Commentaires client les plus utiles
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4.0étoiles sur 5
A Microscope on the World, Avril 2 2001
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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4.0étoiles sur 5
This Way to the Egress, Mars 10 1997
Par Un client
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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