MARTIN DRESSLER(ISBN=9780679781271)

This witty parody of a familiar American story traces the rise of a son of German immigrants in turn-of-the-century New York. Dressler is a hard-headed businessman with a romantic streak who seeks to assuage his sehnsucht by building a series of increasingly elaborate apartment complexes. Dressler's personal life is similarly divided. He marries a sickly, lounging wisp, and relegates her lively sister to the role of business manager and advisor. Dresssler is captive to an empty, mechanical dream, and of course i t destroys him. Success, thy name is Xanadu. Wandering his artificial halls like Charles Kane or Howard Hughes, Dressler lives the blankness of the American capitalist. Success such as Millhauser's has its own peril. It is a peculiar triumph to mirror vacuity well.
Copyright © 1996, Boston Review. All rights reserved. -- From The Boston Review

This wonderful, wonder-full book is a fable and phantasmagoria of the sources of our century.... -- The New York Times Book Review, Janet Burroway

Young Martin Dressler begins his career as an industrious helper in his father's cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top, accompanied by two sisters--one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner. As the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry, a sense of doom builds piece-by-hypnotic piece until this mesmerizing journey into the heart of an American dreamer reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion.

Steven Millhauser lives in Saratoga Springs, New York and teaches at Skidmore College. His first novel, Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright, which has been out of print since 1990, is now available in trade paperback from Vintage Contemporaries, to coincide with the publication of Martin Dressler.

DRESSLER'S CIGARS AND TOBACCO
CHARLEY STRATEMEYER
WEST BRIGHTON
THE VANDERLYN HOTEL
ROOM
A BUSINESS VENTURE
LITTLE ALICE BELL
ADVANCEMENT
THE PARADISE MUSE E
CAROLINE AND EMMELINE VERNON
A SUNDAY AFTERNOON STROLL
THE RADIATOR

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