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The Barnum Museum [Paperback]

4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)


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Product Details

  • Paperback
  • Publisher: Dalkey Archive; First Edition. first thus edition (1997)
  • ASIN: B001TMO8SI
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,584,897 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

11 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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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
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
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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
(REAL NAME)   
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.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Barnum Museum Stories, March 25, 2007
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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.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
sepia postcard, eighth voyage, blue cutaway, black envelope, speech balloon, wig stand, vertical tunnel, thought balloon
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The Barnum Museum, Miss Scarlet, Game of Clue, Professor Plum, The Invention of Robert Herendeen, The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad, Herr Uhl, White Rabbit, Colonel Mustard, The Sepia Postcard, The Professor, Eisenheim the Illusionist, The Arabian Nights, Klassik Komix, Fräulein Greta, Lead Pipe, Susan Newton, Sinbad the Sailor, John Kearns, Valley of Diamonds, Detective Notes, Diana Cerino
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