Beautiful, Poetic, Devastating

Bruce Wagner's brilliance is in his ability to make the unlikely and extreme both believable and relatable. With I Met Someone, he's found a beautiful metaphor to illustrate all the nuanced ways that narcissists consume the ones they love, with one character going so far as to literally steal his son's heart. Julianne Moore's performance is amazing, as good as anything she's ever done.

Totally Brilliant.

Where does I Met Someone rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

High.

What other book might you compare I Met Someone to and why?

Shares themes with Dead Stars, but is overall, a more touching and human story. Dead Stars was also fantastic, in a different way.

Have you listened to any of Julianne Moore’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

She was perfectly cast.

If you could rename I Met Someone, what would you call it?

Ouroboros

Any additional comments?

It is precisely Wagner's willingness to describe our world as it is, that makes this book and his others, so brilliant. The critics often slam Wagner for wasting his formidable talent as a writer (the man can turn a phrase!) on unworthy lowbrow pop culture subject matter, but this assessment misses the point. Sure, Wagner could imagine a world more palatable to highbrow tastes, perhaps something more "noble", like the conflict in Sudan, or something about academics as David Lodge does, but that would lame and predictable. Distasteful as it may be to delicate critical sensibilities, Wagner’s universe is governed by TMZ, and the citizens pledge allegiance to their inalienable rights to unfettered narcissism and the pursuit of fame. Wagner is a scholar of pop culture, he does his homework, he is fluent in the profane discourse. He humbly accepts, for better or worse, we live in a Kardashian zeitgeist. He uncovers depth in the superficial and meaning in the seemingly meaningless. That said, he is not a redeemer of pop culture, he is simply an astute observer of the machinery. It is Wagner's willingness to face the reality of our times and to understand it with scholarly anthropological rigor, that makes him such a great writer…no doubt one of the best of his generation. In this way his is a bit like the Zizek of the fiction world.