The Chrysanthemum Palace

This book is written from the perspective of Bertie, an almost-middle-aged Hollywood actor and son of the fabulously rich creator of a Star Trek-like television program. Bertie wanders through his LA life with his childhood friend Clea, actor/ daughter of a Hollywood iconic star; and her older boyfriend Thad, a writer/actor also second-generation to fame and fortune. The group barely functions as they careen off Southern California landmarks, dropping names and going to the gym and hanging at the Chateau Marmont and AA meetings. At first, I thought the book was badly written and a little too Hollywood insider for me. There's Nick Nolte at Book Soup! Here's an anecdote about Brandon Tartikoff's funeral! I felt a bit stupid, like it was a book written for someone far hipper and cooler than I am. I was sure I wasn't getting the jokes because I'm outside that world. And besides, I wasn't sure I liked the characters, all trying to develop HBO series and make money and get recognition. The characters all have deep sadness in their lives. They're complicated people but a day at California Adventure gets as much attention in this book as a father's funeral. Yet, within a few chapters, I was enthralled. These characters are so vain, so delusional, trying so hard to stay on top of the pop-culture wave du jour, that I couldn't help feeling amused at their lives and conversations. They weren't smarter than I. I finally got the joke. This book is hilarious, a little sad, but definitely captivating. At the end, Bruce Wagner had me exactly where I believe he wants his readers. It's an amazing and deft work that makes a stark commentary on pop culture, fame and relationships.

This is a genuinely fun read for those who want to experience a rather jaundiced view of the inner workings of the entertainment industry, and author Bruce Wagner has a swaggering, scabrous writing style perfect in providing this perspective. Filled to the brim with his insider knowledge about Hollywood, Wagner's novel focuses on three friends who have grown up as the progeny of legends, spoiled misfits really, and now are fully ensconced in what remains of the dream machine. First, there's Bertie, who acts the part of a cocky pilot on a long-running "Star Trek"-like show called "Starwatch", created by his father Perry. But he is tired of what he considers hack work and tries to create his own show for HBO, an unpromising soap called "Holmby Hills". Then there's Thad, a hugely successful Robin Williams-type comic actor in his fifties, who is overshadowed by the far more serious reputation of his legendary novelist father, Jack Michelet, a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Thad's father is larger than life, to put it mildly, fulfilling his macho archetype by living a hedonist lifestyle, maintaining a high standing among the literati and being psychologically abusive to his son, whom he unfavorably compares to his dead twin in an "Ordinary People"-style twist. And finally there's Clea, Bertie's old friend and Thad's current girlfriend, who is the daughter of American screen icon Roos Chandler, who has achieved the unprecedented feat of winning three consecutive Oscars. Clea accepts Bertie's offer of work as an ingenious alien mechanic on "Starwatch" as a way of keeping ahead of her addictions. What Wagner picks up on quite accurately is the way everyone speaks in that cynical, campy, self-conscious language of Hollywood that you suspect real people there are really talking. It's all about one-upping the other person with a gallows humor laced with a patronizing, know-it-all attitude. They celebrate their hypocrisy when justifying why they would accept a job working on a commercial movie, even though they know they need to develop indie cred to develop the image they want. In fact, the three friends all have projects in development that they believe will stir their creative juices and bring them the respect they feel they deserve. The funniest is Clea's plan to develop a Seinfeld-type show about show business children starring herself and Thad, of course. On the other hand, Thad naturally wants to mount a one-man autobiographical show directed by Mike Nichols (just like Whoopi Goldberg). Your enjoyment of this book will depend on your interest in getting intimate with Hollywood studio politics and the lifestyles of the privileged Southern California ennui set. Despite such alienating trappings, Wagner actually makes us care about these quirky, never-satisfied characters, while giving us ample opportunity to laugh at their exploits. A great commuter read.

I really wanted to hate "Chrysanthemum Palace"-the plot description and Bruce Wagner's penchant for punning titles had me ready to read it and rant. The first few pages didn't help either, full of relentless wordplay and pop culture trivia-why read something like this when I can watch "The Simpsons"? But somewhere around page 5, Wagner reached out from between the lines and absolutely grabbed me. He's some kind of genius-in only a few paragraphs he can sketch a character, weave him into a plot and weave the plot into a brutal critique of modern life, all while making you laugh and really feel for his creations. The pop culture patter updates some very serious and classic themes of family and friendship, yet he can let go with incredible bits like "a controversial, all-white version of 'A Raisin in the Sun.'" He's as close as I've seen to a modern-day Dickens, and "Chrysanthemum Palace" is as good a book as I've read in...weeks. Well worth a try.

Reviewed by Cindy Dale for Small Spiral Notebook Wagner's characters exasperate you with their LA-style self-absorption, self-delusion and paranoia. His high-speed prose makes you dizzy with its name-dropping, pyrotechnics and barbs. Part farce, part satire and part pathos, The Chrysanthemum Palace, Wagner's fifth novel, secures Wagner a top spot in the pantheon of Hollywood novelist all stars, right up there with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathaniel West. As he ably demonstrated in first Force Majeure and again in his triple-play `cellular trilogy,' I'm Losing You, I'll Let You Go and Still Holding, no one does Hollywood quite like Bruce Wagner. As The Chrysanthemum Palace opens, we meet the self-dubbed `Three Muskateers.' There is Clea Freemantle, the fragile daughter of a long dead, once ravishing movie star of a certain era (reminiscent of Judy Garland). Then there is Thad Michelet, the rakish, 54-year-old Off-Broadway actor/straight-to-remainder novelist/"guest star on just about every CSI permutation to date." Thad is the sole surviving son of "Black Jack" Michelet, a womanizing literary lion without peers. And finally, we meet Bertie Krohn, our narrator and the only child of Perry Krohn, the incredibly rich and successful creator of "Starwatch: The Navigators", the longest running, wildly popular, beyond cult status TV space soap. These three scions of the rich/famous/borderline immortal, are about to co-star together in a special episode of "Starwatch". Yes, nepotism is alive and well, and the trio of friends has Bertie's father to thank for their forthcoming celluloid adventure. One can not help but wonder where any of the three would be without their famous parent. How does one escape the shadow of `genius?' Can one ever live up to an icon? These are questions that have dogged Clea, Thad and Bertie for a lifetime. Bertie notes in one of his many asides, "Sorry, folks, but it's true-at the root of everything is the need to please one's parents." Open the book to any given page and you will find it studded with bon mots-the Hollywood / LA variety. No one on the literary or Hollywood radar screen, living or dead, is out of reach of Wagner's skewer. Here is Thad's mother, a photographer of sorts who is putting together a vanity coffee-type book of literary greats (which will most definitely not include her son), telling Thad who she's off to shoot next: Wallace Foster or Foster Wallace teaches nearby. Relatively. Someplace called Pomona. A lot of these colleges pay, Thad. Irvine too. Big, big budgets. They're going to drive me. Evidently they give him millions to teach. You know, he was a great fan of Jack's-they used to chat on the phone at indecent hours. Alice Sebold teaches there too. Her husband's quite well known, as well. A novelist. They're both bestsellers. I'm going to do both of them, then fly to San Francisco for Eggers and Michael Something. "Chabon?" Thad replies. His mother answers, "Yes". He won the Pulitzer. And I be

I am biased in that Bruce Wagner is one of my favorite writers, and this may be his most perfectly realized work. In the past his novels have alternated between the scathing and the poetic; this gem is for the first time a finely-wrought mixture of both: the scabrous and the elegiac, the hilarious and horrifying. The story of three friends working on a modern-day Star Trek-like TV series, in a Hollywood that is captured by sharp eye and pitch-perfect ear, it's a haunting and heartbreaking meditation on the wounds that leave their mark in art and how those symbols pulse and persist through the years, eventually to reach their targets. It ended too quickly and I only wish I didn't have to wait for Wagner to write another one. (And I can't believe I beat Harriet Klausner.)