Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer

by Steven Millhauser

Book Overview

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER - NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST - The author of Voices in the Night reveals the mesmerizing journey of an American dreamer as he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 051770319X
• ISBN13: 9780517703199
• Release Date: April 1996
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 294 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Love triangle develops main character.

Mary Whipple's review made some interesting points. I agree that the pacing is quick and the plot is not too terribly complex. I also agree that it is a "lesson" novel. However, I do think Millhauser intended the reader to sympathize with Dressler, and I felt he was successful in evoking this. The devise he used to do so was the love triange between Dressler, his wife, and her sister (with the mother popping in from time to time as well). We see different parts of Dressler's self unfold as he interacts with these characters. I identified with the inner conflict Dressler experienced as I read the book and really wanted him discover how to sort it all out. Millhauser was rooting for his character as well, I sense. He wanted him to win - not in the traditional way, but rather, he wanted him to transcend the immaturity of the race-to-the-top mentality. That's my opinion. (It has been about two years since I read the book, however.)

What a fatal fault has man?

People will give money to live in a fantasy world. Los Vegas has has recently turned to this for trade. Martin Dressler would seem more at home in the 1930's than the early 1900's. A cross between Conrad Hilton and Walter Disney we have a very Nemo like man out of a Jules Verne Sci Fi Novel who ends in his own world.Psychologically he is not in real contact with himself. The result is a biography in a surreal novel that for once seems worthy of a Pulitzer Prize.

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on." Prospero

Martin Dressler is Prospero, Horatio Alger, Jay Gatsby, William Randolph Hearst, William Paley, Richard Cory, Donald Trump, Icarus, and most prominently, he is everyman and nobody. As noted by the more astute observers on these pages, Millhauser has created a fable here, a myth, a romance about human limitations and possibilities. The readers who attack the book for lack of depth, or characterization, or plot, have missed the mark, most likely because they are not well-grounded in Millhauser's mythic sources, and can't recognize a carefully-construed allegory. This novel is as textually rich as a novel can be, but one must dig a little deeper, as Martin digs deeper into the earth in each successive structure he creates. It is also a novel of psychology, as Martin also digs deeper and deeper into his subconscious mind as the novel progresses. This is a multi-tiered work, operating on so many levels as to leave one dazzled at the sheer scope of the enterprise. Such works are easily dismissed by the masses, which is why it is surprising that the Pulitzer committee, so often gravitating to the successful and the obvious, definitely got one right in this instance. The structure of the novel parallels the themes and "plot" of Millhauser's story. In the first few chapters we find ourselves inhabiting a rather mundane, prosaic, grounded reality, as Martin, the son of a cigar-store owner (as was William Paley), is presented as an industrious, intelligent young man who is liked by everyone he encounters. He is, in these early stages, marked more by his efficiency than his imagination. As the novel progresses, we find ourselves venturing further and further from the ordinary and the possible, into the realm of the extraordinary and then the impossible. The move is from terra-firma to terra incognita, from reality as we understand it to the realm of fantasy and magical-realism. It is also as if Martin's mind deteriorates (transmutates?) from sanity to insanity as he descends (or is it ascends?) into his dreamscape. There is also an element of Greek fatalism at work here, as Martin is led along in his voyage of discovery by powers greater than himself: "...again he had the old dream-sense that friendly powers were leading him along, powers sympathetic to his deepest desires." Whether or not the gods at work here are truly benign is one of the issues that are not thoroughly resolved in the course of the book, just as they never were in Greek tragedy. Those desiring neat resolutions, should in fact, stick to more mundane, uni-dimensional novels. Martin's relationship with his wife, Caroline, is also the subject of much criticism at this site. Millhauser is enigmatic on this score as well. He makes obvious her position as the sleeping beauty alone in her tower, whom the prince (Martin) cannot awaken. Yet the mythic elements go deeper than that. The Vernon women also connote the three godesses (Hera, Athena and Aphrodite) at the judgement of Paris, wi

The Fine Line Between Dreaming and Madness

In Martin Dressler, Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Millhauser has created a book that deftly explores the fine line between dreaming and madness. This is the story of a cigar maker's son who grows to realize his dream: that of becoming a master builder of ever more extravagant hotels in late nineteenth-century Manhattan. In its combination of the real and the fabulous, Martin Dressler explores the dark side inherent in the entrepreneurial spirit of America.Reminiscent of E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, Martin Dressler is written in an old-fashioned narration, and, in keeping with the era in which the story is set, it is told to us by a storyteller rather than being dramatized in scenes and dialogue. Although this may sound (and be) boring for some readers, it is the perfect choice for Martin Dressler and gives the book an air of nostalgia and mystery, much like an old-and-faded photograph from some halcyon bygone day.Martin Dressler, himself, is an Hortatio Alger-like figure, a virtuous young man who becomes obsessed with art and architecture. In telling the story of Martin Dressler, Millhauser paints a vivid portrait, unique in American life: that moment in time when dreamers and visionaries were allowed to blossom and reshape a city's skyline with buildings that would take the public's breath away.It is when Martin embarks on his most ambitious project, the building of a hotel called the Grand Cosmos, that this richly evocative book becomes its most intriguing and remarkable. The Grand Cosmos is no ordinary hotel; it is a world unto itself, embodying all the joy and the tragedy that made up turn-of-the-century New York City. Even as Martin realizes his dreams, he loses them as well, something he seems to know, for "even as his new building rose story by story it was already vanishing, the trajectory of the wrecker's ball had been set in motion as the blade of the first bulldozer bit into the earth."This is a quiet, meditative book but one that is densely descriptive and filled to the brim with rich imagery. Millhauser's prose is, as always, vivid and polished to sheer perfection and is perfectly in keeping with the tone of his story.This is a beautiful book, certainly worthy of the Pulitzer Prize and more. In it, Millhauser paints a portrait of an ambitious man who simply had the misfortune to "dream the wrong dream," and, on a larger scale he gives us a gorgeous metaphor for the creative spirit that resides inside the soul of every human being.

A Great Gatsby for the late 20th century

Don't be fooled by the negative reader reviews of this Pulitzer-prize winning book. The disarming simplicity of Millhauser's writing can fool you into thinking that the book lacks depth. Concise and poetic imagery expresses the essence of the ideas in the book and, at the same time, helps unify it. Martin Dressler is an allegory for American culture, which can be enterprising and optimistic at best, and shallow and pointless at worst. If you're fooled by pretentious writing in which the author tries to impress you with his verbal gymnastics and vocabulary, stay away from this book. If you prefer simplistic plotting free of underlying ideas, pick up Jackie Collin's latest offering instead. Otherwise, there aren't many books that have more to say about American culture as directly and poetically as Martin Dressler.