Overview of Bruce Wagner Writes Transgressive Novels About Tragedy & Transcendence
Host Rich Roll interviews novelist Bruce Wagner about a lifetime of transgressive fiction that uses Hollywood as a laboratory for vanity, suffering and the search for spiritual transcendence. Wagner discusses his influences (literary and spiritual), his attraction to transgression, his decade with Carlos Castaneda, his process as a writer, and his recent book Amputation — written in response to devastating fires — plus reflections on aging, identity and the role of the novel today.
Core themes of the conversation
- Hollywood as mirror/laboratory: Wagner treats celebrity, wealth, invisibility and ruin as a terrain to test human longing and vanity.
- Transgression as method: Wagner deliberately visits forbidden, shameful places (incest, addiction, violence) to illuminate the human condition and to pierce received narratives.
- Sacred/transcendent counterpoint: His satire and dark comedy are deliberately balanced with spiritual longing — Buddhist/Sufi parables, Castaneda’s “second attention,” and the search for liberation.
- The tension of fate and agency: Wagner wrestles with ideas of determinism (influenced by Ramesh Balsekar and Nisargadatta) while insisting on moral accountability and the possibility of spiritual escape.
- Impermanence and identity: Aging, bodily fragility, and declining cultural appetite for novels prompt reflections on legacy, the ego, and what art can salvage.
Guest background & notable works
- Bruce Wagner: prolific, eccentric novelist; roughly 15 novels (titles mentioned: Force Majeure; I’m Losing You; Dead Stars; Still Holding; Amputation).
- Early comparisons: often likened to Nathaniel West and Fitzgerald (Pat Hobby stories), but Wagner emphasizes his additional interest in the sacred/transcendent.
- Career moments: sold an early writing adaptation to Oliver Stone; deep connections to Hollywood culture and personalities.
Influences — literary and spiritual
- Literary: Fitzgerald, Nathaniel West, Dickens, Faulkner, Henry James, Dostoevsky, Gogol. Wagner emphasizes “scent” — the language and perfume that draw him.
- Spiritual/parabolic: Buddhist texts (Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand), Sufi parables (Idries Shah), Don Quixote (Dostoevsky praise), Nisargadatta Maharaj (I Am That).
- Carlos Castaneda: Wagner spent a decade in Castaneda’s orbit, learning concepts like the tonal (ordinary reality), the nagual/second attention (non-ordinary reality), assemblage point, lucid dreaming, recapitulation — all of which reshaped his sense of perception and narrative.
The role of transgression in Wagner’s fiction
- Purpose: not gratuitous shock. Visiting the “infernal” permits empathy and a path toward transcendence; transgression is a tool to “attack and destroy bullshit.”
- Recurring content: incest, addiction, child sexual abuse, violent characters — used to explore familial templates, shame, and the social order’s imposed suffering.
- Ethical stance: Wagner insists on affection for his characters even as he exposes their flaws; the goal is illumination rather than mere laceration or sensationalism.
Writing process and relationship to language
- Language as obsession: Wagner describes his lifelong "love affair" with English — its scent and architecture — and sees himself as “wrapped in words.”
- Process: he writes toward silence — attempts to “get out of the way” of Bruce Wagner so material can emerge. He resists the vanity of writing for readers and claims he never wrote for a reader; books are made for himself.
- Reading habits: once voracious; now reads less and sometimes struggles to read or listen to books, yet the verbal sensibility remains acute.
- Output mentality: crafts can be painful; Wagner dislikes writing long projects but can “trick” himself (e.g., write a short book) to get through them.
Amputation, the fires, and urgency of creation
- Context: Amputation emerged quickly after the catastrophic fires (Palisades, Altadena) and is a direct artistic response to that trauma and civic failure.
- Intent: Wagner wanted to avoid polemic; he aimed to render the human comedy/ghoulishness around the disaster and to reckon with the failure of cooperation and civic responsibility.
- Tone: darkly comic, sardonic, despairing and tender; uses real public figures (e.g., Stephen Colbert, Karen Bass) woven with fictional characters to expose cultural contradictions.
Hollywood, celebrity, and borrowed reality
- Hollywood’s scent fascinated Wagner — extremes of wealth and poverty, renown and invisibility — all provide rich mirrors for human longing.
- Wagner often blends real public figures into fiction to test perception vs. reality; he says most people mentioned react positively or are indifferent.
- He views the celebrity-laden culture as fertile ground to examine longing, suffering and the possibility of redemption.
Castaneda & the second attention: practical takeaways
- Key concepts Wagner took from Castaneda:
- Tonal (consensus reality) vs. nagual/second attention (non-ordinary reality).
- Assemblage point as locus of perception; recapitulation as a practice to liberate oneself from conditioning.
- The mind as saboteur and the power of temporary eclipse for access to other perceptions.
- Wagner found these frameworks poetic and useful for both life and art, while recognizing controversies and social pushback around Castaneda.
Personal life, aging, identity and mortality
- Wagner reflects candidly on trauma (abusive father, family dysfunction), addiction encounters (migraines, painkillers), and vulnerability.
- On legacy and cultural decline: worried about declining book sales and the fading monoculture that once buoyed novels, but ultimately skeptical about legacy’s importance.
- Humor about mortality: mixes irony with acceptance; “only thing I worry about from the moment I wake up and put my head on the pillow is book sales,” he jokes — then pivots to deeper acceptance.
Notable quotes & lines
- “I attack and destroy bullshit.”
- “Hollywood had a perfect scent for me because I was someone that was possessed by extremes…celebrity and renown and invisibility.”
- “If you're not willing to go towards the thing that scares you the most...you are cutting yourself off from the possibility of that transcendent experience.”
- On artistry: “I never wrote for a reader ever.”
Main takeaways for someone who won’t listen
- Bruce Wagner’s fiction marries brutal, transgressive material with genuine spiritual longing; the aim is not shock for shock’s sake but an attempt to find transcendence on the other side of suffering.
- His decade with Castaneda and interest in Buddhist/Sufi parables materially shaped his philosophical lens and narrative approach.
- Wagner treats Hollywood as a theater for human failure and aspiration, using real figures and vivid language to highlight the dissonance between appearance and reality.
- He is deeply invested in language as a sensory, almost religious experience; writing is both vocation and torment.
- Amputation is a rapid-response novel born of civic outrage and grief, combining dark comedy and moral reckoning.
Further reading / listening (recommended by context)
- Bruce Wagner — Amputation (latest), Dead Stars, Force Majeure, I’m Losing You, Still Holding
- Carlos Castaneda — Journey to Ixtlan and the Castaneda corpus (for the nagual/tonal framework)
- Nisargadatta Maharaj — I Am That
- Idries Shah — Sufi parables collections
- Buddhist: Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand (title referenced by Wagner)
If you want to quickly grasp Wagner’s sensibility: expect corrosive satire, operatic language, moral fatalism, and an abiding curiosity about whether and how a transcendent center can be found within human disaster.