Read this Pulitzer Prize winning book as part of a shared read around here. Martin is a young kid in a growing New York City at the end of the 19th century. He works in his father's cigar shop but has ambitions. He becomes a bell boy at a hotel, then a clerk then an assistant manager, then he opens a lunch room, then his own hotel. It seems like everything he touches is a success, until its not. This was an okay read. Its not a very deep story, I'd say. He gets one success and immediately moves on, and he seems to leave those who helped him behind. Then in the later part of the book, there's his weird relationship with his wife, who seems to almost be a robot and her sister who becomes his best friend and almost right hand associate. I'm not sure I would recommend it, but if you're on a journey to read all the Pulitzers, you should. ( )

“...Was there then something wrong with him, that he couldn't just rest content? Must he always be dreaming up improvements? And it seemed to Martin that if only he could imagine something else, something great, something greater, something as great as the whole world, then he might rest awhile.”

The setting is New York City, in the late 19th century. Martin Dressler is a teenager with big ideas and even bigger dreams, as he toils industriously at his father’s cigar shop. In his mid-teens he finds work at a famous hotel landmark and quickly begins to move up in the world.
By his early 20s, he owns a string of restaurants. During this rise, he has befriended a pair of sisters- one he marries and one becomes a business partner.

This novel is an odd mix of the mundane and the fantastical, as Martin’s dreams become mystically grotesque, growing so unwieldy and unlikely that he is destined for a downfall. I was reminded of the over-indulgences of Citizen Kane. The first two- thirds of the book is fairly conventional and well-written. For me, in the final third, as the American Dream begins to implode, the narrative falters. That might have been the author’s intention but it was a failing in the story for me. Guardedly recommended. ( )

Very good. Fast read. Not too deep or intense, but definitely a book that will stay in my memory. ( )

The story is based in New York City at the turn of the 20th century, where there are interesting side glances at how the city was changing during that period.
The book’s title is “Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer.” There are some scenes in the book where Martin is dreaming, in and out of reality, as if he is half asleep and half awake.
Martin was a hard-working person from the beginning when he worked at his father’s cigar shop and became a bellboy at a hotel nearby. He grew and learned the hotel business and was going up the ladder of responsibilities and jobs at the hotel, where he eventually was asked to become the assistant manager. He balked because he was developing a restaurant in the area and decided to put his full attention to that endeavor, which was successful and essentially became a restaurant chain.
We follow Martin as he works hard and dreams big.
He met at the hotel where he stayed and eventually became friends with three females, a mother and two daughters. One of the daughters was friendly and eventually became a business associate, which Martin relied heavily on for advice. The other daughter was shy and remote and hardly spoke with the four of them got together, which was often. He eventually decided to marry the shy daughter. She never changed her behavior after the wedding. She is almost dreamlike in the book because of her reclusiveness and diffident demeanor.
While this was going on, Martin sold his restaurant chain and decided to the hotel where he used to work as a bell boy and modernize it. When this was successful, he eventually built three more hotels. The first two were huge successes, whereas the last one made was not. Included in these hotels was a Disney vibe, besides adding various shops, including a department store several stories below street level. At his third hotel, the Disney-type of entertainment went off the rails and became more of a sideshow at the circus.
Martin finally realizes that his hotel is failing and people aren’t interested in his “dream” hotel.
The story ends with Martin in the park across the street from his hotel and mentally watching it deteriorate. Still, it seems he is already dreaming of his next project. “Life is but a dream.” ( )

Martin Dressler is nine years old in 1881 when he has his first business idea, to dress the window of his father’s Manhattan tobacco shop in a distinctive way. The boy works hard for the shop and has for several years; the Dresslers are dour German immigrants to whom work and thrift come naturally. Pleasure, affection, or satisfaction have no place, suspect as the harbingers of ruin.

From these humble beginnings, Martin makes his way in the New York in the 1890s, earning astonishing success, even as a teenager. Through clever anticipation of customers’ wants, constant willingness to revise his approach, and an innate grasp of what constitutes service, young Martin constructs an empire. He learns how to tap into expectations and, later, to create them.

Millhauser excels at presenting New York, a city under rapid expansion, so that it appears almost like a child learning to walk and talk, and from whom we anticipate great things. Everyone has an idea, it seems, as though entrepreneurs stand on every corner, awaiting their chance at the big time. Consequently, though Martin may seem larger than life, he fits right in, except that he thinks more boldly than most.

He personifies several themes, one of which involves fascination with modern technology, which promises to make daily life easier, alongside a contradictory desire to remain in the past, anchored to what people already know. Accordingly, architecture and decorative styles figure heavily, and the author details them down to the smallest brick. His people hunger for the newness and their ability to possess it, yet fear what they might have lost, leaving behind what they grew up with.

I admire Millhauser’s finely wrought depiction of these changes, which feel both exterior and personal. Martin Dressler won the Pulitzer Prize and has been rightly celebrated for its prose and descriptive marvels, making the New York of bygone years into a character. I also like Millhauser’s deft, subtle touch, in which he plumbs nascent, unexpressed desires, followed often by rapid, impulsive action. You never know quite what to expect — for the first half of the novel, anyway — which keeps the pages turning.

However, the narrative depends entirely on one character, and Martin grows tiresome. In the beginning, you want him to break his restraints, venture out on his own, find his fortune. But nothing ever satisfies him, and he doesn’t know why, nor does he bother to think about it, much. That may be true to life, especially for someone who grew up with nothing but work and duty.

But past a certain point, there’s a diminishing return. As Martin grows ever grander in his visions, longing to create something so splendid, even he’ll be happy, you know what will result. You also know that in courting a particular woman — and what a bizarre courtship — he’s heading for trouble. Where the first half of the narrative feels volatile, the second half settles into predictability.

More significantly, Martin’s the only character whose inner life comes across, and success erodes his appeal, which leaves the reader nowhere to go. Our hero talks only of his business plans, get easily annoyed if anyone criticizes them, and seems to understand, or want to understand, people only in relation to himself. A narcissist, in other words, bent on greater and greater grandiosity. In keeping with that portrait, there are only so many descriptions of decorative garishness that I can take, so I wound up flipping through some of them.

Martin Dressler the novel is beautifully written and evocative, but Martin Dressler the man is hard to approach, full of much, yet empty. I think that’s the point, and it comes with no surprise. ( )