In the Penny Arcade Pb [Paperback]

Steven Millhauser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2, 1999

The seven stories of In the Penny Arcade blend both the real and the fantastic in a seductive mix that illuminates the full range of Steven Millhauser's gifts, from 'August Eschenburg', the story of a clockmaker's son whose extraordinary talent for creating animated figures is lost on a world whose taste for the perverse and crude supersedes that of the refined and beautiful, to 'Cathay', a kingdom whose wonders include landscape paintings executed on the bodies of court ladies.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Dalkey Archive Press brings back into print Millhauser's classic and acclaimed stories in their American Literature series. The imagery alone is stunning, but coupled with Millhauser's insights into human flights and foibles, these fictions hold both truth and a surreal, disturbing beauty.

Surely novelist Kirsten Bakis (Lives of the Monster Dogs) and Millhauser in his story "August Eschenburg" had the same dream the same night about their characters. Both are named August, both are creators, and both must confront the troubling issues between what is human and what is humanlike. August Eschenburg creates automatons with such art that they appear to be alive--for very brief performances. His art is copied and subverted by Hausenstein, who builds what the audiences seem to want: automatons whose sexual characteristics are grossly exaggerated in huge rolling hips, leering faces, and large breasts. Art falls prey to popular entertainment when August's benefactor dumps him for--you guessed it--the rosier robot. Like Kafka's "Hunger Artist," August as artist will be drawn back to his art by an urge stronger than mere economics, an urge that applies to artists such as independent press publishers as well! --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Magic, dark fantasy and enchantment provide the recurrent atmosphere and literary mode of this collection of seven stories by the author of Portrait of a Romantic, the first, "August Eschenburg," of novella length. In the title narrative, a 12-year-old leaves the brilliant sunlight of the "real" world to enter a penny arcade he dimly recalls from his childhood. He is in search of "an overwhelming secret . . . something mysterious and elusive that I could scarcely name." But the mechanical gunslinging cowboy proves a creaking, absurd figure and the fortune teller a decayed ruin. The endless disrobing of the nickelodeon woman can still reveal inexhaustible secrets. Then once again the glory fades and the boy concludes that only faith, if it can be retrieved, will restore the wonder that once was. In another tale, an adolescent girl undergoes a series of mysterious changes on the jagged path to self-knowledge; and "Cathay" is a series of magical vignettes situated in an enchanted land of marvelous transformations and exotic rituals. While the meaning of the stories can be willfully enigmatic and the writing at times self-conscious and labored, the prose can also be strong and vivid. There can be no doubt of the author's distinctive imaginative gifts, originality and flair. January 6
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Phoenix Paperbacks (December 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0753808226
• ISBN-13: 978-0753808221
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,957,166 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Parallel Worlds, July 6, 2000

By 

James Cianci - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Penny Arcade: Stories (American Literature Series) (Paperback)

"In The Penny Arcade" is a collection of Steven Millhauser's earliest stories; to read them is to be transported away to a fabulous fantasy world that might have existed in the past - or to be enchanted by the hidden pleasures of our own time. This is Millhauser's gift: on the one hand he conjures such gems as "August Eschenburg" - the brilliant, troubled artist whose medium is automatons and "Cathay," where the reader is a visitor to an imaginary kingdom of despotic emperors, floating islands, and maze-like palaces. But he is also able to describe the fantastic which exists within our own seemingly mundane world. We witness the dark corners and decrepit back rooms of a penny arcade, the increasingly intricate "Snowmen" constructed by children on a winter's day, or the Kafka-inspired "A Day in the Country," where the narrator is introduced to the shocking "wife" of an estranged (deranged?) friend. There is no weak link in this collection - a rarity for most volumes of short stories - and it can only be a testament to Millhauser's imagination and skill that he is able to form a cohesive work from disparate stories. The subjects are wide-ranging, but thematically we are reminded of the wonder that still exists within our own minds, our memories, and in our back yards.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lead Story Fantastic, Other Merely Very Good, September 15, 2008

By 

Vance "Klaatu" - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Penny Arcade: Stories (American Literature Series) (Paperback)

Milhauser is best in evoking strange environments, cast with oddball characters engaged in offbeat, sometimes magical plots. It is speculative fiction at it best. The lead story, August E., is by far the best of the lot, and the longest, a novella about a strange boy and his ability to construct amzaingly advanced clockwork automatons which were the rage in the 19th Century. The plot takes surprising, interesting twists. The book would be worth the price on the strength of this wonderful story itself, and the others, all solid, quirky tales. A fine experience.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In the Penny Arcade, November 19, 2000

By 

Wildness (Colorado Plateau) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: In the Penny Arcade: Stories (American Literature Series) (Paperback)

Steven Millhauser's fanciful tales are a joy to read. In the tittle story, a boy enters the penny arcade alone for the first time to face his greatest fear... being outdrawn by the gunslinging cowboy. But as we grow up, do our fears get left behind?

In another story, a woman leaves for a retreat for the weekend to relax and get a little work and is confronted with another solitary woman who is broadcasting sadness. She can't seem to escape her... or herself.

The stories collected in here are about us facing our ourselves.

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A Guide to my Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.