Edwin Mullhouse by Steven Millhauser. New York. 1972. Knopf. 306 pages. Jacket design by Alice & Martin Provensen. 0394480090. September 1972. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Steven Millhauser's funny, beautiful, and magically illuminative novel of childhood is cast in the form of a dead-serious, indeed major, biography. It is the Definitive Life of a Great American Writer who died when he was eleven, told by his contemporary and lifelong friend It is organized, thanks to Jeffrey's impeccably neat mind, in three sections: The Early Years, The Middle Years, The Late Years. Thus we closely follow Edwin's development from his pre-verbal noises, scrupulously noted by his admiring biographer, through the long devotion to comic books and animated film that so profoundly influenced Edwin's life and works, to the climactic flowering of his literary genius in his remarkable novel, Cartoons. We are made privy to the influence of home and school, to his friendship with the great muralist Edward Penn who disappeared at age seven, to his obsessive love for Rose Dorn - blonde, imperious, impervious to the Valentines, verses, and 43 gifts with which he pursues her. His pained biographer provides, as well, a full account of Edwin's sudden attachment to his violent, almost wordless classmate, Arnold Hasselstrom; And as we enter Edwin's brilliantly productive Late Years, we are shown the sinister series of events leading inescapably to his foreseen death. A satire on biography, a portrait of the artist set entirely in childhood, a vision of childhood as a state of genius--all the elements of Steven Millhauser's wonderful novel work together to charm, to astonish, and to compel a rich rediscovery of the lost moment-to-moment content of childhood.

Steven Millhauser (born August 3, 1943) is an American novelist and short story writer. He won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel Martin Dressler. The prize brought many of his older books back into print. Millhauser was born in New York City, grew up in Connecticut, and earned a B.A. from Columbia University in 1965. He then pursued a doctorate in English at Brown University. He never completed his dissertation but wrote parts of Edwin Mullhouse and From the Realm of Morpheus in two separate stays at Brown. Between times at the university, he wrote Portrait of a Romantic at his parents' house in Connecticut. His story ‘The Invention of Robert Herendeen’ (in The Barnum Museum) features a failed student who has moved back in with his parents; the story is loosely based on this period of Millhauser's life. Until the Pulitzer Prize, Millhauser was best known for his 1972 debut novel, Edwin Mullhouse. This novel, about a precocious writer whose career ends abruptly with his death at age eleven, features the fictional Jeffrey Cartwright playing Boswell to Edwin's Johnson. Edwin Mullhouse brought critical acclaim, and Millhauser followed with a second novel, Portrait of a Romantic, in 1977, and his first collection of short stories, In The Penny Arcade, in 1986. Possibly the most well-known of his short stories is ‘Eisenheim the Illusionist’, based on a pseudo-mythical tale of a magician who stunned audiences in Vienna in the latter part of the 19th century. It was made into the film, The Illusionist (2006). Millhauser's stories often treat fantasy themes in a manner reminiscent of Poe or Borges, with a distinctively American voice. As critic Russell Potter has noted, ‘in (Millhauser's stories), mechanical cowboys at penny arcades come to life; curious amusement parks, museums, or catacombs beckon with secret passageways and walking automata; dreamers dream and children fly out their windows at night on magic carpets.’ Millhauser's collections of stories continued with The Barnum Museum (1990), Little Kingdoms (1993), and The Knife Thrower and Other Stories (1998). The unexpected success of Martin Dressler in 1997 brought Millhauser increased attention. Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories made the New York Times Book Review list of ‘10 Best Books of 2008’ . Millhauser lives in Saratoga Springs, New York and teaches at Skidmore College.

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