NEW BRUCE WAGNER BOOK “DESTROYS” MET GALA

With May 6th and this year’s MET Gala approaching, word on the street is that Anna Wintour’s lawyers are pursuing a takedown of Arcade Publishing’s The MET Gala & Tales of Saints and Seekers, the new X-rated black satire by Hollywood’s Bruce Wagner that threatens to be a WMD— “Weapons of MET Destruction.” Wagner, whom the likes of Salman Rushdie have called a “visionary,” is often compared to both Rabelais and Jonathan Swift. A new generation of writers and artists, such as Emma Cline, the Instagram sensation Jordan Firstman, filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli, musician Father John Misty, and alt-comedians Kate Berlant and John Early, have lavished Wagner with praise as well.

In The MET Gala & Tales of Saints and Seekers, a billionaire socialite, Corinne Coldstream runs over twin girls in an intersection just south of the Beverly Hills Hotel—prophetically echoing the famous Rebecca Grossman case. When Anna Wintour disinvites her from the MET ball, Corinne takes revenge by staging a gala of her own on the same night as Wintour’s 2024 ball. (“Anna’s ball is Israel,” proclaims Gigi and Bella Hadid’s father. “Corinne’s is Palestine.”) Corinne has a trans daughter with 100 million IG followers and one of the book’s bravura scenes is when mother and daughter appear on the Drew Barrymore Show to announce that the girl had (illegal) gender affirmation surgery when she was just eleven years old.

Wagner is famous for his trademark mix of characters that are both real and fictional, and in The MET Gala & Tales of Saints and Seekers, no one gets out alive. Among the cast of persons, places, and things both skewered and extolled: Kaia Gerber, Emma Roberts, Rick Owens, Brandi Carlile, Maggie Nelson and Harry Dodge, Woke World, DEI, Alice Sebold, Elon Musk, DAVOS, Cara Delevingne, BlackRock, Greta Gerwig, and hundreds of others.

No doubt if the lawyers prevail, Wagner will have a sequel to write.