between the stories was so contrived that it held no power for me. Overall, a disappointing read.

[Corina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a different kind of book. It's really the transcript of two different stories told by two different people, years apart, yet they belong together. While it may be tough getting through the talking style of the first storyteller, it's worth hanging in. And don't stop at the end of the first story. Keep going because these two stories are connected in such a way that will make your jaw drop and say "oh my god!" when you realize the connection.

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll be real upfront, the rating may be higher if I would finish the book, but I won't be finishing the book. I wanted to learn something from the stories in this book, but the first story made me so sad, I just couldn't continue reading. I did begin the second story, and it just had a helpless feeling to the beginning. I moved onto a book about the life of a mortician. And I find it extremely ironic that the book about working in a mortuary is more uplifting than The Empty Chair.

[Tucker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly, this was one that just didn’t work for me. I liked the themes described in the book blurb, but the disjointed stream of consciousness writing style didn’t appeal to me. I have a basic familiarity with Buddhism, but much of this book went over my head. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of Buddhism would appreciate it.

Thank you to Penguin and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

[Lisa Beaulieu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gosh I really hate this pretentious stupid book. It sounds interesting, and I finished it ... Ugh! I used to live in SF Bay Area, and have been to Esalen for a weekend writing workshop, and this book encapsulates everything I did not like about the area and Esalen and the whole shebang. (There was much I DID like, that is not included in the book, sadly.)

[Nat · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first story was more compelling, and the endless chatter was a bit more interesting. The 2nd story was pretty boring and detestable really. Or maybe I didn't get it. Somebody let me know if you want.

[Tom Goelz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not for the faint of heart. Bit of a heavy dive into life and death, philosophy and spirituality. Despite that the writing is light on its feet, word playful at almost every turn. Pretty much not like anything I have otherwise read.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great writing and character development. Highly recommended for readers curious about spiritual seekers and meditation.

[Marcus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting read. Great writing but was a little long winded - just my opinion.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moving, smart writing. Intoxicating

[Kylie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not one to read books about religion but I thought this one sounded interesting. Instead I found it terribly sad.
I won this book in a giveaway (:

[George Wehrle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like some of his work, and this one , the first novella was good, the second one lost me

[Janebcolby · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thought very little of this book.