Understanding Steven Millhauser

Chapter 9: The Knife Thrower and Other Stories

CHAPTER 9 The Knife Thrower and Other Stories In the range of its subjects and its approaches to fiction, The KnifeThrower and Other Stories (1999) offers a collection of stories that the author’s readers will identify as “classic Millhauser.” The collection brings together a dozen stories providing a cornucopia of what Millhauser had been publishing in magazines for over a decade. The Knife Thrower, for example, contains his first published story, “The New Automaton Theater,” omitted from In the Penny Arcade because “August Eschenburg” also focused on automaton-making. The presence of “The New Automaton Theater” in this later collection highlights the more sophisticated and often deeper representations of approaches and perceptions readers of Millhauser have become accustomed to. The opening story, “The Knife Thrower,” for example, offers a figure that fascinates Millhauser—the “popular-culture” entertainer, with a touch of the artist. Hensch, the knife thrower, like Eisenheim, the illusionist, known only by his surname, brings into the small, central European city of the narrator a powerful mystique of the “other,” the alien who excites his audience with his dangerous “art.” Like those who attend auto races, Hensch’s audience is titillated by the potential accident that could injure, even kill the attractive, scantily clad woman he throws his knives at, providing an opportunity for the male gaze. The act follows the conventional “climax” rhythm of ever-more daring and dangerous challenges to Hensch’s skill in ensuring that the knife lands exactly where he intends it to, and where viewers know they should want it to, even though they also sense the appeal of that fugitive, subversive impulse to see some blood flowing. The narrative masterfully plays on readers’ expectations of where the plot is leading them, or more specifically how the story will end. The action 90 UNDERSTANDING STEVEN MILLHAUSER appears to move toward its climax with the increasingly subtle demonstrations of Hensch’s art, namely, the incorporation of blood-letting into the performance as the knife thrower succeeds in producing closer “misses,” or “flesh wounds,” as he just pierces the woman’s skin. The next seemingly logical movement, marked by the reappearance of Hensch’s assistant in a long, black dress, is audience participation. First Susan Parker is positioned at the partition to receive a “memento” of the performance, then Thomas, whose memento will be the scar of a knife through his hand. As readers lean forward in anticipation of an even more dramatic climax to Hensch’s performance— and Millhauser’s—the story takes a bizarre turn toward the macabre. When Hensch’s female assistant announces, “And now I must say we have time for only one more event, this evening,” and calls for a volunteer to make “the ultimate sacrifice” (The Knife Thrower 12), suspense builds for the audience, and for readers because “ultimate sacrifice” smacks of battlefield heroism— say, a soldier’s throwing himself on a live grenade to save the lives of his buddies. Unlike the story’s earlier style with its precise, detailed descriptions of the knife thrower’s art, the finale of the performance is less clear and definite. The assistant leads the “girl” who has volunteered to the partition, cheerily asks the volunteer’s name, and tells Laura she “must be very brave” (13). The narrating “we” expresses confusion and a feeling he/they ought to demand an explanation, but events quickly move beyond anyone’s ability to be anything but a passive witness to this “ultimate sacrifice,” punctuated by the woman’s cry and no sound of the knife hitting wood. Hensch acknowledges the audience with a bow, and the curtain falls. What are we to make of this bizarre open ending? The narrator notes that the viewers respond in diverse ways, most of them expressed ironically. The knife thrower “justified his reputation” or “had the right to develop his art,” or the “final act had probably been a set-up, the girl had probably leaped smiling to her feet” (14) after the curtain came down. The narrator generalizes, “when all was said and done . . . the knife thrower had gone too far” (14). Beneath these mundane, conventional sentiments, readers sense the audience is in denial that a girl may have been murdered before their very eyes. The absence of a clear ending is a clue to the narrative’s focus. Our concern is more properly with the “middle” than the ending, with the experience of finding ourselves in a nightmare of dramatically increasing injury and suffering , witnessed...