From Publishers Weekly
The 10 stories in Millhauser's ( Edwin Mullhouse ) newest collection smartly conform to the dictates of literary fashion. "A Game of Clue," which opens the volume, describes both the people playing the famous board game and the lives of the game's characters (pedantic Professor Plum, seductive Miss Scarlet), ultimately proposing reading as a kind of sleuthing, a piecing together of clues encoded in the author's language. The relationships among reader, writer and the written-about are similarly investigated throughout. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock becomes a cartoon hero in "Klassic Komix #1," a witty inquiry into artistic appropriation (here, "Panel 41" has Alfred saying, "Holy cow, mermaids . . . ! Guess they're not singing to me, though. . . . "); Lewis Carroll's heroine is frozen in "Alice, Falling." Elegant facades belie careless housekeeping within these works (each of two characters in "Clue," for example, holds the identical game card). Alone, any of these pieces might seem novel or stimulating, but collectively their concerns, language and imagery become repetitious, oppressively belletristic. First serial to Esquire.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Imagine a funhouse gallery of fictive techniques and ideas, and you'll have some sense of these stories. "A Game of Clue" delineates the line between strategy and chance in a board game while plotting the relationships among the players. "Klassik Komix #1" is a riotous pop comic version of "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock." Other stories recast classic tales in a counterpoint of scholarly satire and nostalgic reverence; one is a melancholy monolog in the manner of Poe. The gimcrackery and excess of the title piece echo in the fin de siecle charm and foreboding of "Eisenheim the Illusionist." Both stories are about crossing the boundaries between art and life, appearance and reality. In this concern for the role of the artist as iconographer, artificer, conjurer, the author's work invites comparison with that of Robertson Davies. Millhauser's distinctive mix of stylistic dazzle and erudite wonder will intrigue admirers of his Edwin Mullhouse ( LJ 8/72), In the Penny Arcade ( LJ 1/86), and From the Realm of Morpheus ( LJ 9/1/86).
- Mary Soete, San Diego P.L., Cal.Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
