The Barnum Museum (American Literature) - Softcover

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.

“His true strength is magic realism. . . . Brilliant parodies, pastiches, and comments on Alice in Wonderland, Sinbad, and T. S. Eliot show how this gifted craftsman can stretch the boundaries of the form.” (Time)

“What a pleasure it is to read a writer this good—Millhauser seems sometimes to return us to the original sources of art, the awe and wonder before the untrustworthy but beautiful force of existence. . . . I love this writer and this book.” (Peter Straub)

“Millhauser has pursued—and perfected—a narrative mode that comes out of the European romantic tradition by way of Edgar Allan Poe. . . . His stylized elegance is reminiscent of Borges and Nabokov. . . . His stories are paeans to the imagination, their magic stemming from the human mind's zest for creating marvels. . . . Graced with a powerful sense of humor.” (Seattle Weekly)

“A writer who vivifies the act of reading. . . Like Borges (and Italo Calvino), he takes us inside the labyrinth of prose.” (Chicago Tribune)

“Imagine a funhouse gallery for fictive techniques and ideas, and you'll have some sense of these stories. . . . Invites comparison with the work of Robertson Davies. . . . A distinctive mix of stylistic dazzle and erudite wonder.” (Library Journal)

“The sentences are of Cartesian clarity. . . . Irresistible. . . . Think of these stories as literary fairy tales, lost characters from The Arabian Nights, the further ghost stories of an antiquary, the slightly etiolated blooms of a late Romantic imagination. Steven Millhauser is, all in all, a wonderfully appropriate writer for our very own fin de siecle.” (Washington Post)

“His best, most resonant stories, like those of Kafka, Borges, and Calvino, remind us that good works of fiction are, among other things, fables. . . . Some of Millhauser's stories bring to mind the somber ironies of Kafka and Borges, but in general his imagination has a light, serene quality—the quality of a precocious child's delight in his own ingenuity. . . . Purely enchanting.” (Entertainment Weekly)

“Stunningly clever and thought-provoking . . . Millhauser is a brilliant stylist who can shift voices like a good ventriloquist.” (The Milwaukee Journal)

“Staggering. . . . With his doppelgangers and children's games, thaumaturgical hauntings and junkshop catalogues, Steven Millhauser may well be American literature's last Romantic, its sole remaining wanderer through the troubled borderland between mundane reality and the world of art.” (Voice Literary Supplement)