The Barnum Museum - Hardcover

Millhauser, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671686402 ISBN 13: 9780671686406

Publisher: Poseidon Press, 1990

Synopsis

Ten stories that explore the boundaries between the material world and the ephemeral realm of imagination conjure a phantasmagorical world where childlike visions of endless possibility intertwine with the laws of the heart

About this title

About the Author

Steven Millhauser was born in 1943 in New York City, and grew up in Connecticut. He received a B.A. from Columbia University in 1965, and went on to pursue a doctorate in English at Brown University. He never completed his dissertation, but did complete a novel that was eventually published in a pared-down form under the title "From the Realm of Morpheus-as well as Edwin Mullhouse". However, it was for his stories that Millhauser became best known; immaculately written, curiously vivid, they trod on fantastic boards in a manner reminiscent of Poe or Borges, but with a distinctively American voice. After "In the Penny Arcade", Millhauser's collections continued with "The Barnum Museum" (1990), "Little Kingdoms" (1993), and "The Knife Thrower and Other Stories" (1998). Steven Millhauser lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, and teaches at Skidmore College.

From Publishers Weekly

The 10 stories in Millhauser's ( Edwin Mullhouse ) newest collection smartly conform to the dictates of literary fashion. "A Game of Clue," which opens the volume, describes both the people playing the famous board game and the lives of the game's characters (pedantic Professor Plum, seductive Miss Scarlet), ultimately proposing reading as a kind of sleuthing, a piecing together of clues encoded in the author's language. The relationships among reader, writer and the written-about are similarly investigated throughout. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock becomes a cartoon hero in "Klassic Komix #1," a witty inquiry into artistic appropriation (here, "Panel 41" has Alfred saying, "Holy cow, mermaids . . . ! Guess they're not singing to me, though. . . . "); Lewis Carroll's heroine is frozen in "Alice, Falling." Elegant facades belie careless housekeeping within these works (each of two characters in "Clue," for example, holds the identical game card). Alone, any of these pieces might seem novel or stimulating, but collectively their concerns, language and imagery become repetitious, oppressively belletristic. First serial to Esquire.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Poseidon Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0671686402
• ISBN 13: 9780671686406
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 237