The Knife Thrower and Other Stories

by Steven Millhauser

The Knife Thrower introduces a series of distinctively Millhauserian worlds: tiny, fabulous, self-enclosed, like Fabergé eggs or like the short-story genre itself. Flying carpets; subterranean amusement parks; a band of teenage girls who meet secretly in the night in order to do "nothing at all"; a store with departments of Moorish courtyards, volcanoes, and Aztec temples: these are Millhauser's stock-in-trade as a storyteller, and he employs them to characteristically magical effect. As in Millhauser's other books, including Edwin Mullhouse and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Martin Dressler, his subject is nothing less than the faculty of imagination itself. Here, however, the flights of fancy are unencumbered by Martin Dressler's wealth of period detail, and the result is fun-house prose whose pleasures and terrors are equally gossamer. Millhauser possesses the unique ability to render the quotidian strange, so that, emerging from his stories, the reader often feels the world itself an unfamiliar place--as do the shoppers at his department store, that marketplace of skillful illusion: "As we hurry along the sidewalk, we have the absurd sensation that we have entered still another department, composed of ingeniously lifelike streets with artful shadows and reflections--that our destinations lie in a far corner of the same department--that we are condemned to hurry forever through these artificial halls, bright with late afternoon light, in search of the way out."

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Magical Realism, American, Literary Fiction, Short Story Collection

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

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" (published in "The Barnum Museum"), 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.

Reviews

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aun los que nos rendimos ante estas obras sentimos cierto desasosiego, pues nos perturban como placeres prohibidos, como crímenes secretos.

Steven Millhauser es todo un ilusionista. Te muestra una historia que no ha sido pero que pudo haber sido, y lo sabes, aunque al leerla estás más que satisfecho de que te engañe durante lo que dura uno de sus cuentos. Sus historias hablan de hechos, lugares y personajes que nunca existieron, con ciertos elementos de realismo mágico, o directamente elementos fantásticos. Y todo ello rodeado de un halo de nostalgia que lo impregna todo, de tal manera que querrías haber visto algunos de los autómatas de los que habla, por ejemplo. Pero si hay una característica que defina la prosa y las historias de Millhauser, esa es el desasosiego, impregnado de ciertos placeres oscuros como ese lanzador de cuchillos de uno de sus relatos.

No cabe duda de que Millhauser es un escritor que desciende de clásicos como Poe y Hawthorne, lo que queda patente en su manera de escribir, elegante, nítida y elocuente. Otra característica a destacar de los cuentos de Millhauser es que no es de los que se guardan un golpe de efecto para el final de los mismos. Su maestría radica en ir calándonos con la trama durante todo su desarrollo, de tal modo que el cuento al completo es la sorpresa en sí. En mi opinión, esto no es nada fácil.

Estos son los doce relatos contenidos en ’El lanzador de cuchillos y otros cuentos’:

El lanzador de cuchillos, en el que asistimos al esperado espectáculo de Hensch, ¡el lanzador de cuchillos!, capaz de realizar las cosas más increíbles con sus afiladas dagas. Millhauser, con un pulso narrativo soberbio, no deja de perturbarnos.

Una visita, en el que el protagonista es invitado por el que fue su mejor amigo, al que no ve desde hace nueve años, a visitar su hogar y conocer a su esposa. Extraño cuento, donde el elemento fantástico es un pretexto para mostrarnos la peculiar vida del amigo.

La Hermandad de la Noche, en el que asistimos a la preocupación de toda una ciudad por el extraño comportamiento de algunas de sus muchachas. Y es que hay mucha confusión: ¿qué hacen durante esas noches en el bosque, rituales demoníacos, eróticos, estéticos? Poco a poco, con una particular estructura narrativa por parte de Millhauser, que casi parece un artículo periodístico (al más puro estilo ‘Las vírgenes suicidas’, de Eugenides), iremos sabiendo más sobre estas jóvenes. Magnífico relato.

La salida, en el que un hombre sorprende a Harter, el protagonista, con su mujer. ¿Qué decidirá hacer este hombrecillo? ¿Y Harter, qué salida tiene? Muy buen cuento.

Alfombras mágicas, en el que el mayor deseo del protagonista, así como de sus amigos, es tener una alfombra con la que surcar los cielos. Un cuento maravilloso, que destila pura nostalgia por una época pasada.

El nuevo teatro de autómatas, en el que sabremos de la pasión de toda una ciudad por la fabricación y el espectáculo con autómatas, arte que está al alcance de unos pocos maestros. Hasta que aparece un genio atípico, Heinrich Graum, y sus nuevas ideas. Gran relato.

Clair de lune , en el que una noche de verano, un chico de quince años no puede conciliar el sueño, quizás debido a la extraordinaria luminosidad de la luna, así que decide salir a pasear. Buen cuento, también de corte nostálgico.

El sueño del consorcio, en el que un consorcio se hace con unos grandes almacenes, ante el escepticismo de algunos ciudadanos. Las extraordinarias ideas de los nuevos dueños no se harán esperar. Magnífico relato, que recuerda a su novela ‘Martin Dressler’, ganadora del Premio Pulitzer.

Vuelo en globo, 1870, en el que acompañamos a un soldado francés y a su piloto, mientras sobrevuelan en globo las líneas prusianas. Quizás el cuento más flojo.

Paradise Park, en el que conocemos la increíble historia del parque de atracciones Paradise Park, desde su inauguración en 1912, hasta su terrible destrucción a causa de un incendio en 1924. Sarabee, su artífice, fue todo un visionario, capaz de dar forma a las más fantásticas atracciones, con un único afán, superarse continuamente. Gran relato.

Habla Kaspar Hauser, en el que asistimos a la conferencia impartida en Nuremberg por Kaspar Hauser, en la que nos contará su historia, partiendo del hecho de su terrible encierro en una torre a oscuras durante años. Nueva versión del mito del pequeño salvaje. Buen relato.

Bajo los sótanos de nuestra ciudad, en el que se nos relata la afición que tiene una ciudad por sus túneles, de origen indio, que más que una curiosidad son un refugio, una obsesión. Buen cuento, donde brilla la imagen de esos ancianos faroleros alumbrando los pasadizos.

Solo puedo decir una cosa de Millhauser: haceros con cualquier libro que lleve su nombre. No os arrepentiréis.

En los largos veranos de mi infancia, los juegos estallaban súbitamente, ardían con un resplandor y desaparecían para siempre. Los veranos eran tan largos que poco a poco llegaban a durar más que el año entero, se estiraban lentamente más allá del borde de nuestras vidas, pero en cada instante de su vastedad estaban por terminar, pues eso hacían los veranos: nos acicateaban con el final, marchaban siempre hacia la larga sombra que arrojaba el final de las vacaciones.

[Maureen]

review to come but for now:

i am in love with the story, "a visit". extended passage transcribed below, in spoiler tags -- i'm not ruining the story here, but by sharing the passage i give away what the story is about.

His little mocking rebuke irritated me, and I recalled how he had always irritated me, and made me retreat more deeply into myself, because of some little reproach, some little ironic look, and it seemed strange to me that someone who irritated me and made me retreat into myself was also someone who released me into a freer version of myself, a version superior to the constricted one that had always felt like my own hand on my throat. But who was Albert, after all, that he should have the power to release me or constrict me-- this man I no longer knew, with this run-down house and his ludicrous frog-wife. There I ate for a while in sudden silence, looking only at my food, and when I glanced up I saw him looking at me kindly, almost affectionately.
"It's all right," he said quietly, as if he understood, as if he knew how difficult it was for me this journey, this wife, this life. And I was grateful, as I had always been, for we had been close, he and I, back then.
After lunch he insisted on showing me his land-- his domain, as he called it. I had hoped that Alice might stay behind, so that I could speak with him alone, but it was clear that he wanted her to come with us. So as we made our way out the back door and into his domain she followed along, taking hops about two strides in length, always a little behind us or a little before. At the back of the house a patch of overgrown lawn lead to a vegetable garden on both sides of a grassy path. There were vines of green peas and string beans climbing tall sticks, clusters of green peppers, rows of carrots and radishes identified by seed packets on short sticks, fat heads of lettuce and flashes of yellow squash-- a rich and well-tended oasis, as if the living centre of the house were here, on the outside, hidden in the back. At the end of the garden grew a scattering of fruit trees , pear and cherry and plum. An old wire fence with a broken wooden gate separated the garden from the land beyond.
We walked along a vague footpath through fields of high grass, passed into thickets of oak and maple, crossed a stream. Alice kept up the pace. Alice in sunlight, Alice in the open air, no longer a grotesque pet, a monstrous mistake of Nature, a nightmare frog and freakish wife, but rather a companion of sorts, staying alongside us, resting when we rested--Albert's pal. And yet it was more than that. For when she emerged from the high grass or treeshade into full sunlight, I saw or sensed for a moment, with a kind of inner start, Alice as she was, Alice in the sheer brightness and fullness of her being, as if the dark malachite sheen of her skin, the pale shimmer of her throat, the moist warmth of her eyes, were as natural and mysterious as the flight of a bird. Then I would tumble back into myself and realize I was walking with my old friend beside a monstrous lumbering frog who had somehow become his wife, and howl of inward laughter and rage would erupt in me, calmed almost at once by the rolling meadows, the shady thickets, the black crow rising from a tree with slowly lifted and lowered wings, rising higher and higher into the pale blue sky touched here and there with delicate fernlike clouds.
The pond appeared suddenly, on the far side of a low rise. Reeds and cattails grew in thick clusters at the marshy edge. We sat down on flat-topped boulders and looked out at the green-brown water, where a few brown ducks floated, out pst fields to a line of low hills. There was a desolate beauty about the place, as if we had come to the edge of the world. "It was over there I first saw her," Albert said, pointing to a cluster of reeds. Alice sat off to one side, low to the ground, in a clump of grass at the water's edge. She was still as a rock, except for her sides moving in and out as she breathed. I imagined her growing in the depths of the pond, under a mantle of lilypads and mottled scum, down below the rays of green sunlight, far down, at the silent bottom of the world.

[Evan Leach · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned about Steven Millhauser after the New York Times selected Dangerous Laughter as one of the best books of 2008. I loved that book so much that I scooped up The Knife Thrower the second I saw it at the used bookstore. The Knife Thrower is a bit more uneven than Dangerous Laughter, which had at least one novel concept that really engaged me in each story. However, I think that the best stories in The Knife Thrower actually surpass Dangerous Laughter: two of the short stories in this collection are among the best that I have ever read. The 12 stories in this collection are:

The Knife Thrower: A fantastically entertaining description of an unorthodox travelling magician. 5 stars.

A Visit: A man visits an eccentric friend he hasn’t seen in almost a decade, with surprising results. This concept was a bit of a miss for me although Millhauser does a good job in spinning out the story. 3.5 stars

The Sisterhood of Night: A disturbing account of a town where teenage girls join a mysterious and inexplicable cult. 4 stars.

The Way Out: A man finds that his affair has unforeseen consequences. Not the strongest story in this book, but not bad. 3 stars.

Flying Carpets: A look at a world where flying carpets are a real commodity and marketed as children’s toys. 3.5 stars.

The New Automaton Theater: The story of a village where clockwork automatons are admired as entertainment and the secretive manufacturers that create them. 4 stars.

Claire de Lune: This short, dreamlike story of a young boy’s nighttime adventure was probably my least favorite in the collection, but still intriguing. 3 stars.

The Dream of the Consortium: A spectacular short story about a mysterious department store designed to cater to our every desire. This was quite simply one of the greatest short stories I have ever read. Thought provoking and incredibly entertaining. 6 stars.

Balloon Flight, 1870: Journalistic account of a 19th century balloon flight during wartime. 3.5 stars.

Paradise Park: The story of a bizarre and mysterious theme park. I don’t want to give anything away, but suffice to say this is probably my favorite short story of all time. It features a mind-blowing concept, a perfectly designed structure, and Millhauser’s usual top notch prose. It is worth buying this book just for these 41 pages. 6 stars and I cannot recommend this story highly enough.

Kaspar Hauser Speaks: A man who grew up in bestial isolation addresses his adopted city after assimilating to human life. 3.5 stars.

Beneath the Cellars of Our Town: The description of a town that has an extensive (and seemingly pointless) series of tunnels beneath its soil. Fascinating and classic Millhauser. 4.5 stars.

There was not a single story in this collection that didn’t offer something to think about, even if I thought some were weaker than others. And the highpoints are amazing. Steven Millhauser really is one of the most talented writers in the business right now and I wish he was more widely read. While I have reservations with some of the stories in this collection, they are outweighed by how incredible the top ones are and I would recommend this book to anyone. 4 stars.

[camille · Rating 4 out of 5]

You’re seeing this right. I finished a book. And it made me want to read other books again. Reading slump: cured. By a university read. The simulation is glitching.

Clair de lune was my favourite one in this book. But honestly, Millhauser’s writing and imagination is incredibly smart and it really draws you in. He is a genius and I honestly cannot wait to study these short stories in class.

[Bandit · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this one up because I couldn't resist the cover art and the fact that it might have something to do with circus. This book lived up to my expectations and then wildly exceeded them. Not all of the stories sung to me, but the ones that did were absolutely amazing. The author creates a magical array of worlds within worlds, dark and mysterious and stunning to explore. In 3 of the stories (which ended up being my favorite) he literally built from the ground up these absolutely incredible self contained architectural marvels that are completely out of this world, yet through exploring them we learn much about the explorers themselves. Here are the dazzling metaphors and meditations on human condition, on its essential inability to be satisfied yet occasionally getting stunned but what they find in their pursuits of the next best thing. There is a depth and beauty to the writing that has some gothic leanings as well as dark fantasy ones. Absolutely gorgeous short story collection, literary architecture at its finest. Highly recommended.

[Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a mistake to make a book comprised solely of this one man's stories. They start of seeming incredibly off-beat and unworldly, sucking you into their own bizarre world. BUT after a while the "sameness" of the stories gets to you. Sure, the setting and the actual happenings are different, but the mysterious "we", the circuitous and obsessive internal monologue, the acceptance of bizarreness and the total apathetic nature of everyone and everything, plus the incredibly over-the-top-ness of all the details. Singularly taken, some if the stories are brilliant! I loved the knife thrower and the toad story. But once they're laid side by side, the larger part of the glamour and mystique vanishes, which is a shame. Break this book up over a long time with a few other books in between and you might enjoy it more.

[Clay C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this collection, though I'd read many of these stories before. Besides the career-spanning collection We Others, I'd say this is a great start to get started on Steven Millhauser's short fiction and is probably his strongest stand-alone collection (the fact that four stories from this collection appear We Others is a testament to that).

If you were being discourteous, you could think of Millhauser as a one or two-trick pony. There's lots of stories that take place in vague suburban towns where enchanting/horrifying things happen, usually narrated in the first person singular by a collective "we." There's a lot of stories that are mostly just Borgesian exposition about some bizarre but fiercely talented engineer/artist/writer/businessman/magician who reaches the top of their craft in some otherworldly or grotesque way. If these don't work for you I imagine Millhauser's work feeling pretty repetitive. If they do work for you (as they work for me), it's like watching a sorcerer performing slightly different variations of the same trick every night, taking special note of different flourishes or theatrics he employs. If the magician changed his act completely, you'd be a bit disappointed. But when he completely nails the familiar trick, leaving you completely beguiled but oddly satisfied with the spectacle and mystery of it, there's simply nothing like it.

I’d recommend this collection to anybody who likes their fiction strange and untraditional and who isn’t afraid to slip into a world of odd dreams and nostalgia, equally comforting and troubling. For me, Millhauser is one of those auteur writers like Robert Aickman or W. G. Sebald. When reading his work, you feel so glad that he exists to write it as it touches upon ideas and visions in your subconscious that you might have never even known existed but seem to have always been there.

As with all short story collections there's hits and misses, but here the hits definitely outnumber the misses. Here are my thoughts on each story:

The Knife Thrower: The titular story does not disappoint at all. A dubious suburban audience comes to see a disgraced knife thrower who has become notorious for small displays of actual violence and pain in his performance. This is quintessential Millhauser: an introspective first person plural narrator, a cozy suburban town disturbed by a sudden intrusion of the bizarre, a vaguely menacing but ingenious showman, hints of transgression that slowly become much less than hints. The power of this story comes from the high-minded but often hypocritical opinions of the audience. Ultimately they fall victim to the knife thrower's greatest trick: becoming haunted not just by the violence they witnesses, bur by the desire they had deep in their hearts to see that violence up-close. A

A Visit: This story is just incredible and might be my very favorite thing Millhauser has ever written. In it, a secluded and aging bachelor pays a strange visit to his charismatic college friend who he's fallen out of touch with. I really don't want to say more than this as I think the central drama of this story is surprising enough to make it worthwhile to go blind into. Needless to say, the reveal is appropriately shocking and surreal while also being very "sweet" in a way that Millhauser's other stories aren't. To me, this story is a reflection on human happiness; how we attain it and how we feel about ourselves when others attain it. An incredible story that I'll be rereading and rereading for years to come. A+

The Sisterhood of Night: Another first person-plural story, this time about a clandestine organization that a group of young girls in a small town become involved with, and the gruesome conclusions their worried parents jump to while trying to solve the mystery. The story’s magic comes from how much worse the parents imagine the "sisterhood" to be than it actually is, and how their close-mindedness serves as an example of the exact kind of thing the girls are trying to escape from. I definitely liked this story, but I thought I'd like it more than I actually did (if that makes sense). I think compared to other stories like this that Millhauser has written, there seems to be less "truth" to this and I think that is largely because the young girls that Millhauser created don't seem as believable. In the end, I think Millhauser understands the psyches of suburban mobs much more than those of young girls, which I suppose does play into the critical issue of the story in its own way. I also know there’s a movie based on that story. I’m not sure if it’s good or not but probably worth a watch one of these days. B+

The Way Out: This story is a bit of a departure from Millhauser's typical style and I'm not convinced it's as effective. In it, a philandering high school teacher comes into conflict with the husband of a woman he's sleeping with and is thrown into a bizarre contest to settle the dispute. I think Millhauser definitely took a chance on this story which I applaud him for, going more for a Raymond Chandler/Tobias Wolff-style story (these might be bad examples but they're what comes to mind) but in the end it just doesn't work for me. It lacks the "truth" that "Sisterhood of Night" did for the main character, while being quite a bit less enjoyable to read than the previous story. That said the conclusion was satisfyingly bizarre. B-

Flying Carpet: An ethereal, enchanting story about a young boy’s experience with a new fad for flying carpet. Here, the flying carpet isn't a gimmick toy but an actual flying carpet. This story is a lot like his novel Edwin Mullhouse, filled with the magic and wonder of the world of childhood though always gleaming with a sharp, transgressive edge reflecting the actual anxieties and secret desires children experience. I experienced dreams where I could fly as a young kid, dreams where I would fly over my neighborhood and look down at churches, schools, and friends' houses. The dreams were always so magical but so ephemeral, and I remember feeling pit-in-my-stomach when I woke up and realized it was all a dream. Despite only having three or four of these dreams they stick in my head so vividly. In this story, Millhauser nails the magic of those long-remembered childhood dreams. Suburban Connecticut in the 50s becomes a stand-in for my own childhood in a large, Rust Belt city in the early 2000s. If this review is too personal it's because this story just clicks for me on such a personal level, as does the subtle but almost heart-breaking ending sum up so succinctly our inevitable departure from the world of magic carpets and dreams where we can fly. A+

The New Automaton Theatre: Millhauser often writes stories that are less character or plot-driven narratives and more like non-fiction examinations of imaginary subjects. This is a prime example of one of these, in which we’re guided through the history of automaton crafting in an unnamed Central European city. This is already interesting enough but the course of the story changes when we are introduced to Heinrich Graum, a dark master of automaton engineering, and the disturbing and transgressive automatons he begins to create that turn the world of the traditional art form on its head. This is an interesting story with a lot to brood on about art and the act of imitation that is at its core. A-

Clair de Lune: A dream-like and peaceful story similar in tone to Flying Carpets. In it, a young boy plagued with sleeplessness on a long summer night ventures outside and comes across a strange gathering of female classmates playing wiffleball in boys’ clothes. We get the feeling that when the young protagonist steps out into the “sorcerer-blue night” he is venturing into a world of dreams and desires, where the familiar and the unfamiliar meld together. That said, the events of the story could also be read as a true account of a particular night, one of those summer nights of early adolescence when everything seems charged with magic and promise, when the worlds of boys and girls begins to separate more and more while the interactions between the two become mysterious and alluring. In many ways, the story seems centrally concerned with gender and the separate countries that young boys and girls occupy. We get an even stronger sense of this in the awkward but earnest interactions the narrator has with his female classmates after the game. Just as in certain holidays when tradition holds that the barrier between the physical world and the spiritual world temporarily dissolves, so too does the border between gendered worlds fade on this long summer night the narrator finds himself in: where boys and girls interact freely and frankly and girls disguise themselves as boys. This hint of the carnivalesque (gosh that sounds pretentious), where norms can be forgotten and gender can be explored works fantastically in this story. When the surreal but strangely cathartic ending comes, we can’t be sure if the narrator is surrendering himself to the world of dreams he finds himself in or simply throwing himself into the strange and romantic promise the night holds. Either way, this story shines with mystery and nostalgia. A+

The Dream of the Consortium: In a typical Millhauser plot, a shadowy corporation opens a shopping mall in a suburban area that seems to contain not only everything their costumers want or need to buy but is also stocked with the goods and services of their imaginations and desires. This is a fun story to read with interesting points about consumerism, but in the end it sees to play on the same themes and plot elements of “Paradise Park” while being less successful than that story. Still a delight to read though and I think divorced from “Paradise Park” I’d appreciate it more. B+

Balloon Flight 1870: I don’t have a ton to say about this story. In it, two French soldiers travel in a hot air balloon across war-torn Europe. This story has a certain Jules Verne-ian flavor that I can appreciate, but I think I was still too enamored with the vision of flight in “Flying Carpets” for this story to have much of an impact on me. Not the strongest story in the collection but not a bad story by any means. B

Paradise Park: This is the longest story in the collection but its length is warranted in my opinion. In it, a mysterious businessman builds an incredible amusement park on Coney Island and continuously outdoes himself with more alluring and outlandish attractions. Ultimately, his creative vision reaches its hellish height and the park destroys itself. I loved the world this story conjures, which is filled with the imagery and ideas of 30’s cartoons and classic theme parks and carnivals. Slowly, the new rides and attractions that Millhauser describes step further and further out of reality and into a strange, fantastic, and seedy realm of fantasy and dark delights. Small details really make this story for me, such as the way the initial iteration of the park languishes as new underground attractions open and the actors playing drifters, criminals, and prostitutes hired to provide real-seeming sleaziness eventually start to truly inhabit their roles in the disused alleys and stalls of the park. Or how the park’s creator achieves his crowning creative glory by crafting a strange ethereal realm that almost resembles a surreal vision of heaven, but when consumers are dissatisfied he crafts for them a true-to-life version of amusement park hell. This story is filled with small details like his that beg for a reread as Millhauser guides us along intro the depths of human desire to be shocked and horrified, with an audience that seems much less morally conflicted than that of “The Knife Thrower.” A.

Kaspar Hauser Speaks: The notorious historical enigma Kaspar Hauser addresses an audience about his story and muses about identity. I was already closely familiar with Kaspar Hauser, a young German from the early 20th century who claimed to have spent his early life isolated in a cell. Hauser attracted a great deal of compassion and attention in Nuremberg, but slowly holes appear in his story and more of the unpleasantness in his character begins to show itself. His story abruptly ends when he is fatally stabbed and his mystery continues unsolved. Did he botch a self-inflicted wound meant to reignite attention and sympathy? Or, despite its dubiousness, could his story in some small way be true? Mystery lingers over Hauser’s case today. I’m not sure if someone unfamiliar with Kakspar Hauser would find this story more or less interesting because of it. Either way I enjoyed this story, but didn’t find it as effective as other stories in this collection despite the interesting questions it raises. B/B+

Beneath the Cellars of our Town: Just as it began, the story ends with a classic Millhauser story. In an otherwise normal suburban town, an intricate mysterious systems of underground tunnels is described to us, rife with urban legends, historical anecdotes, and a brooding sense of mystery beyond human understanding. Nobody knows how or why the tunnels were created, though mysterious, rarely-sighted workers routinely light the lanterns that line the tunnel, taking on a certain cryptid-like awe and respect I loved this idea of a strange subterranean realm under the town, a realm that the inhabitants have a deeply personal and protective relationship with. Just as in the “Knife Thrower,” the first person plural perspective works great here, as do small details that expound the town’s relationship to the tunnels, such as a failed proposal for the entire town to move into the tunnels or the bitter homesickness the town’s inhabitants feel when they are away from the tunnels for too long. Like all great Millhauser stories, the story grips you with its fantastical strangeness but also its oddly relatable and cozy sense of nostalgia. I want to say the tunnel system is a stand-in for religion, but at the same this story pleasantly defies easy categorization as an allegory and works on its own as a work of nostalgia and imagination. A phenomenal story to end a truly great collection with. A

[Richard Jespers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of stories in which an image from the title story—the knife—appears in nearly all the other stories, varied though they may be in character. In “Sisterhood of Night,” a gang of teenage girls leave their homes each night and meet in a wood: “Rumor has it that the girls are instructed to carry weapons: scissors, jackknives, needles, kitchen knives” (38). A character named “Mary Warren displayed a bone-handled kitchen knife” (39). This rather gothic story is marked by the use of third person plural, as if the narrator is one of the girls not a citizen of the town. The girls, after all, are only after silence and invisibility, not mischief.

In “The New Automaton Theater,” Millhauser again employs the third person plural to great effect, as well as the heavy use of passive voice, creating an objectified distance between the material and the reader. He also brings into use another knife, though this time metaphorical in nature: “That long-awaited performance was like a knife flashed in the face of our art” (107).

The story, “Clair de Lune,” is an ode to the moon a fifteen-year-old would write if he could write this well at fifteen. A male teen prowls through his town on a moonlit night and lauds its shadowed “blueness” multiple times. Haunting.

In “The Dream of the Consortium,” a large, multi-storied department store is repurposed. Again, a knife plays a part in the author’s imagery: “One window showed a six-foot scale model of a thirty-four-story hotel, in which each of its more than two hundred rooms was lit up in turn, revealing in each instance an exquisitely detailed scene performed by miniature automated figures: a little man was murdering a little woman with repeated stabbings of a little bloody knife” (138). Again the third person plural creates a certain air, expressing perhaps the thoughts of an entire culture. The story may ultimately be a cautionary tale about the excesses of capitalism. Millhauser creates a dry, biting satire by way of a playful tone.

“Balloon Flight, 1870” is a lovely combination of history, travel, war, peace of being on a four-and-a-half hour balloon ride—escaping from one place to another. Plenty of time to daydream. One of Millhauser’s strengths seems to be creating a unique point of view; this one: watching the world from thousands of feet in the air at a time when humans can only view the earth from a tall tree or a two-story dwelling.

The longest story, “Paradise Park,” is about the history of a Coney Island amusement park, in which one man, having become wealthy from other business interests, desires to fund the rebuilding of this park. The park, a multi-leveled sprawl, is a character that takes the first eight of fifty pages to be described in its entirety; one wonders if a human will appear. Then Sarabee, the owner-manager, does build more and more elaborate parks, sometimes on top of one another, until he, at one point, goes “dark.”

If one wishes to enjoy both reading and being challenged by short stories, Millhauser is your author, and this is the book!

[Tim Storm · Rating 5 out of 5]

About half of theses stories are kind of plotless; the other half are quite gripping plot-wise. His plotless stories are Borgesian philosophical fictions that end up being allegories for our postmodern world. "The Dream of the Consortium," for instance, is about an impossibly large department store that sells just about anything you could want, including full size replicas of ancient ruins. "The consortium was determined to satisfy the buyer's secret desire: to appropriate the world, to possess it entirely," Millhauser writes. He renders his imagined worlds quite vividly; indeed, he's a master at concrete detail. And when he wants a plot, as he does in the title story (and in "A Visit," "The Sisterhood of Night," "The Way Out," "Flying Carpets," and "Claire de Lune"), he provides tension a-plenty as he conveys his strange scenarios. "A Visit" is about an old friend of the narrator's who has married a giant frog; "Flying Carpets" describes a children's fad of literal flying carpets; "The Sisterhood of Night" has a small town baffled by the secret society that has sprung up among teenaged girls--they sneak out of their houses and gather in the woods silently. They're fascinating premises, and Millhauser develops them adeptly, conveying complex motivation, mystery, and ambience galore. Several of them have first person plural narrators, a difficult undertaking in a story of any length but one that Millhauser pulls off over and over again.

[Brett Warnke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steven Millhauser has rescued my interest in the short story. Before I began with his fabulist fiction I thought I would abandon shorter fiction. If I had to read one more realistic story about a job, a bad relationship, a bad father, or urban micro-aggressions I thought I would scream. SM’s works in this collection creates new space for the imagination with beautiful attention to language and a sense of wonder. His story “beneath the sellers of our town“ presages his later collection of stories “Dangerous Laughter,” dealing with human structures and geography. It’s one of my favorites because it has an allegorical structure but a realistic sense, sentence by sentence: Great authors use the best pieces of each genre from which they borrow. Another story “a visit” plays with allegory and realism as well, gestures at being a moral fable, while also commenting on human’s opaque engagement with the natural world. “The knife thrower” is a longer small town story that is a great example of suspense, using slow methodical use of language to build up to a quick climax. The author settings are often in the smaller suburban areas of New England, but magical or odd things occur. Yet he is just as sure footed while in a balloon journey over France during the Paris Commune. Put simply: read every short story Millhauser has ever written.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm reading this very slowly - a story or two every few weeks - and I'm finding that I'm enjoying it that way much more than if I sat down for one long read of it. This way, the fact that the voice of the stories is always so similar isn't bothering me at all, because I am reading them as completely separate entities. I always say I'm not a short story reader, but I'm wondering if that's because I've been reading them wrong all this time, and I should have been approaching them more like I'm approaching this set of stories...
Anyway, these are very weird and sometimes overly-serious, but interesing and full of those lines that really pop out at you and you re-read over again because they sound so gorgeous in your head. Really lovely writing and really interesting premises to each story. Nothing feels spelled out for you, there is a lot of thinking about what's actually happened and adding your own self to the story, trying to analyze it within your brain. Good stuff!

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started out okay...sort of interesting. But I rapidly found myself annoyed with his repeated techniques and themes. Yes, Steven, we do transform a wide variety of things -- experiences, natural resources, historical tradition -- into consumer goods. Also, stop doing that first person plural narrator thing, you're making me crazy with that first person plural narrator thing.

[Jeff Plewniak · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the title story but really everything else seemed rather pointless. He's a good writer but most of the stories didn't feel like stories they were like brochures for wierd places and events. The title story was definitely fantastic though

[lauren mendoza · Rating 4 out of 5]

top three:
kaspar hauser speaks
the sisterhood of the night
ballon flight, 1870

all the short stories reminded me of a steampunk circus which is the main reason i liked this collection in the first place. very magical realism without much magic just very unrealistic which was wonderful. it’s not five stars because the later stories got repetitive in terms of themes- which is fine! but it was kinda annoying to get through especially when symbolism was reused over and over and you’re reading them back to back in a collection.

[Amy (Other Amy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

My father had taught me not to believe in stories about Martians and spaceships, and these tales were like those stories: even as you refused to believe them, you saw them, as if the sheer effort of not believing them made them glow in your mind.
-The Flying Carpets

In a world dense with understanding, oppressive with explanation and insight and love, the members of the silent sisterhood long to evade definition, to remain mysterious and ungraspable. Tell us! we cry, our voices shrill with love. Tell us everything! Then we will forgive you. But the girls do not wish to tell us anything, they don't wish to be heard at all.
- The Sisterhood of Night

I am having the hardest time pulling together what I want to say about this book, so I apologize in advance if any of this is unclear, and I will come back and do this better if better ever comes together.

Remember when albums mattered? When you had to buy music not song by song but as a collection of connected songs? How some artists would actually arrange the whole album as a piece of collective art above and beyond the particular songs themselves? That is this book. The whole work taken together comprises a meditation much greater than the parts. Some of the parts don't even work all that well without the whole.

The theme of the collection emerged with surprising clarity as I was fighting with "Paradise Park," which at first appeared to be a retread of "The Dream of the Consortium." But as I picked apart analogies and worked the puzzles, it turned out to be a revisit to "The New Automaton Theater" and "The Knife Thrower." Then after a brief WTH moment with "Kaspar Hauser Speaks," Millhauser turns full back to the thread of the theme and expands it out with "Beneath the Cellars of Our Town." By this point the book is no longer an anthology of short stories. It is an extended meditation on imagination, particularly the creation and consumption of art and the relationships between art, artist, and consumer (reader). It is one of those books that almost need to be reread as soon as finished, because once its theme emerges in the last pages, the whole work need re-examination with the new perspective in mind. (I am going to wait a bit on that myself, but I will do it eventually.) There is also a nice rhythm to this collection. The stories move from night to day and back again in an almost unbroken progression. There is also a pattern of rising and falling, from flights to explorations of subterranean worlds that begs for a closer examination. The seams of the work are showing in places, and the repetitive nature of the anthology is a little frustrating, but between the meat of the theme and the beauty of the writing (particularly "Flying Carpets," "Clair de Lune," "The Dream of the Consortium," and "Balloon Flight, 1870"), there is really very little to complain about here. I loved it even the moments of frustration.

(I see in other reviews that some have dismissed this as derivative of Italo Calvino and recommended Invisible Cities instead. I do very much want to read that (not just because I get Lorde's "Team" stuck in my head when I hear the title), but I think I will read Dangerous Laughter and Enchanted Night first. There is nothing new under the sun, and revisiting the same concepts from a different angle does not strike me as an immense burden.)

[Zoe Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Millhauser's short stories fall in to two types: the dreamlike more poetic stories focused on individuals and often written in the first person and the more formal almost objective accounts of subtle alternative history. The stories often start out in an apparently normal mundane world before moving into the magical alternative realities, drawing the reader with them.

There are certain themes that run through the stories. His characters seem to be trying to escape the world, flying above it on a carpet or balloon, going underground into the tunnels under a town or into a theme parks. In a way this is paralled by our experience as readers. Indeed the theme of art/artifice gradually becoming larger, perhaps better than life but at the same time becoming disturbing appears in several of the stories. Other stories deal with adolescence as magical/dreamlike, alien to the adult world.

My favourite story was The Sisterhood of the Night in which the adults are worried by what they perceive as a secret society of teenage girls, who gather at night but seem to say and do nothing. At first one is fascinated by what the girls are up to, but after a while one suddenly realises that the action in the story is in the increasingly paranoid reactions of the adults. How easily it could slip into a witchhunt. We too have been guilty of speculating.

I am in awe at Steven Millhauser's stylistic mastery. He uses the first person point of view with great ease, even though he has little time in a short story to establish the voice. His descriptions are wonderful: poetic at times, exact at others. I particularly admire the subtle way he shifts the ground under the reader until suddenly, just like the audience in the title story, you are no longer sure what you are seeing.

This review first appeared on the Magic Realism blog: http://magic-realism-books.blogspot.com It is part of my Magic Realism Challenge in which I read and review 50 magic realism books in one year.

[Favorite 77 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Millhauser es uno de los escritores más sugerentes y precisos que he leído, un auténtico estilista recreando mundos fascinantes. Supongo que una de las razones para que no sea más reconocido -sigo intentando explicármelo- reside en que es un escritor inclasificable, y estos relatos son una buena muestra. No son terror, pero son inquietantes de una manera imprecisa. No hay misterio y no hay, la mayor parte de las veces, emociones en juego. Lo que hay es una seducción fantástica, un embelesamiento, un cuento que encierra un mundo que uno se cree a pies juntillas, porque bajo el hechizo de Millhauser resultan muy plausibles los parques de atracciones de niveles subterráneos imposibles o los autómatas que dejan atrás a sus modelos humanos para convertirse en verdaderos autómatas. Hay cuentos muy sencillos en los que este hombre hace mucho con muy poco, como aquel en que un niño vuela con su alfombra mágica, un ensueño descriptivo de cuento, u otro en que el protagonista visita a una antigua amistad y descubre que éste está casado con una rana, todo narrado con naturalidad y veracidad. Pero la palma se la llevan Paradise Park, donde repite para llevar un paso más allá muchos de los planteamientos de su novela Martin Dressler, y lo logra sin resultar repetitivo, y todos los cuentos, son cuatro o cinco, escritos en primera persona del plural, ubicados en un contexto rural, donde se deja notar la influencia de Kafka, una influencia fagocitada por el sello de Millhauser, pero más que patente, creo yo. Esos cuentos de afamados lanzadores de cuchillos que visitan pueblos perdidos, extrañas y secretas ceremonias femeninas que tienen a un pueblo en vilo, revolucionarios fabricantes de autómatas que influyen en las vida de las personas... son absolutamente fascinantes. Mención especial para Bajo los sótanos de nuestra ciudad, quizás la alegoría sobre la vida interior más bonita que he leído.

Leer a Millhauser es siempre un deleite.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating this one was tough, but that may be true of all short story collections. Some stories in this particular collection packed a punch for me (four stars), while there were others that seemed repetitive variations on a theme (for instance, the stories about an increasingly impossible marionette theater, an increasingly impossible department store, an increasingly impossible theme park, an increasingly impossible construction of underground tunnels in a small town). These I would rate as two stars. The stories that hit the mark for me took a blatantly extraordinary notion and lodged it into a ordinary world. What happens when a man marries a two or three foot tall frog, or flying carpets are real, but are marketed as kids' toys?

Plot is never a major consideration for the writer, as his target is the exploration of characters who find themselves in unexpected situations, and showing what their reactions will be. Perhaps the reasons I liked the stories that I did and that I disliked the ones that I did were that the stories I disliked had a rarely used characteristic and that was, I supposed I could it, a limited first person plural narrator. The story was told only using "we" and "our" for pronouns, as if an entire town was telling the tale of a brief portion of its history. This was an interesting experiment the first time I saw it, but as I read more stories told in this fashion, I became detached from them, and the emotional impact was lessened.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book by Millhauser that I've read, and I really enjoyed it. As others have mentioned, there are recurring themes in many of these stories - flight, underground passages and chambers, mysterious stage shows, scale models - most of which take place in small towns. Both "The New Automaton Theater" and "Paradise Park" seem like they could be, at least in part, allegories of cultural or art history.

Millhauser is often compared to Borges, and indeed both deal frequently with the nature of reality, verisimilitude, and representation, but Millhauser forgoes Borges' literary references in favor of exquisite description and dreamlike moods. "A Visit" and "Flying Carpets", each taking place in a setting that's ordinary save one fantastic aspect, are the stories most overtly similar to actual nocturnal visions. Who hasn't had dreams where everthing seems normal with the exception of one bizarre or implausible element that everyone treats like an unremarkable matter of fact?

These stories also reminded me of those by the criminally obscure horror writer Thomas Ligotti, though Millhauser's aren't nearly as dark and pessimistic.

All in all, these well-crafted tales are definitely worth a read. The language is beautiful too, so if you're as voracious a reader as I am, it's worth slowing down to savor it. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more Millhauser.

[Chrysten Lofton · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.0⭐ “The night sky was the color of a dark blue marble I liked to hold up to a bulb in the table lamp.”

**spoilers**

If you’re following my reviews, thanks for rolling with me ♡

We’re on season four of Stitcher’s LeVar Burton Reads, and we’re gifted with "Flying Carpets” by Steven Millhauser.



Inherently peaceful, beautifully described, and steeped in nostalgia, this story really takes the reader into the sky. There’s a touch of pushing boundaries that you set for yourself, and a personal coming of age. Outgrowing everything. Summers really are always ending. Summers really are infinite.

I had to keep pausing and rewinding because this story kept putting me to sleep. Not in a bad way, though. In a warm, familiar, calm way.

This is a grade A certified bed time story.

Thanks for reading, and If you wanna chat about the latest LBR episodes, hit me up in the comments and come meet with us at LeVar Burton Reads: The Community on Facebook.

- 📚☕♥

[craige · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, I really had not read this book, or if I had, I utterly had forgotten it. I thought the stories all went on a bit too long and the 2nd and 3rd one were a bit rambly. The imagery was great, though. And I do tend to enjoy a new story that builds upon a legend, as the 2nd and 3rd stories do. But I have to wonder how come the first story was included with these two. I have to guess that it fits with them because of the house imagery as all three stories had interesting structures as part of them.
------------
I guess I thought I had read this book before, but now that I'm reading it I don't think I had. I thought the first story went on too long and the second story is going in an odd direction, but the writing is compelling, so I'm still drawn in. Not sure if it will in fact merit the 5 stars I gave it before I read it, but I'll wait until I've read all the stories before I change my rating.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I particularly love Millhauser's work with the plural, communal narrator here -- I don't think I've ever seen it done with such skill, and the result is often creepy and insidious in the way that groupthink really is. Title story is amazing, and I feel like I can actually see the unbelievable worlds he created in Dream of the Consortium and Paradise Park. The stories are also fascinating for their approach to form and structure -- they frequently don't follow a traditional narrative built on character, but simply build and build -- ascend in the fantastical -- until some kind of logical breaking point.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first couple of stories are of that variety built around on a single unusual premise - the knife thrower who intentionally slightly injures his assistants, a man who inexplicably marries a large frog. Sometimes the magical realism elements seem to serve solely as metaphors, lacking the sheer imaginative joy of outright fantasy. The best and longer stories, "The New Automaton Theater" and "The Dream of the Consortium" for example, have echoes of Angela Carter and Borges. The writing is a bit studied - since the stories were originally in The New Yorker, Harper's, Grand Street, Kenyon Review et al. you know you're in the heart of MFA America but the best of it is well worth reading.

[Avital · Rating 4 out of 5]

I deeply admire the stories The Knife Thrower and the one about the girls (I'll complete later...), but exactly for that reason the other stories seem like variations of these ones. Still, what he does, he does perfectly.

[Rhiannon Frater · Rating 5 out of 5]

People may disagree with me, but a lot of these tales came across as subtle horror. In fact, a few really unsettled me and haunted me well after I finished the novel. I really loved this book of short stories and highly recommend it.

[♥Van'Nesia Scott Aka♥ J.K.`s Bitch♥]

♥THIS BOOK IS ABOUT A GIRL WHO IS WRITING A PEN PAL FROM FAR AWAY UNTIL ONE DAY SHE FINDS OUT THAT HE IS RELATE TO ONE OF HER FRIENDS AND SHE MEETS HIM ONE DAY AND DECIDES HE IS WAY TO OLD FOR HER AND THAT THEY WOULD BE BETTER OF AS JUST GOOD FRIENDS!♥

[Matt Harms · Rating 5 out of 5]

There really isn't anything like this. Favorite stories are: The Knife Thrower, The Sisterhood of Night, Beneath the Cellars of our Town.

[Gabriel Congdon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not much I can add that hasn't been addressed by the other reviews. I'll quickly add that Millhauser uses muted colors. Regardless if it's a moving-forward-work or a plotless piece, they're done conservatively and with reserve. The most shapely sections are when Millhauser is writing psycological-cum-philosophical as another reviewer pointed out, but these sections have nothing to do with the actual story. This effect works well usually (from Giogorine to Pissarro) what's lost in vibrancy and intensity is gained in perspective and unity.
The rub being Modernity's obsession with being difficult for the sake of being art. Mill goes much farther with the plotless pieces in this, but it's by way of the gallimaufry. (We're still living in Schultz and Rauschenberg's flee market, in fact, I doubt will ever leave it.) The sing plainsong: these are minimalistic strange stories; I can't say I've seen stories like them (it's a mix between Barthelme's subjects and Auster's execution to make a gross siamese-twin of aesthetics). If something is left to be desired, it makes one analyze the nature of desire, I guess, I mean that's what I did.

That's where the review ends. Below is a message to a friend that the reader need not bother with. I shouldn't do things like this in a public forum and will endeavor not to, but shall do so now.

Meg: It's was all so surprisingly. I'd never encountered a writer whose work is very much like my own and reversely, how un-crazy I was about some of them. The blame goes with me as a reader, I think, Lord knows I have more respect for the New York Times Notable Books than I do myself, but maybe, just maybe, some of the phenomena I use to sweeten my tea, don't actually work, out in the field. Anyway. I've wasted enough time talking about this. Go Cav's! #Cav's in 7.

[Alex C. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Knife Thrower - great
A Visit - great
The Sisterhood of the Night - Intriguing
The Way Out - Excellent
Flying Carpets - Okay
The New Automaton Theater - 24 pages of scene description with a bit of intrigue. Meh.
Clair de Lune - Neat
The Dream of the Consortium - Ugh, more scene description that doesn't seem to really go anywhere.
Balloon Flight, 1870 - Okay
Paradise Park - UGH. Even more drawn out scene description. This one was painful to get through, but props for a somewhat neat ending.
Kaspar Hauser Speaks - Okay
Beneath the Cellars of Our Town - Okay

As other reviews have mentioned, Steven Millhauser is an excellent writer who can really paint a picture, but it's a shame that in this book every short story seems to follow the same formula: "Here's the world we live in. Isn't it intriguing? We have grown up around it so it's normal to us, except for this one thing that happened which we don't like to talk about. Here's what happened. Isn't that strange?"
After a while the stories all blended together, and towards the end I was anxious to be done with it.

[Mudlum]

Möönan, et sellel raamatul on väärtusi, teatav painajalikkus, eriti lapsepõlve tunnete ja seisundite edasiandmisel, mingi oma kummalisus, mida valitud stiil ilmselt toetab. Aga mulle see täiel määral pärale ei jõudnud. Takerdusin sõnadesse ja lausetesse, pidin endale teksti peas ümber tõlkima, et sellest aru saada, otsekui loeksin võõrkeelset teost. Liiga palju oli eri lugudes sarnaste teemade arendusi, oli midagi kunstlikku, vägisi tehtut, väsisin väga, lugedes lõbustuspargi lõpututest atraktsioonidest, kus igaühe puhul seletati, kuidas vigur täpselt tehtud on. Ja neid oli lugematul arvul! Näiteks: „Muud Danzikeri loodud lustisõidud olid „Jonnipunn“, „Ämblik“, „Virvarr“, „Nähvak“, „Liialdav Lizzie“ ja „Pöörane ratas“, tohutu horisontaalne terasvõru, mille läbimõõt oli rohkem kui sada jalga ja mis pidi pööreldes tugiteljel tasakaalus püsima otsekui hiigelsuur vankuv münt, kiikuvad ripp­istmed nii sise- kui välisserval“ (lk 165). https://sirp.ee/s1-artiklid/c7-kirjan...