The Chrysanthemum Palace by Bruce Wagner
Originally published in Time Out New York, March 10, 2005
In an age when Ashlee Simpson and Kieran Culkin get almost as much press as their siblings, it’s hard to imagine how having a celebrity in the family could be detrimental to one’s career. But in the world portrayed by Bruce Wagner’s novelThe Chrysanthemum Palace, shadows cast by family members’ Emmys and Pulitzers lead directly to a life of migraines and AA meetings. When the book opens, struggling actor Bertie Krohn swallows his pride (and artistic integrity) and joins the cast of his father’s cheesy TV “space opera” Starwatch. He is soon joined on the deck of the USS Demeter by childhood friend Clea Freemantle, the daughter of a movie star, and her sometimes lover Thad Michelet, whose father, Jack, has written a slew of award-winning novels. All three characters have been chewed up and spit out by Hollywood, and all have failed to carve artistic legacies of their own. But from their communal self-pity, a dysfunctional alternative family emerges, an alliance of three friends always ready to offer support or a handful of Vicodin.
At its best, Palace reads like a wicked satire of mainstream entertainment, a literary L.A. Story chock-full of industry in-jokes. Wagner gleefully captures the absurdity of popular culture, especially when he’s sending up the books of Jack Michelet (sample line: “The cunt looked like a chrysanthemum”. Chrysanthemums pop up repeatedly in the book, but don’t try too hard to uncover their significance—the references add up to nothing. Palace mocks the impulse to decipher the symbols of these semifamous characters’ lives. Throughout, Wagner encourages you to laugh at, and keep your distance from, the meaningless frenzy that surrounds life in the spotlight. You’re better off being anonymous.