Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer

(Paperback)

Available Formats

---

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Young Martin Dressler begins his career as an industrious 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, accompanied by two sisters--one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner. As the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry, a sense of doom builds piece-by-hypnotic piece until this mesmerizing journey into the heart of an American dreamer reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion.

Reviews

Millhauser's fiction is a genre all of its own - Independent

Mr Millhauser possesses a bountiful imagination, and an ability to catch his perceptions in a bright butterfly net of prose - New York Times

Millhauser's writing is funny, melancholy and endlessly thought-provoking - The Times

This wonderful, wonder-full book is a fable and phantasmagoria of the sources of our century - New York Times

Author Bio

Steven Millhauser is the author of numerous works of fiction, including Martin Dressler, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1997, and, more recently, We Others: New and Selected Stories, winner of The Story Prize and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. His work has been translated into fifteen languages, and his story 'Eisenheim the Illusionist' was the basis of the 2006 film The Illusionist. He teaches at Skidmore College.