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Steven Millhauser




Title Author Publisher Price
Little Kingdoms Steven Millhauser Phoenix $7.95
9780753808238
Read more and comment... 		The lead story in this collection of three novellas by America's reigning master of the form, "The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne" is an amazing tour de force for which the life and work of Winsor McCay serves as a springboard into a hallucinatory trip inside the mind of a powerful and obsessive creativity. We believe that this work stands to be especially appreciated by comics aficionados, and as we just secured a large quantity of the UK edition at a special price (and as the US edition is now, while not, technically, out of print, available only in a print-on-demand edition) we felt it was appropriate to bring it to our customers' attention at this time.  The two additional novellas that fill out this volume are every bit as original, unique and intense:  "The Princecss, the Dwarf and the Dungeon" is a magnificent deconstruction of the fairy tale that reveals its origins and functions -- social as well as psychological; and "Catalogue of the Exhibition: The Art of Edmund Moorash (1810 - 1846)" is one of the most singular works in the annals of fiction -- a turbulently romantic tale presented in the form of, as the title has it, the catalogue for an exhibition of paintings.  Recommended!
McSweeney's 15 Steven Millhauser, Roddy Doyle McSweeney's $20.00
($24.00 list)
Mcsweeneys15
Read more and comment... 		official hype - "Issue 15 is also known as The "Icelandic Issue". Printed in Iceland, half of the stories are written by actual Icelandic writers. And the kicker? It also comes with a Icelandic tabloid mini-mag filled with words you won't understand and images that speak for themselves.  Included in this issue are new stories from Roddy Doyle, Steven Millhauser and many exceptional newcomers.  Hardcover, bound in fine cloth. This issue makes us want to sit by a fireplace on a snowy day."
Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943 - 1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright Steven Millhauser Vintage Books $10.80
($12.00 list)
Edwinmullhouse
Read more and comment... 		Whether the point of this novel is to show us the adult that lies latent in the child or to reveal to us the child that the adult never manages to quite fully outgrow is a question that is difficult if not fruitless to answer.  What is certain, however, is that the novel Edwin Mullhouse is brilliantly conceived.  It is also shockingly well written, replete with uncannily accurate descriptions of childhood perceptions that can at times be overwhelmingly sympathetic.  It is at turns funny, sad, insightful, and even profound;  but above all else, it is deeply creepy:  It reveals -- almost imperceptibly at first, but then slowly, incrementally, the inertia builds, like a snowball rolling down the hill of your neighborhood cemetery --  the dark, lurking, unconscious desires that shadow what we might otherwise simply take to be our bright, waking, thoughtful acts.   >> Read our full length review by clicking on the image at left.
Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer Steven Millhauser Phoenix $4.95
0753805421
Read more and comment... 		This Pulitzer Prize winning novel represents the apotheosis of Millhauser’s obsession with obsessives.  In the character of Martin Dressler, Millhauser has found a character that fulfills both his personal needs as a writer and the novel’s needs for justification.  Dressler serves as a synecdoche for both the American Way and the American Dream, or, perhaps, more properly, how these two overlap and even, at times -- such as during the 1990s, when this novel appeared, merge into an organic whole in which each are indistinguishable from one another.  Millhauser’s inimitable style carries the reader through the life-cycle of Dressler’s dream of life that seems so real that at times its hard to believe that it’s only a dream; but then, the best of dreams are always like that, aren’t they? Import softcover
Dangerous Laughter Steven Millhauser $4.95
($14.95 list)
Dangerous-laughter
Read more and comment... 		OK, all you cheapskates, we know you've been waiting for us to get the latest Millhauser collection in for a bargain price – and now we have:  13 new tales by the master... for less!
In the Penny Arcade Steven Millhauser Phoenix $4.95
9780753808221
Read more and comment... 		This collection of works from the early 1980s by Millhauser starts off with August Eschenburg, a prototypical tale which serves as the template for several later Millhauser works, most notably Martin Dressler (see below).  The middle section is composed of three stylistically linked forays into the classic short story mode, each of which stages an elaborate wedding of location with season to produce an exquisite evocation of an exact yet unnameable emotion, and each of which manages to pull it off.  The stories that will really having you reaching for the champagne to celebrate their success, however, are the three that close out the volume, and most especially the titular tale, In the Penny Arcade.  This story reacheds the summit where so many others have fallen short in capturing that oh-so-elusive scene in which childhood ends.  It distills this instant in an essence that is as momentous as it is bittersweet.  This story is bracketed by a pair of equally successful distillations, first of childhood, and the other of tradition.  This book is a treasure. import softcover
We Others: New and Selected Stories Steven Millhauser Alfred Knopf $25.00
($27.95 list)
Weothers
Read more and comment... 		Long-time Copacetic customers are well aware of how highly esteemed Mr. Millhauser is within our walls.  Millhauser has painstakingly crafted a voice in writing, an approach to the material, and a fictional method that combined to create a new and potent force in literature that has produced truly remarkable works that have definitely shaped the post-'60s literature since first dawning in the 1972 novel Edwin Mullhouse.  Here we have seven new stories together with selections from four of his previously published story collections that we have been persistently touting here for the past decade.  We would like to assure anyone reading this who has yet to succumb to our persuasions that this fine volume will provide an excellent entry point to one of the most singular, pleasurable and uncanny bodies of work they are likely to ever come across.  Long-time readers of Millhauser will, of course, perhaps feel a slight irritation at having to buy stories they already own, but this irritation will pass away within moments of opening the pages of this book, replaced by thankfulness and wonder.