Martin Dressler: The Tale of An American Dreamer - Hardcover

Millhauser, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 186159089X ISBN 13: 9781861590893

Publisher: Phoenix House, 1998

Synopsis

Martin Dressler is the son of cigar maker, born in late nineteenth-century New York. As Martin approaches manhood, it is rapidly clear that his ambitions stretch far further than inheriting his father's shop, as he moves first to take a job in a hotel, then to open a restaurant, and rapidly ascends to become a builder of hotels of his own. He is a classic entrepreneur, a young man who has the audacity to make his dreams - and the American Dream - come true. But when Martin sets out to build the Grand Cosmos, this mesmerizing novel finally exposes the ambiguity of the American dream and the perils and wonder of human ambition and the human imagination.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

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 Trade Paperback edition.

About the Author:

Steven Millhauser lives in Saratoga Springs, New York and teaches at Skidmore College.  His first novel, Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright, which has been out of print since 1990, is now available in trade paperback from Vintage Contemporaries, to coincide with the publication of Martin Dressler.

About this edition

• Publisher: Phoenix House
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 186159089X
• ISBN 13: 9781861590893
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 293