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The Barnum Museum American Literature Series Steven Millhauser Steven Milhauser 9781564781796 Books

Download As PDF : The Barnum Museum American Literature Series Steven Millhauser Steven Milhauser 9781564781796 Books

The Barnum Museum American Literature Series Steven Millhauser Steven Milhauser 9781564781796 Books

3 1/2 stars. A very mixed bag of stories. Two were simply "unreadable": "A Game of Clue", and "The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad". I tried reading these 2 stories, but was so bored that I decided to just skip them -- something that I can't recall ever doing before in my life. ( I decided I had better things to do with my time than trudge through these stories.) Oddly enough, some reviewers of this book (on Amazon) thought these two stories were the best! So, all we can say is that we apparently value different things in the written word.

Millhauser revels in exhaustive description. It can become very tedious, and not all readers will enjoy the endless detail. These stories are more like paintings than stories. There is very little action, very little character development. The stories are more about ideas and philosophical conundrums than about human interactions. "Eisenheim the Illusionist" is the best of the lot, followed by "The Invention of Robert Herendeen" and "Behind the Blue Curtain". These stories are like dreamscapes, and are successful at presenting the odd concepts from which each story derives. Yes, Millhauser has some interesting conceptual ideas, but they are presented more as descriptive accounts of events -- as opposed to plot-oriented events and characters. The melting of fantasy into reality, or reality into fantasy, are at the core of Millhauser's collection.

"The Barnum Museum" , "The Sepia Postcard" & "Rain" (to a lesser extent) are also good stories, but less successful than those mentioned above.

"Klassic Komix #1" and "Alice, Falling" were tedious and uninteresting to me-- but slightly better than "The Game of Clue" and "The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad". These 4 short stories seem to be experimental in nature, and they all failed to gain my interest.

So, on balance, there are some interesting stories here. But, there are some really boring ones also. Nobody can be expected to be successful all the time, so I still recommend reading this book (or, at least, some of it).


Tags : The Barnum Museum (American Literature Series) [Steven Millhauser, Steven Milhauser] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Barnum Museum is a combination waxworks, masked ball, and circus sideshow masquerading as a collection of short stories. Within its pages,Steven Millhauser, Steven Milhauser,The Barnum Museum (American Literature Series),Dalkey Archive Press,1564781798,Literary,Literature & Fiction,FICTION General,FICTION Short Stories (single author),Fiction,Fiction & related items,Fiction - General,Fiction Literary,Fiction Visionary & Metaphysical,General,Literary Collections American General,Modern fiction,Popular American Fiction

The Barnum Museum American Literature Series Steven Millhauser Steven Milhauser 9781564781796 Books Reviews

SO BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN, MY FAVORITE AUTHOR!
To add a different type of praise to Steven Millhauser's work.... I suggest "The Barnum Museum" to those who want to try reading a different style of writing. Not to say that his style is difficult because it is not. But his style is a enjoyable departure from the usual short story telling and his stories are a departure from the "usual."

It is not appropriate to try to explain his style because it would detract from the discovery that you will have if you try this book. Try it, I think that you will be happy for the experiance.
Remarkable writing...loved it.
Loved the movie "The Illusionist," so just had to read the story on which it is based. Milhauser is a writer I'd never heard of before. His writing style and sense of the eerie reminded me very much of Ray Bradbury, especially Bradbury's "October Country" stories, which haunt me to this very day. Milhauser is racier but no less a skilled writer. "Eisenheim the Illusionist" is a masterpiece and "A Game of Clue" is like no other story I've read. I recommend this anthology to anyone who like eerie or weird stories. I'll have to read more Milhauser to see if this is his usual style of writing. I look forward to it.
Probably the best collection Millhauser has written, written with the most care, sentences crafted and recrafted in sound with painstaking effort that disappears in later, looser stories.
Eisenheim the Illusionist was my favorite story as a little girl, and now I have this beautiful book full of other short stories, included my previously mentioned favorite.
The short story that was the basis of the movie with Edward Norton that is still one of my favorites. Jessica Biel and Edward Norton do a great job in this adaptation of one of the stories and if you enjoyed that movie this story gives you more of a back story which is why I ordered the book.
3 1/2 stars. A very mixed bag of stories. Two were simply "unreadable" "A Game of Clue", and "The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad". I tried reading these 2 stories, but was so bored that I decided to just skip them -- something that I can't recall ever doing before in my life. ( I decided I had better things to do with my time than trudge through these stories.) Oddly enough, some reviewers of this book (on ) thought these two stories were the best! So, all we can say is that we apparently value different things in the written word.

Millhauser revels in exhaustive description. It can become very tedious, and not all readers will enjoy the endless detail. These stories are more like paintings than stories. There is very little action, very little character development. The stories are more about ideas and philosophical conundrums than about human interactions. "Eisenheim the Illusionist" is the best of the lot, followed by "The Invention of Robert Herendeen" and "Behind the Blue Curtain". These stories are like dreamscapes, and are successful at presenting the odd concepts from which each story derives. Yes, Millhauser has some interesting conceptual ideas, but they are presented more as descriptive accounts of events -- as opposed to plot-oriented events and characters. The melting of fantasy into reality, or reality into fantasy, are at the core of Millhauser's collection.

"The Barnum Museum" , "The Sepia Postcard" & "Rain" (to a lesser extent) are also good stories, but less successful than those mentioned above.

"Klassic Komix #1" and "Alice, Falling" were tedious and uninteresting to me-- but slightly better than "The Game of Clue" and "The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad". These 4 short stories seem to be experimental in nature, and they all failed to gain my interest.

So, on balance, there are some interesting stories here. But, there are some really boring ones also. Nobody can be expected to be successful all the time, so I still recommend reading this book (or, at least, some of it).