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The Chrysanthemum Palace
F. Scott Fitzgerald meets Nathanael West in the breakthrough novel by critically acclaimed author Bruce Wagner. This quintessential L.A. novelist spins his most ambitious and moving story to date: a philosophical, heartbreaking tale of three friends lost in a California dream gone mad.
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 recoutns 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 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 major writer whose narrative delivers devastating emotional impact.
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 recoutns 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 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 major writer whose narrative delivers devastating emotional impact.
- GenresFiction
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
4 people are currently reading
194 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Wagner
32 books174 followersBruce 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.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
January 15, 2020
Not impressed. Hard to believe this was a finalist for major book awards. It's supposed to be a farce, a satire of Hollywood and fame and our star culture. But the humor falls flat, and it's not made up by having characters I cared about. I couldn't even tell sometimes if the author/narrator's poetic descriptions of scenes or his emotions were meant to be taken seriously or meant to be more farce. If they were serious, they were poorly done. If they were farce, we'd already had enough of that.
I finished the book because it was short, but I wouldn't have continued if it had been 500 pages.
The plot. The book's narrator is a 35-ish guy named Bertie who's the son of a filthy rich TV producer. Like so rich that his $15-million home is filled with collectible paintings and sculptures. The son grew up fairly unhappy, as would be expected when one has a philandering father, and he's bounced around doing a few things, but at the start of the book has become a major supporting actor on his father's long-run TV series, which is basically "Star Trek." There are several sections that described the scene shooting of the show, and these are clearly meant to be funny, but they're just dull. And I'm not a "Star Trek" fan at all, so it's not like I was offended by a satire.
Anyway, Bertie is sort of floundering. He's making decent money, and he's got his parents' millions to fall back on, but he wants to do something of greater artistic quality. (Just like his dad, not incidentally.) He's also a recovering addict. And he seems to have women at his fingertips, of course.
Anyway, he runs into his first girlfriend from middle school, a woman named Clea, at an AA meeting. (By far the funniest line in the entire book is a comment from a friend of Bertie's who says, "It should just be called 'A' because it's never anonymous.) Clea has had a slightly better acting career than his. She's the daughter of a sex-symbol actress who died when they were teens. Bertie and Clea have a quick fling and then settle into a supportive friendship in which he helps her get clean from drugs and drink. Then she gets on his TV show, both due to her own merits and his influence.
Enter Perry, who is the son of a great, great novelist and essayist, Jack. Jack is like Hemingway, Updike, Robert Frost and 10 other great male authors put together. As mythic in his way as Bertie's dad. But Jack is a sadistic dad, unlike Bertie's merely distant and judgmental one.
Perry gets a 2-episode spot on the TV show, for which he comes to Hollywood for about 3 weeks. It turns out he and Clea had a long, tempestuous, on-off relationship. They start to date again, she starts to abuse drugs again, and it turns out that Perry is a really awful boyfriend and a totally self-destructive person. Meanwhile, Bertie starts dating Perry's book agent -- he's written four mediocre novels in an attempt to match his dad -- and the sex with this woman, Marian, is, of course, the best that either has ever had.
As it goes downhill, there's supposed to be a lesson, I guess. But it's really just not very interesting. And while Perry's wordplay is kind of fun, pretty much nothing else is fun or illuminating. It's hollow, like Hollywood probably is, but the book lacks the heft of other novels about hollowness, such as "Bright Lights, Big City."
I finished the book because it was short, but I wouldn't have continued if it had been 500 pages.
The plot. The book's narrator is a 35-ish guy named Bertie who's the son of a filthy rich TV producer. Like so rich that his $15-million home is filled with collectible paintings and sculptures. The son grew up fairly unhappy, as would be expected when one has a philandering father, and he's bounced around doing a few things, but at the start of the book has become a major supporting actor on his father's long-run TV series, which is basically "Star Trek." There are several sections that described the scene shooting of the show, and these are clearly meant to be funny, but they're just dull. And I'm not a "Star Trek" fan at all, so it's not like I was offended by a satire.
Anyway, Bertie is sort of floundering. He's making decent money, and he's got his parents' millions to fall back on, but he wants to do something of greater artistic quality. (Just like his dad, not incidentally.) He's also a recovering addict. And he seems to have women at his fingertips, of course.
Anyway, he runs into his first girlfriend from middle school, a woman named Clea, at an AA meeting. (By far the funniest line in the entire book is a comment from a friend of Bertie's who says, "It should just be called 'A' because it's never anonymous.) Clea has had a slightly better acting career than his. She's the daughter of a sex-symbol actress who died when they were teens. Bertie and Clea have a quick fling and then settle into a supportive friendship in which he helps her get clean from drugs and drink. Then she gets on his TV show, both due to her own merits and his influence.
Enter Perry, who is the son of a great, great novelist and essayist, Jack. Jack is like Hemingway, Updike, Robert Frost and 10 other great male authors put together. As mythic in his way as Bertie's dad. But Jack is a sadistic dad, unlike Bertie's merely distant and judgmental one.
Perry gets a 2-episode spot on the TV show, for which he comes to Hollywood for about 3 weeks. It turns out he and Clea had a long, tempestuous, on-off relationship. They start to date again, she starts to abuse drugs again, and it turns out that Perry is a really awful boyfriend and a totally self-destructive person. Meanwhile, Bertie starts dating Perry's book agent -- he's written four mediocre novels in an attempt to match his dad -- and the sex with this woman, Marian, is, of course, the best that either has ever had.
As it goes downhill, there's supposed to be a lesson, I guess. But it's really just not very interesting. And while Perry's wordplay is kind of fun, pretty much nothing else is fun or illuminating. It's hollow, like Hollywood probably is, but the book lacks the heft of other novels about hollowness, such as "Bright Lights, Big City."
Read
March 3, 2013He's a terrific writer. But the story didn't seem to keep my attention like I wished it had. He says something almost nice about Michael, though.
February 24, 2023
With this book I conclude my brief and semi-deep dive into Wagner's works. He is undoubtedly the contemporary novelist laureate of LA, and this book, like pretty much all of his others, revolves around Hollywood and its quirky, at times unredeemable denizens. It is far more linear than the other novels of his I've read, and it's also far shorter, checking in at barely 200 pages. And, while that makes it more manageable, it also makes it somewhat more difficult to lose oneself in the long, rambling expository paragraphs characteristic of much of Wagner's work, largely absent here.
The novel is a literary case study of a semi-successful Hollywood couple weighed down by the far greater successes of their respective parents, told in the narrative voice of another character who's also burdened by the successes of his own. There are some laughs, and some interesting set pieces, but in end, it reads like little more than a fairly mundane and predictable (albeit impressively realistic) "VH1 Behind the Scenes"-esque descent into drugs and untimely demise.
The novel is a literary case study of a semi-successful Hollywood couple weighed down by the far greater successes of their respective parents, told in the narrative voice of another character who's also burdened by the successes of his own. There are some laughs, and some interesting set pieces, but in end, it reads like little more than a fairly mundane and predictable (albeit impressively realistic) "VH1 Behind the Scenes"-esque descent into drugs and untimely demise.
February 19, 2021
An actor recounts the relationship between a childhood friend and a famous actor of stage and screen. As the three work together on a TV series, the group attempts to break out of the shadow of (each of) their famous parents. Wagner is known for his biting satire of Hollywood, but after reading a few of his other books, he comes off more of a one-trick pony (similar to the "shock factor" of Chuck Palahniuk). While all of the other characters have their own boisterous personalities, the narrator comes off rather dull and unremarkable. The LA/literary gymnastics Wagner performs are impressive, but only up to a point -- after which they just become tiresome and distracting. An OK story, but nothing I thought warranted being a contender for a major book award.
2.5 Stars
2.5 Stars
February 26, 2018
یادداشت کوتاهی درباره این رمان
(3.5 ستاره)
https://rpsubik.blogspot.nl/2018/02/t...
(3.5 ستاره)
https://rpsubik.blogspot.nl/2018/02/t...
March 18, 2015
The Tragedy of Having Gods as Parents: A Review of The Chrysanthemum Palace by Bruce Wagner
The main reason I got this book was because one of the main characters is called Clea. Clea is the title of one of the Alexandria Quartet books by Lawrence Durrell (I was named after one of them). I also named my daughter Clea. I was hoping that the Alexandria Quartet might be mentioned somewhere in the book. I mean, Clea is a very rare name. There might be a big chance that the author would refer to it somewhere in his book. I was not disappointed. If only for that, I was satisfied.
It took me more than a few months to start reading the book and it took me a month and a half to finish this book. It was my bathroom reading fare. The story was a bit dragging. Three spoiled brats do not not make very attractive characters. However, I could identify. After all, I grew up in the shadow of a very flamboyant beauty queen mother. I know the insecurities that come with very accomplished/ very beautiful parents.
The novel was full of pathos. However, coming from a third world country put the lives of Bertie, Thad, and Clea in perspective. How could these drug-addicted children of celebrities find despair when they are all well-fed and presented with lots of opportunities despite being has-beens? In that sense, I felt alienated. I did understand that the story revolved around the tragedy of being the progeny of gods and goddesses.
What did I enjoy? I loved the parts when Starwatch became part of the plot. It was a reference to Star Trek, of course. And that's why it was great. The story within the story was equally enthralling (or, in fact, more enthralling). I also liked the character, Miriam (a. k. a. Meerkat), Thad's agent and Bertie's lover. She seems to have been one of the most levelheaded of their bunch.
Overall, this is a reflective and somewhat depressing read. It has entertaining peeks into the glitzy Hollywood life. But don't be fooled. This book is a tragedy. Expect grandiose soliloquies and unforgiving parents who drive their children to suicide.
The main reason I got this book was because one of the main characters is called Clea. Clea is the title of one of the Alexandria Quartet books by Lawrence Durrell (I was named after one of them). I also named my daughter Clea. I was hoping that the Alexandria Quartet might be mentioned somewhere in the book. I mean, Clea is a very rare name. There might be a big chance that the author would refer to it somewhere in his book. I was not disappointed. If only for that, I was satisfied.
It took me more than a few months to start reading the book and it took me a month and a half to finish this book. It was my bathroom reading fare. The story was a bit dragging. Three spoiled brats do not not make very attractive characters. However, I could identify. After all, I grew up in the shadow of a very flamboyant beauty queen mother. I know the insecurities that come with very accomplished/ very beautiful parents.
The novel was full of pathos. However, coming from a third world country put the lives of Bertie, Thad, and Clea in perspective. How could these drug-addicted children of celebrities find despair when they are all well-fed and presented with lots of opportunities despite being has-beens? In that sense, I felt alienated. I did understand that the story revolved around the tragedy of being the progeny of gods and goddesses.
What did I enjoy? I loved the parts when Starwatch became part of the plot. It was a reference to Star Trek, of course. And that's why it was great. The story within the story was equally enthralling (or, in fact, more enthralling). I also liked the character, Miriam (a. k. a. Meerkat), Thad's agent and Bertie's lover. She seems to have been one of the most levelheaded of their bunch.
Overall, this is a reflective and somewhat depressing read. It has entertaining peeks into the glitzy Hollywood life. But don't be fooled. This book is a tragedy. Expect grandiose soliloquies and unforgiving parents who drive their children to suicide.
June 12, 2007
I was not emotionally impacted by this book. No... not at all... Albeit, I was a little shocked at the end when something happens to two of our characters (I'm not giving it away in case you are intending to read or are reading this book). But... other than that I could care less. With the exception of Bertie, and occasionally Mariam, everyone in the book, be they secondary characters or primary, come off as extremely shallow... mind you, that is pretty much Hollywood for you.
Wagner seems to enjoy showing off his skill with the English language and displaying his amassed knowledge of obscure nouns, verbs, and adjectives. I know that I'm a well-read young woman, but occasionally I stumbled across words that, had I the energy or the drive to do so, I would have to look up in the dictionary. He also enjoyed name dropping of the book type. Putting in the names of various authors or directors or actors... it began to get sort of redundant after a while. But once again, that's Hollywood for you.
The book... is basically Hollywood. Fauxllywood, really, because there are fictional "stars" in the book, mingling with the real ones. Keep your eyes open for Sharon Stone.
Also, until the end part of the book, there didn't appear to be any clear plot or story, it was just a bunch of vignettes almost. A lot of times I couldn't figure out why certain portions of the book were in there at all, and I still wonder... Maybe because I still don't understand or because I'm tired.
Anywho, the book was okay, though keep a pocket dictionary handy if you plan on reading it. You might also want to brush up on your popular culture history... that will be needed too.
Hooray for Fauxllywood!
Wagner seems to enjoy showing off his skill with the English language and displaying his amassed knowledge of obscure nouns, verbs, and adjectives. I know that I'm a well-read young woman, but occasionally I stumbled across words that, had I the energy or the drive to do so, I would have to look up in the dictionary. He also enjoyed name dropping of the book type. Putting in the names of various authors or directors or actors... it began to get sort of redundant after a while. But once again, that's Hollywood for you.
The book... is basically Hollywood. Fauxllywood, really, because there are fictional "stars" in the book, mingling with the real ones. Keep your eyes open for Sharon Stone.
Also, until the end part of the book, there didn't appear to be any clear plot or story, it was just a bunch of vignettes almost. A lot of times I couldn't figure out why certain portions of the book were in there at all, and I still wonder... Maybe because I still don't understand or because I'm tired.
Anywho, the book was okay, though keep a pocket dictionary handy if you plan on reading it. You might also want to brush up on your popular culture history... that will be needed too.
Hooray for Fauxllywood!
January 31, 2015
I definitely shouldn't have loved this book as much as I did -- I read it in 3 or 4 sittings. The writing seemed over-fancy at first, like Wagner was trying too hard; but after 10 or 20 pages I relaxed, gave into it, and really enjoyed his style. The story crashed along and I couldn't wait to see what happened next -- it also had just enough cameos and references to actual people to make it feel like it really happened. Main character is Bertie, son of Starwatch (aka Star Trek) creator, who has two other friends both kids of even famouser parents -- Clea, daughter of a Marilyn Monroe character and Thad, son of asshole Pulitzer prize dad (maybe Mailer crossed with Faulkner). Thad is a famous actor and frustrated writer, Clea is a semi-famous actor and frustrated addict, and they end up in a tragic relationship.
August 14, 2007
I'm a fan of Wagner's Hollywood set tales of misfits, outcasts, castoffs, wannabees, no hopers, insiders, and other assorted California types. This is no different. Get out your dictionary to look words up as you read this, ha. I'd like to see Wagner step out of his element soon and try something kind of different.
March 27, 2012
I love the way Bruce Wagner writes but never really connected with his characters or the story in this novel. The vapid, desperate to be the hero or at least found interesting narrator didn't really have anything redeemable to find to like about him, or the charm that lets the unrepentant get away with their shenanigans.
November 20, 2014
The typical Wagner novel, but with the most heart compared to the savage Dead Stars and the clumsy Still Holding. The tragic structure makes The Chrysanthemum Palace more plot centric than the ambitious Dead Stars and more coherent than Still Holding. The best book of Wagner to recommend to newcomers.
December 14, 2007
Bruce Wagner is kind of a maniac. He writes insane prose that I find sort frenetic and lunar and sad and speedy, but I can never fully get with his characters. But, I can't stop reading his books. I'm Losing You is also really great.
February 23, 2016
Bruce Wagner never disappoints. He makes you feel as you are a a witness to the LA scene, bad and good. He is a writer I can read over and over again My only complaint with this book is it is too short.
March 21, 2007
I really liked this. Can't think of much to say about it other than it's funny, sad, weird, and an easy read.
June 13, 2007
To read my review from Time Out New York, please click on this link:
[http://66.111.110.102/newyork/Details...]
[http://66.111.110.102/newyork/Details...]
June 27, 2009
I COULD NOT get into this book. I kept trying because I'd seen really good reviews. One of the few books in my life that I just didn't finish.
June 9, 2014
Great book. I am officially a fan. Richard Wagner is a great fiction writer.
June 2, 2014
Amazing.
April 20, 2016
Witty and stylish but ultimately left me cold
March 1, 2015
Another outstanding chronicle of life in Southern California
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews