Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (Vintage Contemporaries)

Steven Millhauser's new novel tells the story of a young entrepreneur in late-nineteenth-century New York City whose ambition to make concrete an elusive dream leads to a fabulous creation that houses the imagination itself.Young Martin Dressler begins his career as a helper in his father's cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top. His visions grow more and more fantastical as he plans his ultimate creation: the Grand Cosmo, in which he attempts to capture the entire world and its dreams. Accompanied on this journey by two sisters - one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner - and as the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder, he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry. The Grand Cosmo is his triumph and his undoing, the bold conclusion to this biography of the twentieth-century notion of progress, this mesmerizing journey into the heart of an American dreamer reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion. "Mr Millhauser possesses a bountiful imagination, and an ability to catch his perceptions in a bright butterfly net of prose." - The New York Times"Millhauser's characteristic fascination with the material artifacts of the vanished past-and the startling deftness with which he can describe the street, the carnival, the hotel that never existed-marks him as a cultural historian as well as an idiosyncratic fabulist." - Publishers WeeklySteven Millhauser is a recipient of the Lannan Award and has been honoured by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The author of Edwin Mullhouse, The Barnum Museum, and Little Kingdoms, among other books, he teaches at Skidmore College.

pulitzer Prize-winning Novelist Steven Millhauser Returns With A Magical Novella Imbued With The Transforming Power Of The (almost) Full Moon.

A Hot Summer Night In Southern Connecticut, Tide Going Out And The Moon Still Rising. Laura Engstrom, Fourteen Years Old, Sits Up In Bed And Throws The Covers Off.

Others, Too, Are Awakened By A Chorus Of Night Voices: Haverstraw, A Thirty-nine-year-old Failed Writer Living In His Mother's Attic; An Old Woman Who Lives Alone; Three Teenage Boys Looking For Trouble; A Gang Of Girls Who Roam The Night And Break Into Houses; A Lonely Young Man Looking For Love; A Beautiful Mannequin Whose Cold Fiberglass Arms Begin To Quicken; A Group Of Restless Children; And Assorted Dolls, Toys, And Animals Long Forgotten In An Attic.

This Is The Night Of Revelation. This Is The Night The Dolls Wake. This Is The Night Of The Dreamer In The Attic. This Is The Night Of The Piper In The Woods.

Only Steven Millhauser Could Transform Our Childhood Legends Of The Night Into A Hypnotic Adult Tale Of Passionate Enchantment, Encounters Of Darkness And Illumination, Human Passions And Inhuman Awakenings. Read It By The Light Of The Moon.

publishers Weekly

compared To His Ambitious, Pulitzer Prize-winning Martin Dressler, Millhauser's New Novella May Seem Slight, But It Has A Resonance And Fairy Tale Allure That Belie Its Slim Page Count. Set On A Sultry Summer Night When An Almost-full Moon Hovers Over Southern Connecticut, The Book Follows A Handful Of Small-town Characters Who Yearn For Anonymity, Recognition, Love Or Escape. Laura Engstrom, 14, Seeks A Solitary Release From The Deep Restlessness That Makes Her Bones Itch. Haverstraw, 39, Lives With His Mother While He Works On A Novel And Despairs Of Ever Achieving Anything With His Life. Janet Manning, 20, Longs For The Appearance Of A Heartbreaker She Met On The Beach That Afternoon. A Drunken Romantic, William Cooper, 28, Gazes Into Storefront Displays, Hoping For Love And A Lucky Break. An Old Woman Who Lives Alone Yearns For Company. He Gracefully Intertwines These Lives And Others With Magical Elements--a Mannequin That Comes Alive, A Chorus Of Night Voices, A Silent Visit From A Moon Goddess--to Create A Trance World Suffused With Luminescence And Longing, Where Each Character Verges On The Brink Of Fulfillment Or Collapse. Millhauser Sketches Each Person's Plight In A Few Skillful Lines And Repeats Gestures And Thoughts So Their Variations Resound On Many Levels. A Set Of Abandoned Dolls, For Example, Awaken And Pantomime A Sorrowful Romance That Echoes Janet's Desire For Her Young Lover, Haverstraw's Long-standing Friendship With A Friend's Mother And Coop's Abstracted Love For The Mannequin. Only A Scattering Of Facile Nursery-rhyme Type Of Songs Echo Hollowly In Millhauser's Elegant, Penetrating Tale. (oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Cartoons that draw their creator into another world; demonic paintings that exert a sinister influence on our own. Fairy tales that express the secret losses and anxieties of their tellers. These are the elements that Steven Millhauser employs to such marvelous—and often disquieting—effect in Little Kingdoms, a collection whose three novellas suggest magical companion pieces to his acclaimed longer fictions.

In "The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne," a gentle eccentric constructs an elaborate alternate universe that is all the more appealing for being transparently unreal. "The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon" is at once a gothic tale of nightmarish jealousy and a meditation on the human need for exaltation and horror. And "Catalogue of the Exhibition" introduces us to the oeuvre of Edmund Moorash, a Romantic painter who might have been imagined by Nabokov or Poe. Exuberantly inventive, as mysterious as dreams, these novellas will delight, mesmerize, and transport anyone who reads them.

Publishers Weekly

Overlappings of imagination and reality cast magic through these three vividly conceived novellas exploring the ramifications of artistic creation. In ``The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne,'' the eponymous hero, a cartoonist for a New York City newspaper in the 1920s, labors in the study of his Mount Hebron home on a ``secret, exhilarating project'': thousands of numbered ink drawings that will constitute moments of an elaborate animated film. As the world of his art becomes more splendid, the day-to-day reality of his life becomes progressively less rewarding. ``The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon'' juggles familiar motifs of legend--a beautiful, virtuous princess; a jealous prince; a scheming dwarf; a towering castle and subterranean dungeon--in its tale of a town's self-conscious effort to attach a fanciful, folkloric past to its utilitarian present. ``Catalogue of the Exhibition'' fashions a biography of fictional 19th-century painter Edmund Moorash and his intimates from a sequential discussion of his exhibited works. Millhauser ( The Barnum Museum ) evokes the impact of non-verbal art with uncommon ease. He develops each of these stories with such narrative precision and well-chosen detail that even his most fanciful and abstract conceits fully engage the reader. (Sept.)

a Master Of Literary Transformation, Pulitzer Prize-winner Steven Millhauser Turns His Attention To The Transformations Of Love In These Three Hypnotic Novellas. While Ostensibly Showing Her Home To A Prospective Buyer, The Narrator Of “revenge” Unfolds An Origami-like Narrative Of Betrayal And Psychic Violence. In “an Adventure Of Don Juan” The Legendary Seducer Seeks Out New Diversion On An English Country Estate With Devastating Results. And The Title Novella Retells The Story Of Tristan And Ysolt From The Agonized Perspective Of King Mark, A Husband Who Compulsively Looks For Evidence Of His Wife’s Adultery Yet Compulsively Denies What He Finds. Combining Enchantment As Ancient As Sheherezade’s With Up-to-the-minute Acuity And Unease, the King In The Tree Is Millhauser At His Best.

the New Yorker

an Ingenious Geometer Of Love Triangles, Millhauser Tinkers With Tested Formulas In These Three Novellas, While Giving Full Rein To His Taste For The Fantastical. Cuckolded King Mark, In A New Twist On The Legend Of Tristan And Isolde, Commissions An Automaton Copy Of His Banished Queen. Don Juan Travels To An English Country Estate, Where His Playboy Instincts Run Afoul Of A Quizzical Enlightenment Bluestocking. In The Weakest Of The Three Novellas, A Melodramatic Monologue That Opens The Collection, A Bitter Widow Confronts Her Late Husband's Mistress While Showing Her Around Their House As A Prospective Buyer. Yet, No Matter How Rickety The Scenario, Millhauser's Shrewd Sense Of Psychology Makes His Characters' Impulses Toward Romantic Excess Manifestly Believable, As When The Chivalrous Tristan Realizes That If He Was Going To Betray At All, Then He Had To Betray As Deeply As Possible.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler delivers an inventive collection of three novellas that are a magical companion to his acclaimed longer fictions. "Millhauser makes our world turn amazing!" The New York Times Book Review Cartoons that draw their creator into another world; demonic paintings that exert a sinister influence on our own. Fairy tales that express the secret losses and anxieties of their tellers. These are the elements that Steven Millhauser employs to such marvelousand often disquietingeffect in Little Kingdoms. In "The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne," a gentle eccentric constructs an elaborate alternate universe that is all the more appealing for being transparently unreal. "The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon" is at once a gothic tale of nightmarish jealousy and a meditation on the human need for exaltation and horror. And "Catalogue of the Exhibition" introduces us to the oeuvre of Edmund Moorash, a Romantic painter who might have been imagined by Nabokov or Poe. Exuberantly inventive, as mysterious as dreams, these novellas will delight, mesmerize, and transport anyone who reads them. A master of literary transformation, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler turns his attention to the transformations of love in these three hypnotic novellas. • “No one alive writes better about yearning and heartbreak.... Before such mastery, a reader can do nothing but bow his head.” —The Washington Post Book WorldWhile ostensibly showing her home to a prospective buyer, the narrator of “Revenge” unfolds an origami-like narrative of betrayal and psychic violence. In “An Adventure of Don Juan” the legendary seducer seeks out new diversion on an English country estate with devastating results. And the title novella retells the story of Tristan and Ysolt from the agonized perspective of King Mark, a husband who compulsively looks for evidence of his wife's adultery yet compulsively denies what he finds. Combining enchantment as ancient as Sheherezade's with up-to-the-minute acuity and unease, The King in the Tree is Millhauser at his best.

from The Bestselling Author Of martin Dressler Comes A New Collection Of Short Stories That Explore The Magnificent Obsessions Of The Unfettered Imagination, As Well As The Darker, Subterranean Currents That Fuel Them.

with The Panache Of An Old-fashioned Magician, Steven Millhauser Conducts His Readers From The Dark Corners Beneath The Sunlit World To A Balloonist's Tour Of The Heavens. He Transforms Department Stores And Amusement Parks Into Alternate Universes Of Infinite Plentitude And Menace. He Unveils The Secrets Of A Maker Of Automatons And A Coven Of Teenage Girls. And On Every Page Of the Knife Thrower And Other Stories, Millhauser Confirms His Stature As A Narrative Enchanter In The Tradition Of Nabokov, Calvino, And Borges.

entertainment Weekly

a Pulitzer Prize-winning Author Presents A Collection Of Tantalizing Stories As Gothic As Poe And As Imaginative As 'fantasia'

""Revenge" is a tour de force about erotic love and betrayal, told through the voice of a woman showing her home to a stranger with a disturbing secret. As the once-happy wife moves from living room to bedroom, she insinuates herself into her guest's (and the reader's) mind - and we witness the gradual unfolding of a carefully meditated scheme of revenge.". ""An Adventure of Don Juan" and the title novella transform classic fables into immediate, wholly original tales of romance. The first puts the famous lover on a country estate in England, where he attempts to perpetrate a brilliant seduction only to discover something surprising about the human heart. In the mesmerizing "The King in the Tree," Millhauser explores devotion and denial, casting the tragedy of Tristan and Ysolt as an engrossing tale of a king's infatuation with his beautiful wife - and the agony of her betrayal with his own nephew."--BOOK JACKET. ""A hot summer night in southern Connecticut, tide going out and the moon still rising. Laura Engstrom, fourteen years old, sits up in bed and throws the covers off.""--BOOK JACKET. "Others, too, are awakened by a chorus of night voices: Haverstraw, a thirty-nine-year-old failed writer living in his mother's attic; an old woman who lives alone; three teenage boys looking for trouble; a gang of girls who roam the night and break into houses; a lonely young man looking for love; a beautiful mannequin whose cold fiberglass arms begin to quicken; a group of restless children; and assorted dolls, toys, and animals long forgotten in the attic."--BOOK JACKET. "Steven Millhauser transforms our childhood legends of the night into a hypnotic adult tale of passionate enchantment, encounters of darkness and illumination, human passions and inhuman awakenings."--BOOK JACKET. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler—a collection of stories in the tradition of Nabokov, Calvino, and Borges that explores the magnificent obsessions of the unfettered imagination, as well as the darker, subterranean currents that fuel them. •'Tantalizing new stories.... Millhauser's ingenuity is delicious.'—A. S. Byatt, The Washington Post Book WorldWith the panache of an old-fashioned magician, Steven Millhauser conducts his readers from the dark corners beneath the sunlit world to a balloonist's tour of the heavens. He transforms department stores and amusement parks into alternate universes of infinite plentitude and menace. He unveils the secrets of a maker of automatons and a coven of teenage girls. And on every page of The Knife Thrower and Other Stories, Millhauser confirms his stature as a narrative enchanter. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler comes a stunningly original new book set in a Connecticut town over one incredible summer night. The delicious cast of characters includes a band of teenage girls who break into homes and simply leave notes reading "We Are Your Daughters," a young woman who meets a phantom lover on the tree swing in her back yard, a beautiful mannequin who steps down from her department store window, and all the dolls "no longer believed in," left abandoned in the attic, who magically come to life. With each new book, Steven Millhauser radically stretches not only the limits of fiction but also of his seemingly limitless abilities. Enchanted Night is a remarkable piece of fiction, a compact tale of loneliness and desire that is as hypnotic and rich as the language Millhauser uses to weave it. PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • The author of Voices in the Night reveals the mesmerizing journey of an American dreamer as he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry. “This wonderful, wonder- full book is a fable and phantasmagoria of the sources of our century.” — The New York Times Book Review Young Martin Dressler begins his career as an industrious helper in his father's cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top, accompanied by two sisters—one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner. As the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder, a sense of doom builds piece-by-hypnotic piece until this mesmerizing journey reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion.

Edwin Mullhouse, a novelist at 10, is mysteriously dead at 11. As a memorial, Edwin's bestfriend, Jeffrey Cartwright, decides that the life of this great American writer must be told. He follows Edwin's development from his preverbal first noises through his love for comic books to the fulfillment of his literary genius in the remarkable novel, Cartoons.

Edwin Mullhouse, a novelist at 10, is mysteriously dead at 11. As a memorial, Edwin's bestfriend, Jeffrey Cartwright, decides that the life of this great American writer must be told. He follows Edwin's development from his preverbal first noises through his love for comic books to the fulfillment of his literary genius in the remarkable novel, Cartoons.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Finalist Young Martin Dressler begins his career as an industrious helper in his father's cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top, accompanied by two sisters--one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner. As the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry, a sense of doom builds piece-by-hypnotic piece until this mesmerizing journey into the heart of an American dreamer reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion. Whether chronicling the phantasmagoric excesses of an amusement park entrepreneur in "Paradise Park," or the dangerously addictive delights of the largest department store ever conceived in "The Dream of the Consortium," Millhauser's fictions explore not only the magnificent obsessions of the unfettered imagination, but also the darker, subterranean desires that fuel them. From the odd corners of life that persist below the sunlit world in "Beneath the Cellars of Our Town," to views from the heavens in "Flying Carpets" and "Balloon Flight, 1870," he takes us on a tour beyond the everyday, to realms we recognize only in dreams.

Young Martin Dressler begins his career as an industrious helper in his father's cigar store.  In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top, accompanied  by two sisters--one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner. As the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry, a  sense of doom builds piece-by-hypnotic piece until this mesmerizing journey into the heart of an American dreamer reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion.

Young Martin Dressler begins his career as an industrious helper in his father's cigar store.In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top, accompaniedby two sisters--one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner. As the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry, asense of doom builds piece-by-hypnotic piece until this mesmerizing journey into the heart of an American dreamer reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion. From the Trade Paperback edition. Young Martin Dressler begins his career as an industrious helper in his father's cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top, accompanied by two sisters--one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner. As the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry, a sense of doom builds piece-by-hypnotic piece until this mesmerizing journey into the heart of an American dreamer reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion. From the Hardcover edition Dressler's cigars and tobacco Charley Stratemeyer West Brighton The Vanderlyn Hotel Room 411 A business venture Little Alice Bell Advancement The paradise musée Caroline and Emmeline Vernon A Sunday afternoon stroll The radiator Intimacies The eighth day of the week Mr. Westerhoven makes a proposal Business and pleasure Courtship The blue velvet box Wedding night The fate of the Vanderlyn New life Rudolf Arling Harwinton The Dressler A fifth chair at dinner The new Dressler Caroline's way The grand cosmo. A parody of a literary biography starring a 10-year-old novelist who is mysteriously dead at 11—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler.As a memorial, Edwin Mullhouse's best friend, Jeffrey Cartwright, decides that the life of this great American writer must be told. He follows Edwin's development from his preverbal first noises through his love for comic books to the fulfillment of his literary genius in the remarkable novel, Cartoons. A parody of a literary biography starring a 10-year-old novelist who is mysteriously dead at 11from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler. As a memorial, Edwin Mullhouse's best friend, Jeffrey Cartwright, decides that the life of this great American writer must be told. He follows Edwin's development from his preverbal first noises through his love for comic books to the fulfillment of his literary genius in the remarkable novel, Cartoons. The rise and fall of a man of imagination. From a helper in his grandfather's cigar store in 19th Century New York, he rises to become an entrepreneur of fabulous creations, culminating in a hotel with moonlight, waterfalls and a Grecian temple where maidens recite poetry around the clock. Facing ruin, he comes to the conclusion he dreamed the wrong dream. By the author of Edwin Mullhouse In Steven Millhauser's new novel set in turn-of-the-century New York City, we watch young entrepreneur Martin Dressler like many of his day make the ascent from hotel bellhop to builder of hotels. This mesmerizing novel brings us face to face with the ambiguity beneath the optimism of the American dream with a swiftness and intensity that are in themselves magnificently dreamlike. A new compilation of short fiction by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler features thirteen tales, including "Cat 'n' Mouse," a reimagining of the conflict between cartoon rivals, along with stories grouped into three sections--Vanishing Acts, Impossible Architectures, and Heretical Histories. Reprint. 15,000 first printing. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler presents three exuberant novellas that crisscross the line between fancy and reality, including the tale of a gentle eccentric who constructs an elaborate alternative universe. Reprint. 20,000 first printing. A fantasy novella on the happenings in a Connecticut town one moonlit night. Two people romance, a woman pines for her lover, teens break into a house, a store mannequin comes to life. By the author of Martin Dressler WHEN WE LEARNED that Hensch, the knife thrower, was stopping at our town for a single performance at eight o'clock on Saturday night, we hesitated, wondering what we felt. Thirteen darkly comic stories, Dangerous Laughter is a mesmerizing journey that stretches the boundaries of the ordinary world.From the Trade Paperback edition. The little kingdom of J. Franklin Payne The princess, the dwarf, and the dungeon Catalog of the exhibition, the art of Edmund Moorash (1810-1846).

Thirteen darkly comic stories, Dangerous Laughter is a mesmerizing journey that stretches the boundaries of the ordinary world.