Steven Millhauser

I just read Martin Dressler, and I loved it, so when I saw this novella sitting unloved in the share corner of our Master's Studio, I scooped it up. (It's not stealing from my students if I return it on Monday, right?) This is not the equal of Martin Dressler, not really close, but there is still a lot of good here. Millhauser once again uses a fairytale-like style to tell a modern story. This one leans a good deal more into magical realism than MD, and though I rarely groove on magical show more realism, I thought he did it well. This is atmospheric and poetic, and there is also a very dark undercurrent. A good deal of this addresses the dangers girls and women face when they try to define themselves, and men see them only as ways to meet their (sometimes, but not always, repulsive) needs or wants. show less

As in Millhauser’s previous books, this book recreates the origin of something specifically American—this time not the department store, but the chain restaurant and the modern hotel, built atop a labyrinth of luxury stores. If any other writer would have written a novel on this subject, Martin Dressler would have been simply a boring businessman, but Millhauser’s genius is to know that the origin of most things is ambivalent. He is also a first-rate anthropologist of Americana, and show more knows that this is the only society where pragmatism, action, and a business-like view of life are (or rather, once were) not necessarily the opposite—as in all other societies—but the other face of a dreamer’s vision. Thus, Martin Dressler is the archetype of this paradoxical and specifically American union. For Dressler, building a modern hotel is a project meant to create a world into itself, a magic world that would link together various small, separate elements. In other words, something akin to a novel.

Like in “Paradise Park” and “The Dream of the Consortium” from The Knife Thrower, Dressler’s desire to build ever more spectacular hotels that would enclose the entire world within their walls, becomes a desire to find a total replica or a perfect copy of the real world: a hotel where you could find the pleasures of the countryside or of nature or of high culture without the inconveniences of travel. A pre-Las Vegas. One could even say that Dressler’s project to build a Grand Cosmo, a hotel that would rival the world itself and ultimately make it superfluous is…the Internet. The dream of a magic world ends up becoming a perversion, the perversion of a soul always hungry for something bigger.

Millhauser’s books are not always liked by the “average reader” because for most people it is hard to move back and forth between a realist esthetics and one rooted in symbols, and this is what reading Millhauser requires. His books are apparently realist, but it is a faux realism because they all have a higher, symbolic level, and often are modern fables. But ultimately what makes him a great writer is his incantatory style, the dream-like atmosphere emanating from his prose. show less

I grew up watching The Twilight Zone and reading Edgar Allan Poe. I suppose you could say I have always had a bent toward the fantastic that lies just below the surface of the mundane. Consequently, Steven Millhauser’s new collection of stories, Disruptions, delighted me. I relished these strange tales portraying quaint small towns with their sudden obsessions and young people encountering things that disrupt their lives.

There are stories of transformation. The first story, “One Summer show more Night,” haunted me for days. “In the summer of my sixteenth birthday I fell in love with the night,” it begins. A few minutes in company with an older woman who delights in “the only night that ever was” alters his perception, knowing that everything had changed. Boys dare to sleep in a haunted house only to emerge unable to articulate the transforming experience. A girl walking home in the dark flees a pursuer, finding safety in an alteration.

There are stories of communities that engage in a shared obsession for a fad–a shadow puppet theater inspiring a black and white world, the removal of lawns for hardscapes or the competition for higher reaching ladders. One town’s lethargy overcomes them for weeks. A community of acceptance becomes one of prejudice. A guillotine is raised in the public square, a historical tour reenacts a tragedy, a society assumes that punishment for all is expected, and earned.

Because these characters and places are so familiar, these stories are disconcerting, revealing too much, recognizable yet bizarre.

Thanks to A. A. Knopf for a free book. show less

Como ya dije en su momento en la reseña de 'Risas peligrosas', Millhauser es un escritor esquivo, que huye tanto del éxito como del fracaso. Con 'Martin Dressler. Historia de un soñador americano' obtuvo el Premio Pulitzer en 1997, algo que parece no haber influido en la vida de Millhauser, que ya veía reconocida su obra por la crítica especializada. Con todo lo que se publica en este país, es una pena que escritores de su talla, y en concreto de novelas como 'Martin Dressler', pasen show more de puntillas por las librerías. Y es que Millhauser en un escritor que sabe narrar.

La historia transcurre en Nueva York, a finales del siglo XIX, en plena expansión de esta gran ciudad, cuando los edificios empezaban a querer rozar las nubes. Una ciudad en la que tenían cabida todo tipo de individuos, desde charlatanes, hasta genios y visionarios de un futuro que estaba al alcance de sus manos. Un mundo donde los soñadores tenían material sobre el que poder trabajar. Es el Sueño Americano, y Martin Dressler es un soñador. Martin, hijo de un humilde tabaquero, tiene la cabeza llena de sueños a los que dar rienda suelta. Siendo tan solo un niño, su mente desborda de ideas imaginativas. Desde su puesto en la tabaquería de sus padres, Martin irá ascendiendo, en una espiral de ambición pero también de obsesión por alcanzar un ideal. Millhauser nos va contando este ascenso en un argumento lineal, por lo que es mejor contar lo menos posible para no desbaratar su lectura.

La creación del mundo que Martin tiene en la cabeza resulta fascinante, mezcla de un 'Ciudadano Kane' o un 'Metrópolis' visto por Tim Burton, en los que tiene lugar el particular imaginario de Millhauser, con sus arquitecturas imposibles, sus miniaturas y su imaginación desbordante. Y es que Millhauser nos propone un cuento, una fábula en la que un sueño puede ser un fin en sí mismo, y en donde la redención y la paz pueden residir más en el fracaso que en el éxito. Un cuento, en fin, compuesto por dos tramas, una la del soñador irredento en busca del ideal, y otra en la que tienen lugar tres mujeres, una madre y sus dos hijas, una bella, etérea y melancólica, y la otra fea, enérgica y vivaz, dando lugar a una cierta duplicidad.

'Martin Dressler' es una historia magnífica, que nos habla del afán de superación y de los bellos sueños del protagonista, sin importar la cruel realidad. show less