Steven Millhauser, whose new collection, "Disruptions" (Knopf), is out just in time for his eightieth birthday, is the great eccentric of American fiction: a sleight-of-hand artist who from time to time seems to vanish into his own work. His first novel, "Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright"-ostensibly a biography of an eleven-year-old novelist by his fifth-grade classmate-was a minor sensation when it first appeared, in 1972, and it became a cult classic. There has never been anything like it, both a parody of literary biography and a mesmerizing evocation of a small-town nineteen-fifties childhood.
Millhauser had another brush with fame in 1997, when his fourth novel, "Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer," won the Pulitzer Prize. But his second and third novels-one a portrait of a teen-age romantic and the other a fantasy set in the kingdom of Morpheus, the god of dreams-are not as memorable, and he is best known for his short stories and novellas, like the ones gathered in the new book, in which compression somehow allows his talent its fullest expression. (Millhauser has said that he likes the "fraudulent modesty" of the story, the way that, pretending not to strive for much, it actually aspires to embody the whole world.)
This story is from the August 14, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the August 14, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES
Go with the flow like a dead fish.
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS
The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS
How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE
A different kind of machine politics.
THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON
Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.
THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE
Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.
THE HOME FRONT
Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.
SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED
Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.
TUCKER EVERLASTING
Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.
