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Martin Dressler, the Tale of an American Dreamer

by Steven Millhauser

February 1998

Synopsis

Martin Dressler"Young Martin Dressler begins his career as a helper in his father's cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top. His visions grow more and more fantastical as he plans his ultimate creation: the Grand Cosmo, in which he attempts to capture the entire world and its dreams. Accompanied on this journey by two sisters - one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner - Martin walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry. The Grand Cosmo is his triumph and his undoing, the bold conclusion to this biography of the twentieth-century notion of progress, this mesmerizing journey to the heart of the American dream." (Publisher)

Reviews

  • "Turning real estate into a reflection of a mind that in turn mirrors a society is a tricky literary feat. Millhauser pulls it off by lowering the barriers between realism and myth. The effect is also to remove artificial distinctions between the entrepreneur and the artist. Both, this well-told tale of obsession suggests, are gripped by demonic energies and grand schemes. And both take big risks, not the least of which is to be consumed by their own creations." (R.Z. Sheppard - Time)
  • "On the surface, Steven Millhauser's first novel, Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954, and his most recent, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, appear radically different in subject and scope. . . . But both Edwin Mullhouse's biography and Martin Dressler's hotel are really cities of the mind, archeologies of the imagination. . . . Like Edwin Mullhouse, Millhauser's new novel is a story of genius and obsession. . .. It's a tale as American as a Horatio Alger. . . . Historic New York has been the focus of popular novels from the nostalgic (Jack Finney's Time and Again) to the nasty (Caleb Carr's The Alienist). Martin Dressler's Manhattan joins the fantastic ranks of meta-cities as a worthy companion to Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale and E.L. Doctorow's The Waterworks. If you're a fan of the time-travel genre, you'll relish the vivid detail with which Millhauser re-creates a bygone era." (Diana Postlethwaite - The Nation)

Book Club Rating and Comments

If you or your book club has read this book and would like to share your comments, please email us at upthecreekbc@yahoo.com.

Other Books by Steven Millhauser

  • 'The Barnum Museum'
  • 'Edwin Mullhouse'
  • 'Enchanted Night'
  • 'From the Realm of Morpheus'
  • 'In the Penny Arcade'
  • 'The Knife Thrower and Other Stories'
  • 'Little Kingdoms'
  • 'Portrait of a Romantic'