Customer Reviews

Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I loved this book. It is one of the most original pieces of work I've read in years. It masterfully blends truth and fiction in such a way that you are drawn into the life story of Edwin Mullhouse. Beyond the descriptive imagery, which is fantastic, and brought back many of my own memories of childhood, this book plays with form, in that it is a FICTIONAL account written in the style of a classic English biography. The narrator is a child, but writes in an adult manner, giving detailed accounts and analysis to such events in Edwin's life as how he learned to speak, his first comic book, and the first great love of his life (in 1st grade).

This juxtaposition of adult analysis with childish feelings, toys, and concerns makes a great new form of "fictional biography"

I also loved the "physicality" of words that exists in this work. Edwin, just learning to write, can't help seeing words as pictures. For example, "yellow" is a boat with a rudder and two smoke stacks and "bed" is two fat men looking at each other over a table. Edwin is fascinated with cartoons and comics and writes his masterpiece, "Cartoons" when he is just 11. This is basically a very detailed account of a cartoon. I LOVED IT! To "read" a cartoon and see it in your head as you read brings a new dimension to the printed page. The words become images and the images are words. Great reading, and highly recommended for any serious writer or anyone who wants to remember their childhood....(note: I picked up this book when I heard Charles Frazier was reading it; he wrote Cold Mountain---not only a great author, but a great book critic it seems ;)

Previous reviewers are right to single out Millhauser's stunningly accurate, beautifully rendered descriptions of the minutiae of childhood--he remembers everything of childhood we've forgotten.

More importantly, in his own playful and deadly way, he draws readers into a sinister dance, making us accomplices to the crime at the heart of the book. Among other things, if you're a reader of "real" biographies, you'll likely return to your nonfiction with a slightly different take on the genre.

Not that the following statement will win the books zillions of new readers, but, if you love (or at least admire) Nabokov's Pale Fire, be sure not to miss Edwin Mullhouse.

I just finished reading the other readers' reviews of this book. I want to add just one more thing. Upon reading the book a second time, I was so involved with the characters that I was actually hoping for a happier ending this time. Of course, no such ending would have been as satisfying as the one Millhauser produced, but my connection with Edwin was so strong that I couldn't help wanting him to triumph.

Edwin Mullhouse was a wonderful book. Millhauser carefully weaves his story through the voice of Jeffrey, a young biographer. Millhauser's descriptions are beautiful and perfect. Some questions to keep in mind while reading this novel, is Jeffrey really who he says he is, and is Edwin really who Jeffrey portrays him as? Would Edwin exist without Jeffrey? This story cannot be taken at face value, the true meaning lies behind the words. A great read!

Much of the "stuff" of the novel has been skillfully described in previous reviews here, so, briefly, let me add that since reading this hauntingly mysterious book, I have been gorging myself on other works of the author. "Martin Dressler", and now, "The Knife Thrower and other Stories". And, I don't plan to stop there. It took me some time to catch on to the darkness beneath "Edwin", and I recommend patience on the part of the new reader of Millhauser's work for the pay-off is glorious, enigmatic, enchanted, and eye-opening.

Edwin Mullhouse is the story of a young author who takes his inspiration from comic books and animated shorts, and who was tragically dead at 11 years old. (Nothing is given away here, it's said in the first paragraph.) Millhauser weaves together a tale that, while intently focused, is incredibly reflexive, to the point where the author's intent seems to be to call to attention the art of biography as much as the art of creative writing.

The ages of the characters are highly important. If they were older, Rose Dorn and all of Edwin's other obsessions would be out of place. However, we almost understand everything that Edwin goes through, while Jeffrey (the biographer and Edwin's best friend) is left to puzzle it out. Jeffrey's memory is brought into question not by himself, but by his insistance that it is infallible. And, often, it is impeccable at remembering details of early childhood, as far as we know. His intentions are honorable, but just how far can we trust him?

The other notable thing in this book is the language. Millhauser's words are vibrant, whether describing a closed down amusement park or a cartoon or the haunting of a writer. Where else can one find a line such as: "And you see, there are all these words, nothing but words, nothing but words, what are these words, and there they are, so that's what you're faced with, words, words..."

This book is magic. That's all there is to it.

If you are a fan of great dark, funny, intense, deep fiction then this is what you need to read. It is honestly my favorite book I have ever read. Not for everyone though. Some people just don't want to go to those recesses of the mind and stay there for that long. I, on the other hand, love it. It makes me feel that much more alive.

This book works on more self-reflexive fiction/non-fiction levels than any book I have ever read with the possible exception of Maus - with which it shares a magical ability to make cartoons more real than reality. There are a million great things I can say about this book, (the descriptions, the subtle parody of adult life, the weird set pieces) but I'll just confine myself to the fact that in this novel - like the last book I totally fell in love with, Infinite Jest two years back - all of the really important parts are not written on the page, but in your head. It's not an easy book, like much of Millhauser's work. I almost wish that he didn't win the Pulitzer, after wading through the comments of the legions of knuckleheads who picked up "Martin Dressler" because of its cred and got ticked because it wasn't The Alienist. Parts are confusing and discursive, though never without an inevitable point, and some of the long descriptive passages become interesting only the second time through. Which, for me, began the second I finished the last page. Really, this is an amazing, criminally neglected masterpiece. Reading it is like getting a slow-motion punch to the face. There``s plenty of time to get out of the way, but something compels you to wait and find out if it's actually going to hurt that much when it hits. And, of course, it does - and when the inevitable shot rings out, it's the reader that's pulling the trigger. END

Dear God, someone has actually complained that "the problem is that his writing does not refelect the central conceit of the book - that this is a book written by an eleven year old...at no point will you believe this was written by a child." I wouldn't be quite so broken up about this had I not learned just last week that Swift wasn't *really* talking up the culinary possibilities of Irish foundlings in "A Modest Proposal," but as it is I don't know that I have the strength to go on...

A fondly remembered girlfriend gave me the (remaindered) hardcover at about this time in 1974, and I was entranced. Myself nine years--almost to the day--younger than Edwin, I nevertheless found the account of a Connecticut childhood in the late 1940s and early 1950s eerily evocative of my own experiences on the other coast, which probably says a bit more about the relative stasis and the enforced conformity in which the surface of the country's middle class existed during that period than about my particular and individual receptivity to author Steven Millhauser's prose. Ah, but it is splendid prose indeed, and summoned up for me the vivid sense of, for example, the classrooms of the period. A more perceptive reviewer than the one I savaged above alluded to Nabokov's "Pale Fire," and that comparison is spot on. Part of the joke is that "Jeffrey Cartwright," who tells our story, is a humorless pedant fit to stand beside Charles Kinbote as a Nabokovian (or for that matter Jamesian) unreliable narrator (and for those who aren't disposed to get the joke, there's the scholarly 1972 Introductory Note by "Walter Logan White"--that year's "John Ray, Jr."), whose approach to his material is that of a dutiful grind of a grad student, as author Millhauser was himself at that time.

This is a beautifully evocative and fanciful portrait of the artist at American mid-century. I don't know whether it will resonate quite the same way with readers born after, say, 1956, but given that Jane Austen stays in print even though the grandchildren of her original readership have all perished, I venture to hope that "Edwin Mullhouse" will find new readers throughout this century. Warmly recommended.

SPOILER ALERT * * * * * SPOILER ALERT * * * * * SPOILER ALERT * * * * * SPOILER ALERT

The reviews here, even the many offering high praise, have missed what is going on in this book. Jeffrey Cartwright was hoping his friend, Edwin, was going to become a major literary figure to whom Jeffrey could serve as Boswell. When Jeffrey finally figured out that Edwin was not a genius, Jeffrey lost it and killed Edwin. He then wrote this biography trying to pass off Edwin's inanities as genius so as to salvage his own need to have been in the presence of greatness.

Many are right in saying that this book provides a powerful evocation of childhood. But at its core, Millhauser has written a clever, biting satire lampooning the need of so many of us to be in the presence of greatness and the bitterness that follows when we find we have been deceived.

I can understand negative reviews by those who missed the nasty conceit underlying this seeming tale of childhood innocence. But I was dumbfounded that not one of the many positive reviews picked up on it. This, as much as anything, serves to establish what a devilishly wonderful book this is.

If you like this sort of thing, track down a copy of Thomas Berger's Sneaky People.Sneaky People: A Novel