The Chrysanthemum Palace (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "I AM AN ACTOR..." (more)
Key Phrases: Jack Michelet, The Soft Sea Horse, Black Jack (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In his Cellular Trilogy, novelist Wagner gleefully excoriated Hollywood vanity and pretense. Obviously his hunger for butchering Tinseltown's sacred cows was not sated because in his latest work he continues to carve them up. His uproarious new satire focuses on a trio of psychologically and emotionally fragile actors, each of whom carries the added baggage of a very famous and successful parent. The story is told from the perspective of Bertie Krohn, the soon-to-be-middle-aged son of the "creator-producer in perpetua of TV's longest-running syndicated space opera, Starwatch: The Navigators." After several attempts to make it on his own artistically, Bertie succumbs to nepotism and joins the cast of Starwatch. The book revolves around his interactions with two other actors who are appearing on the series. The first is Clea Fremantle, his childhood crush and the daughter of a "legendary film actress." The other is Thad Michelet, the 50-something son of a universally revered, award-winning author. Much as Jeffrey Frank did in his excellent novel The Columnist, Wagner crafts a savage meditation on contemporary self-involvement—his characters are vacuous, name-dropping black holes of self-absorption. The writing itself is wonderfully bad, as Bertie the hapless hack attempts to chronicle his melodramatic tale with 25-cent words ("commodious," "numinous," etc.) and wickedly overwrought metaphors ("Thad's hungry eyes surveyed the topography of human detail unfolding before him like a jet devouring a runway during takeoff"). It's a short, sharp book that puts a dagger right in the heart of Hollywood.
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From The New Yorker

On the set of a schlocky TV space opera called "Starwatch," three children of wealthy and talented parents struggle to attain success of their own. The narrator, Bertie, is the son of the show's creator, and his current acting job is the nadir in a career of ever-shrinking ambition. His companions are Clea, the pill-popping daughter of a sexy actress who died young, and Thad, who is plagued by a personality disorder and the outsized legend of his father, an award-winning author. Suffering in the shadow of parental fame is a familiar trope of tabloid pathos, and the parents here are predictably malevolent. This slender novel lacks the kaleidoscopic frenzy of Wagner's "cell-phone" trilogy, and its more limited range gives his relentlessly up-to-the-minute pop-trivia references a somewhat airless feel. Still, his ability to eviscerate the absurdities of Hollywood, while occasionally hinting at its basic humanity, remains undiminished.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (February 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743243390
• ISBN-13: 978-0743243391
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,157,852 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars five stars, achieved writer!, February 9, 2005

By	Felicia Sullivan (New York, ny United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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 believe he makes quite a living writing screenplays." To which Thad mutters, "Jesus. Mr. Spider-Man 2!"

Or consider the exchange that occurs between Thad and the lawyers after the death of Thad's father and the reading of the will. It should come as no surprise that `Black Jack' is still calling the shots even after death, having willed Thad $10 million dollars with one tiny provision: one of Thad's books must appear on the New York Times bestseller list. As the first lawyer explains to Thad, "I guess your father's intentions were that you use your gifts to write something either very commercial-a John Grisham, or what have you-a Da Vinci Code-or something artistic, with crossover appeal." To which Thad retorts, "Bergdorf Blondes?" A second lawyer chimes in, "Not Bergdorf Blondes. Like The Corrections. Remember the guy who pissed Oprah off? Didn't that make the list? Some years back? I'm pretty sure it did. My theory-it's only a theory!-is that Jack was thinking of this as an incentive, a goal to work toward. A reward, if you will." But inspiration soon strikes and Thad and his cohorts may very well have the last laugh.

We trail the narcissistic trio through two weeks of filming as they hatch their plan to fulfill the codicil. From the "Starwatch" set to The Shutters Hotel to Disneyland, the three fast friends ricochet through the story-all the way to the Bun Boy Hotel and the novel's tragic desert denouement.

The self-absorbed wannabes, the white wine swilling, the pill-popping, the AA meetings, the pitches, the agents, the lawyers-it's all there, and then some. Buckle up. You're in for quite a ride, and bring along a tissue. All but the most jaded will need it by the end.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An intergalactic masterpiece, March 14, 2005

By	Dangle's girl (Astoria, NY United States) - See all my reviews

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Tell me why Clea, September 23, 2005

By	Frances Kuffel "fmk" (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

does herself in? Thad -- well. The world was not worse off for such a morose beast in it, but tell me why I care about these characters?

This is Gatsby in Hollywood, or Gatsby's grandchildren, mooning after what is lost, without anything elegaic or acknowledging in the doing of it. I didn't put the book down, but I didn't come away feeling I'd done anything more than survive Bruce Wagner's ennui.

& I got enough of that on my own.