An amazing collection of surreal short stories that tread the border between normal and supernatural, generally on the topic of what's real and our desires. Only one or two have explicitly supernatural elements but they all have something that feels close to it - you're never sure if it's something that could actually happen or if it's fantasy. I shelved it as "horror" even though it's not really because it comes close a lot - it reminds me a bit of someone like Ligotti, with far fewer horror elements but with similar topics, questioning our hold on reality and how solid our attachment society really is. His writing style reminds me of Kafka a bit with the way the sentences are structured.

Lots of good stories. His descriptions of things are great and highly imaginative so even the stories which are mostly description and don't really have a climax - Paradise Park and The Dream of the Consortium - are fascinating and make you think a lot on the idea behind them (a huge sophisticated amusement park and a giant department store, respectively). Maybe the highlight is "Kaspar Hauser Speaks", a short speech from the historical figure (although from a time after he'd died in real life) which contains a section which I felt perfectly encapsulated the feeling of being different in a way that forcefully separates you from others.

Other people have mentioned that he recycles themes a bit and I wouldn't disagree - some of the stories are similar to the others. But he brings a lot of new imagery and ideas to each one and personally they're themes that fascinate me so I didn't mind at all, although it'd maybe pall over multiple books.

A great collection if you're at all interested in surreal short fiction. ( )

My father had taught me not to believe in stories about Martians and spaceships, and these tales were like those stories: even as you refused to believe them, you saw them, as if the sheer effort of not believing them made them glow in your mind.
-The Flying Carpets

In a world dense with understanding, oppressive with explanation and insight and love, the members of the silent sisterhood long to evade definition, to remain mysterious and ungraspable. Tell us! we cry, our voices shrill with love. Tell us everything! Then we will forgive you. But the girls do not wish to tell us anything, they don't wish to be heard at all.
- The Sisterhood of Night

I am having the hardest time pulling together what I want to say about this book, so I apologize in advance if any of this is unclear, and I will come back and do this better if better ever comes together.

Remember when albums mattered? When you had to buy music not song by song but as a collection of connected songs? How some artists would actually arrange the whole album as a piece of collective art above and beyond the particular songs themselves? That is this book. The whole work taken together comprises a meditation much greater than the parts. Some of the parts don't even work all that well without the whole.

The theme of the collection emerged with surprising clarity as I was fighting with "Paradise Park," which at first appeared to be a retread of "The Dream of the Consortium." But as I picked apart analogies and worked the puzzles, it turned out to be a revisit to "The New Automaton Theater" and "The Knife Thrower." Then after a brief WTH moment with "Kaspar Hauser Speaks," Millhauser turns full back to the thread of the theme and expands it out with "Beneath the Cellars of Our Town." By this point the book is no longer an anthology of short stories. It is an extended meditation on imagination, particularly the creation and consumption of art and the relationships between art, artist, and consumer (reader). It is one of those books that almost need to be reread as soon as finished, because once its theme emerges in the last pages, the whole work need re-examination with the new perspective in mind. (I am going to wait a bit on that myself, but I will do it eventually.) There is also a nice rhythm to this collection. The stories move from night to day and back again in an almost unbroken progression. There is also a pattern of rising and falling, from flights to explorations of subterranean worlds that begs for a closer examination. The seams of the work are showing in places, and the repetitive nature of the anthology is a little frustrating, but between the meat of the theme and the beauty of the writing (particularly "Flying Carpets," "Clair de Lune," "The Dream of the Consortium," and "Balloon Flight, 1870"), there is really very little to complain about here. I loved it even the moments of frustration.

(I see in other reviews that some have dismissed this as derivative of [a:Italo Calvino|155517|Italo Calvino|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1403100215p2/155517.jpg] and recommended [b:Invisible Cities|9809|Invisible Cities|Italo Calvino|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388395463s/9809.jpg|68476] instead. I do very much want to read that (not just because I get Lorde's "Team" stuck in my head when I hear the title), but I think I will read [b:Dangerous Laughter|1540810|Dangerous Laughter|Steven Millhauser|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1437485127s/1540810.jpg|1533013] and [b:Enchanted Night|229579|Enchanted Night|Steven Millhauser|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1403185401s/229579.jpg|222327] first. There is nothing new under the sun, and revisiting the same concepts from a different angle does not strike me as an immense burden.) ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2020/09/review-of-knife-thrower-and-other.html ( )

Imagine if Edgar Allen Poe were writing today, and you'll get an idea of the way Millhauser writes. This is a great introduction to the author. If you like this, you can tackle "Martin Dressler" next. ( )