Customer Reviews

In The Penny Arcade

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"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.

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.

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.

The recent film "The Illusionist" was said to borrow heavily from this book, so I snatched it up. As can happen, the movie was better than the book. It's an interesting work, but doesn't really go anywhere with its story. Buy the DVD, forget this.