The Empty Chair: Two Novellas

by Bruce Wagner

Overview

A profound and heart-wrenching work of spiritual storytelling from the internationally acclaimed author of Dead Stars
 
Celebrated for his “up-to-the-nanosecond insider’s knowledge of the L.A. scene” (The Washington Post), Bruce Wagner takes his storytelling in a radically new direction with two linked novellas. In First Guru, a gay Buddhist living in Big Sur achieves enlightenment in the horrific aftermath of his child’s suicide. In Second Guru, Queenie, an aging wild child, returns to India to complete the spiritual journey of her youth.
Told in ravaged, sensuous detail to a fictional Wagner by two strangers on opposite sides of the country, years apart from each other, these stories illuminate the random, chaotic nature of human suffering and the miraculous strength of the human spirit.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780142181232
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/30/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Bruce Wagner is the author of Dead Stars, Memorial, The Chrysanthemum Palace (a PEN/Faulkner fiction award finalist), Still Holding, I’ll Let You Go, I’m Losing You, and Force Majeure. He lives in Los Angeles.

Read an Excerpt

preface
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Empty Chair"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Bruce Wagner.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"[Wagner] possesses a fluent ability to move aback and forth between the satiric and the sympathetic, the scabrous and the tender."
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Wagner’s book deftly illustrates how the quest for spirituality and self-realization underscore one’s understanding of the purpose of life.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
 
“While Wagner’s trademark scathing satirical skills are in full force thanks to his sprightly word play and jaundiced observations, his purposeful exploration of the nature and importance of storytelling takes him in a subtly nuanced new direction.”—Booklist
 
“Lushly embroidered with allusions to the Beat Generation…Wagner meditates on our fundamental cravings for connections—both human and divine—and meanings—both personal and cosmic—with wit, compassion and a sharp eye for the lies we tell ourselves.”—Kirkus, STARRED review

Editorial Reviews

"[Wagner] possesses a fluent ability to move aback and forth between the satiric and the sympathetic, the scabrous and the tender."
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Wagner’s book deftly illustrates how the quest for spirituality and self-realization underscore one’s understanding of the purpose of life.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
 
“While Wagner’s trademark scathing satirical skills are in full force thanks to his sprightly word play and jaundiced observations, his purposeful exploration of the nature and importance of storytelling takes him in a subtly nuanced new direction.”—Booklist
 
“Lushly embroidered with allusions to the Beat Generation…Wagner meditates on our fundamental cravings for connections—both human and divine—and meanings—both personal and cosmic—with wit, compassion and a sharp eye for the lies we tell ourselves.”—Kirkus, STARRED review

From the Publisher

It would be easy at first glance to mistake The Empty Chair for vintage Wagner—trading Hollywood for a spot-on sendup of the new age "diet Buddhism" movement, a devastating indictment of this "backdrop for a variety of seekers slouching toward spiritual redemption." But the deeper the reader burrows into these remarkable novellas, the clearer it becomes that Wagner is after something else. Together, the stories add up to a full-hearted seeker's lament, and would make a fine fictional companion to the Trappist monk Thomas Merton's writings on spiritual outrage and the impossibility of solace…[a] challenging and sublime work…

The New York Times Book Review - Dani Shapiro

…demonstrates Mr. Wagner's range as a writer, reminding us…that he possesses a fluent ability to move back and forth between the satiric and the sympathetic, the scabrous and the tender…he demonstrates his talent here for creating characters far more complicated and conflicted than they first appear. They are susceptible to pride and silliness and self-delusion, but are also trying to grapple with loss, pain, grief and the abyss of mortality with every tool they have at hand, including desperate grasps after art and religion…The strange and terrible connection between the two tales that is eventually revealed…makes us ponder, as his characters do, big existential questions about fate (versus randomness), destiny (versus free will) and the patterning (or lack of patterning) in the universe.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

10/28/2013
In this new collection of two novellas by the author of Dead Stars, a fictionalized Wagner sits down with two disparate characters who have undergone traumatic spiritual journeys, interviewing them over the course of a few days. In “First Guru,” a gay man explains his love of Jack Kerouac, and narrates the story of his life, from being molested in a Catholic church to marrying a woman and having a child with her, to finally ending up where Wagner finds him, sleeping in and operating his book-van lending library. “Second Guru” concerns a woman, Queenie, on a trip to India, as she reconnects with her old flame, Kura, after battling with depression and the aftermath of an abusive relationship, in search of his former spiritual guide. The collection is aptly named, as the metaphor of the empty chair comes to mean radically different things for each of the protagonists and their journeys toward and away from Buddhism. Throughout the interviews, Wagner interjects descriptions of his subjects, lending believability to the format, and the dialogue is spot-on—especially when Queenie ruminates on her fantasies of self-obliteration. Ultimately a quiet, brooding collection, Wagner’s book deftly illustrates how the quest for spirituality and self-realization underscore one’s understanding of the purpose of life. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Casting himself as a story collector, Wagner links two novellas, two narratives separated in time yet bound by a common motif: the empty chair, where loss, grief and death are seated. Known for his gorgeously acerbic dissections of SoCal and Tinseltown, Wagner (Dead Stars, 2012, etc.) turns his eyes toward the spiritual, examining the wreckage of two souls. A self-labeled gay Buddhist tries to tell the story of his son's suicide, looping back through memories and tangential details to avoid the final scene. Lushly embroidered with allusions to the Beat Generation, his tale takes on the rhythms of Gary Snyder's poetry, the patter of Jack Kerouac's prose. While awaiting the settlement of a lawsuit (he was one of the altar boys caught in the Catholic priest sex scandal), he joyously raised his son, Ryder, and watched his wife delve deeper into her practice, bringing Buddhism to schoolchildren and death row inmates alike. Ryder's death sends them reeling, as they try to make sense of it through spiritual beliefs or storytelling itself. In the second tale, aging hipster Queenie examines her relationship with Kura, the man who saved her life after her affair with a gangster turned deadly in a 1975 Chicago nightclub. A master criminal intent upon becoming a saint, Kura longs to experience satsana at the feet of the Great Guru. Their pilgrimage to Bombay, however, wrests Kura away from Queenie, setting him on a path toward disappointment rather than enlightenment. Twenty-seven years later, a single call from him reunites the pair on a ruinous quest to find the guru who disappeared. Wagner meditates on our fundamental cravings for connections--both human and divine--and meanings--both personal and cosmic--with wit, compassion and a sharp eye for the lies we tell ourselves.

Kirkus Reviews