Saints and Seekers and Stories

At Bruce Wagner’s Echo Park book launch, he discusses the “Joker” sequel and attention-starved cave-dwelling monks, as Brittany Menjivar reports.

By Brittany MenjivarNovember 23, 2024

BOOK LAUNCH: THE MET GALA & TALES OF SAINTS AND SEEKERS WITH BRUCE WAGNER AND JORDAN FIRSTMAN, Stories Books & Cafe, Los Angeles, November 15, 2024.

In novelist and screenwriter Bruce Wagner’s Los Angeles, Murphy’s law usually proves correct. Shocking deaths abound; in fact, an essay in this publication describes his characters—typically Hollywood personnel of some sort—as haunted by “the ever-present fear of terminal illness or drug-induced insanity.” Thankfully, no tragedy befell the launch of his latest book, comprised of two novellas: The Met Gala & Tales of Saints and Seekers, published by Arcade in June. Joined by actor and writer Jordan Firstman (star of the 2023 black comedy Rotting in the Sun, which similarly delivers dark commentary on the entertainment industry), Wagner graced the Stories patio with reflections on celebrity and philosophy, as the title of his new book would suggest.

Rather than beginning with a reading, Wagner and Firstman dove right into conversation. Wagner explained that he often turns to parables for inspiration, in both the creative and the mystical sense; he sees the City of Angels as a fitting backdrop for their spiritual successors. Growing up in Beverly Hills, he has decades’ worth of material to draw upon. “I drove a limousine in Beverly Hills, and I drove an ambulance in Beverly Hills, and they were very similar,” he said. He also spent time in the nightlife circuit, floating in and out of clubs with ethereal names like “Another World.” In these settings, he had a front row seat to “fame and how it cripples and distorts and enlivens”—a topic explored in works such as his 1996 breakout novel I’m Losing You and 2014 David Cronenberg collab Maps to the Stars, both about dysfunctional high-profile families.

Wagner once heard an anecdote, he told us, about “a cave-dwelling monk who wanted to be the most famous cave-dwelling monk ever known.” Wagner was also once warned that lust for fame was perhaps the most destructive desire, “beyond physical pain and the agony of love,” an observation that squared with his personal experience. He wrote Tales of Saints and Seekers to explore this type of temptation, which he ultimately equated to “obsession with self.” “You can get out of the way of self, but it’s hard to extinguish self,” he noted. (If you’re detecting a hint of Buddhism, you’re correct: many of Wagner’s characters are Buddhist, and the author himself has studied Eastern schools of thought.)

Luckily for the cinephiles in the audience, Wagner eventually turned his attention to film, commenting on the brilliance of Rotting in the Sun as well as a more recent picture, the divisive courtroom drama–cum-musical Joker: Folie à Deux. (As a Joker 2 truther myself—I even donned Arthur Fleck’s red-and-blue face paint for Halloween—I was happy to have backup.) His musings on the latter movie became a rumination on leaning into surreal, unique language: although he loved Joaquin Phoenix’s cover of pop standard “If You Go Away,” he pointed out that the original singer crooned not “I’d have been the shadow of your dark” but “I’d have been the shadow of your dog,” a lyric he found far more striking.

A Q and A with the crowd steered Wagner into more concrete matters of craft. One attendee asked him about his tendency to write with his works’ titles already formed—how did he know when he had landed on the right one?  “It’s like God says, ‘Your ride is here,’” he quipped. I asked him if he ever struggled to discern whether a concept would be better for a book or a film; he revealed that, although his career sometimes requires him to be flexible (for example, a proposed play ended up becoming a written project), prose is his first love, and thus is usually his first choice when it comes to format.

Emerging into the starless Echo Park dark, I couldn’t help but think back on an exchange that drew a good laugh from the crowd: Wagner revealed that people who read his books sometimes get nervous to travel to Los Angeles after closing the cover; Firstman countered that they actually made him more grateful he calls the city home. I get what he was onto—L.A. living can be strange, startling, and even scary, but as Wagner knows, it’s certainly never boring.

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Photo by contributor.

LARB Short Takes live event reviews are published in partnership with the nonprofit Online Journalism Project and the Independent Review Crew.