The Barnum Museum by Steven Millhauser

The Barnum Museum by Steven Millhauser

The Barnum Museum is a combination waxworks, masked ball, and circus sideshow masquerading as a collection of short stories. Within its pages, note such sights as: a study of the motives and strategies used by the participants in the game of Clue, including the seduction of Miss Scarlet by Colonel Mustard; the Barnum Museum, a fantastic, monstrous landmark so compelling that an entire town finds its citizens gradually and inexorably disappearing into it; a bored dilettante who constructs an imaginary woman - and loses her to an imaginary man! - and a legendary magician so skilled at sleight-of-hand that he is pursued by police for the crime of erasing the line between the real and the conjured.

Steven Millhauser's stories are as dense with minute realistic detail as a 15th-century Flemish painting, but they never fail to take a sharp turn into fantasyImagination is his favorite subject as well as his precision instrument. His fiction is about virtuosity, especially his own. But it's also about the way imagination takes possession of the world and the imaginer. Entertainment Weekly Imagine a funhouse gallery of fictive techniques and ideas, and you'll have some sense of these stories... 'A Game of Clue' delineates the line between strategy and chance in a board game while plotting the relationships among the players. 'Klassik Komix #1' is a riotous pop comic version of 'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock.'.. Millhauser's distinctive mix of stylistic dazzle and erudite wonder will intrigue admirers of his Edwin Mullhouse, In the Penny Arcade, and From the Realm of Morpheus. Library Journal

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.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781564781796
ISBN 10	1564781798
Title	The Barnum Museum
Author	Steven Millhauser
Series	American Literature Series
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Dalkey Archive Press
Year published	2014-05-22
Number of pages	240
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.