Understanding Steven Millhauser

Notes

NOTES Chapter 1—Understanding Steven Millhauser 1. Danielle Alexander, “Steven Millhauser,” Review of Contemporary Fiction 26.1 (Spring 2006): 7–76. 2. Review of Dangerous Laughter, “Upfront,” New York Times Book Review, Oct. 5, 2008, BR6. 3. Ibid. 4. E-mail, Jan. 25, 2009. 5. Jim Shepard, “Steven Millhauser,” Bomb (Spring 2003): 1. 6. J. D. O’Hara, “Portrait of a Romantic,” Library Journal, Aug. 1, 1977, 1679. 7. Even though it was his first published story, “The New Automaton Theater” was held back until the later collection The Knife Thrower after his editor pointed out it was too similar to “August Eschenburg” for it to fit in the collection In the Penny Arcade. 8. E-mail, May 3, 2012. The author’s remarks about the uncertainty of placing a novella should be read in the context of his success in publishing his early novellas, beginning with “August Eschenburg” in the journal Antaeus, which subsequently published the novella “The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon.” Similarly, his novella “Catalogue of the Exhibition” appeared in Salmagundi and “Revenge” in Harper’s, while “Paradise Park” was published in Grand Street. 9. Not coincidentally, these two stories represent half of the “Selected Stories” the author chose from his collection Dangerous Laughter. 10. “The Slap” is the favorite story in the collection for Michael Dirda, the Washington Post reviewer who has been one of the author’s most appreciative readers. 11. J. D. O’Hara, “Two Mandarin Stylists,” Nation, Sept. 17, 1977, 250–52. Chapter 2—Edwin Mullhouse 1. The names “Edwin” and “Edward” are not coincidentally similar. 2. The Penn “cellar” is a forerunner of Morpheus’s world. 3. It is part of the innocence of Jeffrey and Edwin’s world that sexuality is totally absent, even in the boys’ discourse, and no one intrudes derogatory interjections of “homo” or “faggot” to denigrate a boy for being different. 4. Jeffrey’s concern with the potential deviation of seconds from the exact number past 1:06 of Edwin’s birth anticipates the cataloger digressing in his narrating of the calamitous scene at the end of “Moorash” to comment on efforts to repair a damaged painting. 134 NOTES TO PAGES 26–45 5. In “The Mock-Biography of Edwin Mullhouse,” Adams notes Jeffrey’s ominous interest in the youngest boy in the family that moved into the Mullhouse home as Jeffrey’s next biographical subject. 6. E-mail message, Jan. 25, 2009. Chapter 3—Portrait of a Romantic 1. Writing in the Library Journal, J. D. O’Hara asserted: “This second novel proves that Millhauser’s dazzling Edwin Mullhouse . . . was no fluke” (1679). 2. Millhauser grew up in Stratford and Fairfield, Connecticut. 3. In her extensive article in the March 2006 issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction, devoted to Millhauser. 4. We find ourselves identifying the older storyteller as “Grumm” and the boy, even as an adolescent, as “Arthur” to denote his youth. 5. In the context of this “jocoserious” opening, “killer” is ambivalent: positioned after “lover,” it suggests “lady-killer,” but it may also be Grumm’s first expression of remorse for killing his friend William Mainwaring, whose commitment to suicide he betrayed. 6. Such preservation is also the subject of Millhauser’s later story “Here at the Historical Society,” with its specimens of the “New Past.” 7. In contrast to the fixation with dates and time in the earlier novel, time is indeterminate here. If Grumm at 29 is “writing” this novel near 1977 when it was published he might have been born about 1948 so Arthur might be meeting Philip in about 1961, a year or so before “The Sixties” began. 8. Much as Eleanor reminds readers of Poe’s women, we should not forget that she is critical of Poe. 9. The author was aware that in his last years the Romantic composer Robert Schumann retreated to an insane asylum, where he died. Chapter 4—From the Realm of Morpheus 1. “Questions.” E-mail of Steven Millhauser to Alicita Rodriquez, Sept. 21, 2005, cited by Alexander in “Steven Millhauser.” 2. Carl Hausman’s surname is one of several of Millhauser’s self-conscious plays upon his own name. 3. Millhauser’s interest in magicians, or “illusionists,” will reach its fullest expression in “Eisenheim the Illusionist,” a short story with the feel of a novella. 4. This tale is the first of numerous expressions of Millhauser’s development of marital fidelity and love triangles. His later collection of novellas The King...