The Barnum Museum (American Literature Series) [Paperback]

Steven Millhauser (Author)

Book Description

Series: American Literature Series | Publication Date: September 14, 2007

The Barnum Museum is a combination waxworks, masked ball, and circus sideshow masquerading as a collection of short stories. Within its pages, note such sights as: a study of the motives and strategies used by the participants in the game of Clue, including the seduction of Miss Scarlet by Colonel Mustard; the Barnum Museum, a fantastic, monstrous landmark so compelling that an entire town finds its citizens gradually and inexorably disappearing into it; a bored dilettante who constructs an imaginary woman--and loses her to an imaginary man!--and a legendary magician so skilled at sleight-of-hand that he is pursued by police for the crime of erasing the line between the real and the conjured.


Ingeniously written and orchestrated, each exhibit in The Barnum Museum will compel you to continue, each story becoming a lure to the next.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Among these 10 stories are "A Game of Clue" based on the famous board game and its characters, and "Klassic Komix #1" starring Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock. The tales "smartly conform to the dictates of literary fashion," said PW. "Alone, any of these pieces might seem novel or stimulating, but collectively they become repetitious, oppressively belletristic."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Imagine a funhouse gallery of fictive techniques and ideas, and you'll have some sense of these stories. "A Game of Clue" delineates the line between strategy and chance in a board game while plotting the relationships among the players. "Klassik Komix #1" is a riotous pop comic version of "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock." Other stories recast classic tales in a counterpoint of scholarly satire and nostalgic reverence; one is a melancholy monolog in the manner of Poe. The gimcrackery and excess of the title piece echo in the fin de siecle charm and foreboding of "Eisenheim the Illusionist." Both stories are about crossing the boundaries between art and life, appearance and reality. In this concern for the role of the artist as iconographer, artificer, conjurer, the author's work invites comparison with that of Robertson Davies. Millhauser's distinctive mix of stylistic dazzle and erudite wonder will intrigue admirers of his Edwin Mullhouse ( LJ 8/72), In the Penny Arcade ( LJ 1/86), and From the Realm of Morpheus ( LJ 9/1/86).
- Mary Soete, San Diego P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 237 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr; 2nd edition (September 14, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564781798
• ISBN-13: 978-1564781796
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #528,208 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This Way to the Egress, March 10, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Barnum Museum (Plume) (Paperback)

It's high time someone rediscovered Steve Millhauser's short stories, because there's nothing else like them being written in the U.S. (well, except for Ron Carlson). The title story describes a museum of impossible things--a magical place full of dreams--which would be a pleasant enough subject for a story, but Millhauser also emphasizes the commercialism of the place, the boredom of the patrons, the risks the museum runs of falling apart under its own extravagance. This is fantasy with a difference. The other stories are similarly clever: fascinating premises that actually go further than you'd expect. In "Behind the Blue Curtain," a boy sneaks behind the movie screen and discovers huge actors, as big as they are in the movies, waiting to go and entertain--and when Millhauser describes how vaporous they are, he could suddenly be talking about the weakness of fantasy, or the pressures of celebrity, or the fragility of childhood imagination. He has a deft touch with metaphor--he chooses the right one and simply lets it resonate. The other stories have similar fantastic ideas: "Klassik Komix #1", which is written as a description of a comic book, frame by frame; "The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad" which interweaves three stories--Sinbad in the past, Sinbad in his dotage, and the history of the Arabian Nights; "A Game of Clue," which tells the story of four Clue players AND describes the entire game from the perspective of the pieces...I could go on, but all the stories are imaginative and rewarding, and I can't understand why no one seems to have bought the book. Granted, he can run a little long (if you want terseness, go to Ron Carlson), but if you're hungering for a warm, Calvinoesque, American counterpart to British authors like Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and Will Self, meet Steven Millhauser. And prepare to smile

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Microscope on the World, April 2, 2001

By 

Jeremy Garber "urbanmenno" (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Barnum Museum (American Literature Series) (Paperback)

Amazon led me to Millhauser's work through a winding maze of postmodernist writers, and I was pleased to have discovered him. His trademark seems to be exhaustive inspection of detail -- the detail of a puzzle piece, a dusty corner of a library, the curves of a woman yet unknown. This volume is worth reading solely for the first story, "A Game of Clue," which simultaneously describes a family conflict during a session of the classic board game, and the action of the episode of Clue itself, complete with the twisted seduction of Miss Scarlet by Colonel Mustard. Ultimately, Millhauser's stylistic microscopic detail grates on the brain, and it best taken in small doses. However, this author clearly takes great pains to birth his work, and students of fiction can learn from his carefully crafted approach.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Barnum Museum Stories, March 25, 2007

By 

Lillian Julow "Lilykins" (Gainesville, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Barnum Museum (American Literature Series) (Paperback)

The short story form is one of the most difficult to master, but Steven Milhauser does just that, become its master. This collection of short stories, including Eisenheim the Illusionist which became a fascinating film last year starring Edward Norton, was - for me - his crowning achievement. You'll want to go back again and again to read the stories and find each time something you hadn't noticed before, some nuance, perhaps, that opens the door a little more into Milhauser's fascinating world.