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Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright
A parody of a literary biography starring a 10-year-old novelist who is mysteriously dead at 11—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler.
As a memorial, Edwin Mullhouse's best friend, Jeffrey Cartwright, decides that the life of this great American writer must be told. He follows Edwin's development from his preverbal first noises through his love for comic books to the fulfillment of his literary genius in the remarkable novel, Cartoons.
As a memorial, Edwin Mullhouse's best friend, Jeffrey Cartwright, decides that the life of this great American writer must be told. He follows Edwin's development from his preverbal first noises through his love for comic books to the fulfillment of his literary genius in the remarkable novel, Cartoons.
305 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
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1593 people want to read
About the author
Steven Millhauser
67 books471 followersMillhauser was born in New York City, grew up in Connecticut, and earned a B.A. from Columbia University in 1965. He then pursued a doctorate in English at Brown University. He never completed his dissertation but wrote parts of Edwin Mullhouse and From the Realm of Morpheus in two separate stays at Brown. Between times at the university, he wrote Portrait of a Romantic at his parents' house in Connecticut. His story "The Invention of Robert Herendeen" (in The Barnum Museum) features a failed student who has moved back in with his parents; the story is loosely based on this period of Millhauser's life.
Until the Pulitzer Prize, Millhauser was best known for his 1972 debut novel, Edwin Mullhouse. This novel, about a precocious writer whose career ends abruptly with his death at age eleven, features the fictional Jeffrey Cartwright playing Boswell to Edwin's Johnson. Edwin Mullhouse brought critical acclaim, and Millhauser followed with a second novel, Portrait of a Romantic, in 1977, and his first collection of short stories, In The Penny Arcade, in 1986.
Possibly the most well-known of his short stories is "Eisenheim the Illusionist" (published in "The Barnum Museum"), based on a pseudo-mythical tale of a magician who stunned audiences in Vienna in the latter part of the 19th century. It was made into the film, The Illusionist (2006).
Millhauser's stories often treat fantasy themes in a manner reminiscent of Poe or Borges, with a distinctively American voice. As critic Russell Potter has noted, "in (Millhauser's stories), mechanical cowboys at penny arcades come to life; curious amusement parks, museums, or catacombs beckon with secret passageways and walking automata; dreamers dream and children fly out their windows at night on magic carpets."
Millhauser's collections of stories continued with The Barnum Museum (1990), Little Kingdoms (1993), and The Knife Thrower and Other Stories (1998). The unexpected success of Martin Dressler in 1997 brought Millhauser increased attention. Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories made the New York Times Book Review list of "10 Best Books of 2008".
Millhauser lives in Saratoga Springs, New York and teaches at Skidmore College.
Until the Pulitzer Prize, Millhauser was best known for his 1972 debut novel, Edwin Mullhouse. This novel, about a precocious writer whose career ends abruptly with his death at age eleven, features the fictional Jeffrey Cartwright playing Boswell to Edwin's Johnson. Edwin Mullhouse brought critical acclaim, and Millhauser followed with a second novel, Portrait of a Romantic, in 1977, and his first collection of short stories, In The Penny Arcade, in 1986.
Possibly the most well-known of his short stories is "Eisenheim the Illusionist" (published in "The Barnum Museum"), based on a pseudo-mythical tale of a magician who stunned audiences in Vienna in the latter part of the 19th century. It was made into the film, The Illusionist (2006).
Millhauser's stories often treat fantasy themes in a manner reminiscent of Poe or Borges, with a distinctively American voice. As critic Russell Potter has noted, "in (Millhauser's stories), mechanical cowboys at penny arcades come to life; curious amusement parks, museums, or catacombs beckon with secret passageways and walking automata; dreamers dream and children fly out their windows at night on magic carpets."
Millhauser's collections of stories continued with The Barnum Museum (1990), Little Kingdoms (1993), and The Knife Thrower and Other Stories (1998). The unexpected success of Martin Dressler in 1997 brought Millhauser increased attention. Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories made the New York Times Book Review list of "10 Best Books of 2008".
Millhauser lives in Saratoga Springs, New York and teaches at Skidmore College.
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July 25, 2022
Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright is an utterly unpredictable tale and it is one of the best postmodernistic novels I’ve ever read.
Writers and their critics… Writers and their biographers… Their relationships can turn fancifully complicated…
In the end, every story becomes different from what its author wanted it to be. In the end, our life turns out to be a different story from the one we wished it to become.
Writers and their critics… Writers and their biographers… Their relationships can turn fancifully complicated…
Isn’t it true that the biographer performs a function nearly as great as, or precisely as great as, or actually greater by far than the function performed by the artist himself? For the artist creates the work of art, but the biographer, so to speak, creates the artist.
In the end, every story becomes different from what its author wanted it to be. In the end, our life turns out to be a different story from the one we wished it to become.
January 1, 2008
I originally read this book in my sophomore year of high school, and remember little about it except that I liked it. Reading it again, it turns out that Edwin Mullhouse is actually one of my favorite books; if I didn't know any better, I'd also venture that it's been a fairly significant influence on my own sporadic attempts at fiction. Huh.
There's a lot going on here: a parody of the impulse to biography (since the narrator is a sixth-grader and the subject is his next-door neighbor and playmate, the parody is mostly implicit, so that Millhauser can go in for some straight-played analysis and leave it to the reader to remember who's doing the talking), a pretty sophisticated first-person narrator of uncertain reliability, and so on. Mostly, though, it's a precisely described, regally dictated catalog of childhood memory (that is, personal) and postwar Americana (that is, universal); the idea, which is a dominant and explict theme in Millhauser's recent short fiction, is that language (or, more generally, any kind of art or other vehicle), if utilized to its fullest potential, can grant us access to the totality of experience. We would be able to remember everything, if only we could find the right words for all of it.
There's a lot going on here: a parody of the impulse to biography (since the narrator is a sixth-grader and the subject is his next-door neighbor and playmate, the parody is mostly implicit, so that Millhauser can go in for some straight-played analysis and leave it to the reader to remember who's doing the talking), a pretty sophisticated first-person narrator of uncertain reliability, and so on. Mostly, though, it's a precisely described, regally dictated catalog of childhood memory (that is, personal) and postwar Americana (that is, universal); the idea, which is a dominant and explict theme in Millhauser's recent short fiction, is that language (or, more generally, any kind of art or other vehicle), if utilized to its fullest potential, can grant us access to the totality of experience. We would be able to remember everything, if only we could find the right words for all of it.
August 3, 2010
The book's conceit is instantly intriguing: The biography of an 11-year-old writer. But where most authors would milk this for broad comic effect, Millhauser uses it to plumb the deepest mysteries and complexities of childhood. It's full of casually profound observations about genius, biography, and schoolyard friendships. There's also a series of doubles, books within books, and secret treacheries. The rich prose is a direct homage to Nabokov and the closest I've seen anyone come to capturing that style. One of the best debut novels in American lit. It's hard to believe this isn't already a classic.
November 17, 2010
A lot of times I feel like my preconceived notions of a novel plays a disproportionate role in my eventual reaction to the book. For instance, I'll read a book like Lolita and I go into it knowing that it's one of the major works of the 20th century, and that Nabokov is a master of English prose. The same is true with novels that I hear criticism of. If reviewers I tend to a agree with disparage a book, I'll find myself prone a somewhat hidden wish to confirm their opinion. I don't think this is is necessarily good or bad, if anything it's natural.But it's something that I find myself thinking about when I read. I could guess a rating before I start most books and there would be a high correlation with my eventual ratings. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy Lolita, or that you can never really appreciate classic works of art once a definite critical group-think has been set. I just sometimes have a hard time sorting any bias that I bring to the reading experience by a semi-conscious wish to see my preconceived notions confirmed from any truly sincere reactions to the novel. Again, I think this is natural, but it still concerns me.
However, every once in a while, I'll read a book that surprises me. When a book that I expect to be great disappoints, me I can get pretty vindictive, as seen here. On the other hand, every once in a while a book will be unexpectedly knock my socks off. Either way, the unexpected reaction gives a certain additional power to my overall feelings about the book. Edwin Mullhouse is an example of the pleasant surprise.
The full title really jumps out at you and is probably what inspired me to pick up a copy. Yes, the book is really the biography of a Edwin Mullhouse, deceased eleven year old novelist. The writer of the biography, Edwin's closest friend and neighbor Jeffery Cartwright, is convinced that Edwin has produced a work of transcendent genius, and fills it his destiny to tell Edwin's life story. However, Cartwright is apparently writing his friends biography in the month's after his untimely demise, when he's not busy being a sixth grader.
This could have been gimmicky piece of po-mo, excessively 'cute,' and/or any of the other hazards that modern writers sometimes succumb to. But Millhauser creates Jeffery's voice in a way that avoids any of these pitfalls. Edwin, and especially Jeffery, are not average children. For instance, Jeffery can recall distinct details of his first meeting with Edwin when he was six months old. However, in their relationship there are hints and glimpses of being a kid that are familiar but are, as Millhauser puts it, 'scrupulously distorted.' Parts of the novel surfaced memories of my childhood that I hadn't thought of in years.* The undeniably alien-Edwin's career as a novelist-is confined to the last quarter of the book. At it heart, Edwin Mullhouse is a artfully told and strangely familiar coming of age story, despite the unique narration concept and any scrupulous distortions.**
The narrative device Millhauser uses allows him to do really cool things with the distinctions between childhood and adulthood. Edwin and Jeffery appear in many ways to be almost unrealistically precocious but there are hints of immaturity. I'm not sure if I'm making sense so let me put it this way. Despite the fact that the narrator has a great hand for prose and would be unusually sophisticated for an adult, once you get into the novel you have no problem accepting the premise that the chronicler of the tale is a 12 year old, an exceptionally bizarre and unique 12 year old, but a 12 year old nonetheless.
Edwin Mullhouse is a really multi-faceted novel, and there are other themes that I could dwell on. For instance the novel is also a portrait of Post-War America and a deconstructive critique and parody of the genre of biographies. Let me just close with a spoiler-free note on the ending. I'm pretty good at picking up narrative clues and hints, but there is a twist in the last quarter of the book that I did not see coming. At first it jarred me, and it still does. But after some reflection, the twist can't be said to be inconsistent with the narrative or themes of the novel. Moreover, it does fit in with my thoughts on the power of the pleasant surprise.
* Let me illustrate by an example. Edwin Mullhouse is without a doubt a novel for adults but for some reasons it reminds me of a book I last read around 15 years ago and haven't thought about in who knows how long: Sideways Stories from Wayside School. Edwin and Jeffery's adventures at Franklin Pierce Elementary for some inconceivable reason made me think of this book. There's a sense of gonzo shadows of the reality of being a pre-teen kid in both Edwin Mullhouse and (at least my hazy recollections of) Sideways Stories.
** I would further explain the term, but the passage that it's featured really a linchpin of the actual read and is one of those things that should be encountered in the way the author meant it to be, so I'll refrain.
However, every once in a while, I'll read a book that surprises me. When a book that I expect to be great disappoints, me I can get pretty vindictive, as seen here. On the other hand, every once in a while a book will be unexpectedly knock my socks off. Either way, the unexpected reaction gives a certain additional power to my overall feelings about the book. Edwin Mullhouse is an example of the pleasant surprise.
The full title really jumps out at you and is probably what inspired me to pick up a copy. Yes, the book is really the biography of a Edwin Mullhouse, deceased eleven year old novelist. The writer of the biography, Edwin's closest friend and neighbor Jeffery Cartwright, is convinced that Edwin has produced a work of transcendent genius, and fills it his destiny to tell Edwin's life story. However, Cartwright is apparently writing his friends biography in the month's after his untimely demise, when he's not busy being a sixth grader.
This could have been gimmicky piece of po-mo, excessively 'cute,' and/or any of the other hazards that modern writers sometimes succumb to. But Millhauser creates Jeffery's voice in a way that avoids any of these pitfalls. Edwin, and especially Jeffery, are not average children. For instance, Jeffery can recall distinct details of his first meeting with Edwin when he was six months old. However, in their relationship there are hints and glimpses of being a kid that are familiar but are, as Millhauser puts it, 'scrupulously distorted.' Parts of the novel surfaced memories of my childhood that I hadn't thought of in years.* The undeniably alien-Edwin's career as a novelist-is confined to the last quarter of the book. At it heart, Edwin Mullhouse is a artfully told and strangely familiar coming of age story, despite the unique narration concept and any scrupulous distortions.**
The narrative device Millhauser uses allows him to do really cool things with the distinctions between childhood and adulthood. Edwin and Jeffery appear in many ways to be almost unrealistically precocious but there are hints of immaturity. I'm not sure if I'm making sense so let me put it this way. Despite the fact that the narrator has a great hand for prose and would be unusually sophisticated for an adult, once you get into the novel you have no problem accepting the premise that the chronicler of the tale is a 12 year old, an exceptionally bizarre and unique 12 year old, but a 12 year old nonetheless.
Edwin Mullhouse is a really multi-faceted novel, and there are other themes that I could dwell on. For instance the novel is also a portrait of Post-War America and a deconstructive critique and parody of the genre of biographies. Let me just close with a spoiler-free note on the ending. I'm pretty good at picking up narrative clues and hints, but there is a twist in the last quarter of the book that I did not see coming. At first it jarred me, and it still does. But after some reflection, the twist can't be said to be inconsistent with the narrative or themes of the novel. Moreover, it does fit in with my thoughts on the power of the pleasant surprise.
* Let me illustrate by an example. Edwin Mullhouse is without a doubt a novel for adults but for some reasons it reminds me of a book I last read around 15 years ago and haven't thought about in who knows how long: Sideways Stories from Wayside School. Edwin and Jeffery's adventures at Franklin Pierce Elementary for some inconceivable reason made me think of this book. There's a sense of gonzo shadows of the reality of being a pre-teen kid in both Edwin Mullhouse and (at least my hazy recollections of) Sideways Stories.
** I would further explain the term, but the passage that it's featured really a linchpin of the actual read and is one of those things that should be encountered in the way the author meant it to be, so I'll refrain.
March 12, 2021
While I absolutely loved this book, I don't think it's for everyone. This is not at all to say "Oh you need to be extra smart or have really good taste to like it." You just need to have patience for long blocks of text and flowery, sentimental (sometimes even saccharine) descriptions of nature and the seasons. These passages that take a highly nostalgic view of suburban life at first seem a bit like a joke. After all, this book is usually thought of as a black comedy and the child narrator is characterized as pompous and long-winded. However, the more you read the more you realize that these verbose descriptions of things like snowy days, summer skies, and cozy interiors are often startlingly striking, original, and beautiful. There are so many passages like these that are so beautifully-crafted and enchanting that I mourn the fact that they are fading away from my memory even now as I write this. I certainly didn't grow up in mid-twentieth century Connecticut, but I unconsciously found a lot of my own childhood memories of places and times of year serving as stand-ins as I read. In crafting images of bittersweet lost beauty is the author making fun of us for falling victim for this same rose-tinted view of childhood and nostalgia he seems to be satirizing? I think instead he's purposefully pairing these two disparate ideas together, mixing genuine, achingly-nostalgic literary beauty and satire. After all, Millhauser's upbringing must have closely resembled the world of Edwin Mullhouse, perhaps nobody would fall victim to its allure as much as he.
On the whole, I think it would be safe to categorizing this book as a post-modern black comedy. The premise itself seems to embody this type of novel: a stuffy, precocious child writes a literary biography for his short-lived best friend whose fictional novel is described to us as a lost masterpiece. We are constantly told of Edwin's genius and the transcendent novel he would eventually write, at the same time Jeffrey Cartwright (the author of the fictional biography) gives us very little to suggest Edwin was any kind of genius at all. In fact, just as Edwin occasionally delighted in torturing Jeffrey during his short life, Jeffrey seems intent on putting down Edwin almost any chance he can get. Jeffrey tells us Edwin is lazy, moody, inarticulate, and superficial when it comes to his personal tastes. This is the grand but tragic joke at the heart of the book: Edwin is no tortured genius (though he certainly is tortured), the autodidactic, falsely-modest Jeffrey is. Jeffrey is infinitely smarter and more advanced than Edwin, though to craft a wonderful biography Jeffrey first needs to craft a wonderful artist. He does this by building up Edwin's creative genius in order to fashion the kind of person who is worthy of a biography like this, though Edwin's actual personality often risks the great plans Jeffrey has in store for him. That said, Jeffrey faithfully follows this biographical philosophy up until the grizzly and shocking end.
Even categorizing this book as a comedy is not-fully accurate. Millhauser bends genre frequently. Certain passages are profound and moving, others are eerie and frightening. The book features a series of tragic deaths of children that come into Edwin and Jeffrey's life. These sections are often dreamlike and disturbing, containing pseudo-supernatural occurrences that seem to categorize much of Millhauser's short fiction. Maybe this should also serve as a warning for prospective readers, several children meet violent ends in this book though none I found to be particularly tasteless or overly shocking. Most you certainly see coming, and Jeffrey alludes to all them before they happen; conjuring up a strange sense of predestination.
Although Millhauser's writing was phenomenal throughout the entire novel, my favorite sections were those where he would describe the events of a 1930s style cartoon in a vivid but oddly self-serious style. There are two sections in the book like this and both were absolutely delightful to read. Imagine a Tom and Jerry or Roadrunner cartoon written down as a novel. Appropriately, there are plenty of surreal physical comedy gags here: characters are flattened and rolled up like carpets or run off the edges of cliffs but don't surrender to gravity until they look down or turn completely black and charred when explosions misfire in their face. These sections might not seem like they'd work on paper, but they were strangely revolutionary to me in a way I can't fully explain. It felt almost like a sad tribute to a lost world of memories preserved in these lively, formulaic cartoons. Edwin's novel, which Jeffrey describes for us near the end of the book and is appropriately titled Cartoons, takes the form of a long-form description of a cartoon situation. Edwin's novel, in its startling resemblance to the events of Edwin's life and tragic foretelling of how that life ends, is perhaps the only evidence we have of Edwin's attested creative genius. Is this a mysterious burst of genius from an average child whose only remarkable features are his mysterious illnesses and fits of depressions? Or, in typical unreliable narrator fashion, is Jeffrey still enhancing Edwin's life and work by taking creative liberties? It leads us to ask ourselves; would we rather be an average person who rises to and falls from great heights almost accidentally through an all-consuming creative undertaking? Or a true genius cursed to hide in the shadows and view other people's works of art as an eternal critic and commentator? Whichever sounds more appealing, Edwin Mullhouse will show you the dangers that come with true or false artistic genius and plunge you into the warm, dark heart of nostalgia. I'd recommend it to anyone who loves post-modern fiction or wants to read a novel that is a complete departure from the usual.
On the whole, I think it would be safe to categorizing this book as a post-modern black comedy. The premise itself seems to embody this type of novel: a stuffy, precocious child writes a literary biography for his short-lived best friend whose fictional novel is described to us as a lost masterpiece. We are constantly told of Edwin's genius and the transcendent novel he would eventually write, at the same time Jeffrey Cartwright (the author of the fictional biography) gives us very little to suggest Edwin was any kind of genius at all. In fact, just as Edwin occasionally delighted in torturing Jeffrey during his short life, Jeffrey seems intent on putting down Edwin almost any chance he can get. Jeffrey tells us Edwin is lazy, moody, inarticulate, and superficial when it comes to his personal tastes. This is the grand but tragic joke at the heart of the book: Edwin is no tortured genius (though he certainly is tortured), the autodidactic, falsely-modest Jeffrey is. Jeffrey is infinitely smarter and more advanced than Edwin, though to craft a wonderful biography Jeffrey first needs to craft a wonderful artist. He does this by building up Edwin's creative genius in order to fashion the kind of person who is worthy of a biography like this, though Edwin's actual personality often risks the great plans Jeffrey has in store for him. That said, Jeffrey faithfully follows this biographical philosophy up until the grizzly and shocking end.
Even categorizing this book as a comedy is not-fully accurate. Millhauser bends genre frequently. Certain passages are profound and moving, others are eerie and frightening. The book features a series of tragic deaths of children that come into Edwin and Jeffrey's life. These sections are often dreamlike and disturbing, containing pseudo-supernatural occurrences that seem to categorize much of Millhauser's short fiction. Maybe this should also serve as a warning for prospective readers, several children meet violent ends in this book though none I found to be particularly tasteless or overly shocking. Most you certainly see coming, and Jeffrey alludes to all them before they happen; conjuring up a strange sense of predestination.
Although Millhauser's writing was phenomenal throughout the entire novel, my favorite sections were those where he would describe the events of a 1930s style cartoon in a vivid but oddly self-serious style. There are two sections in the book like this and both were absolutely delightful to read. Imagine a Tom and Jerry or Roadrunner cartoon written down as a novel. Appropriately, there are plenty of surreal physical comedy gags here: characters are flattened and rolled up like carpets or run off the edges of cliffs but don't surrender to gravity until they look down or turn completely black and charred when explosions misfire in their face. These sections might not seem like they'd work on paper, but they were strangely revolutionary to me in a way I can't fully explain. It felt almost like a sad tribute to a lost world of memories preserved in these lively, formulaic cartoons. Edwin's novel, which Jeffrey describes for us near the end of the book and is appropriately titled Cartoons, takes the form of a long-form description of a cartoon situation. Edwin's novel, in its startling resemblance to the events of Edwin's life and tragic foretelling of how that life ends, is perhaps the only evidence we have of Edwin's attested creative genius. Is this a mysterious burst of genius from an average child whose only remarkable features are his mysterious illnesses and fits of depressions? Or, in typical unreliable narrator fashion, is Jeffrey still enhancing Edwin's life and work by taking creative liberties? It leads us to ask ourselves; would we rather be an average person who rises to and falls from great heights almost accidentally through an all-consuming creative undertaking? Or a true genius cursed to hide in the shadows and view other people's works of art as an eternal critic and commentator? Whichever sounds more appealing, Edwin Mullhouse will show you the dangers that come with true or false artistic genius and plunge you into the warm, dark heart of nostalgia. I'd recommend it to anyone who loves post-modern fiction or wants to read a novel that is a complete departure from the usual.
June 22, 2020
It was fun for a while. Cute anecdotes. But 100 pages in, I was still waiting for a story. Wry cuteness only goes so far. I gave up and picked another book with a narrative
July 12, 2012
I really wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The concept I found to be quite charming if a bit strange. It is the tale of young genius Jeffrey and of his obsession in detailing the life and relationships of his best friend, Edwin. This story chronicles their lives from toddlerhood up until Edwin's unfortunate demise during the last of their grade school years.
I found Jeffrey's attitude and style of writing to be humorous in a weird ironic way. It was more the fact that the precise, educated writing contained in the novel is supposedly straight from the pen and ponderings of an ordinary caucasian twelve year old. Very dry stuff -- no antics from the stooges are to be found here.
The book, although quite slowly paced, did have a handful of truly awesome moments. There was more than one opportunity where I felt to reread a passage so that I would have a chance to take a nice soak in the picture of a time that I had all but forgotten. It made me miss being a kid.
I loved this book in small doses, but it is not something that I would be overly excited to reread anytime soon. I do believe that the experiences contained within are worth the journey through a few hundred pages at least once.
I found Jeffrey's attitude and style of writing to be humorous in a weird ironic way. It was more the fact that the precise, educated writing contained in the novel is supposedly straight from the pen and ponderings of an ordinary caucasian twelve year old. Very dry stuff -- no antics from the stooges are to be found here.
The book, although quite slowly paced, did have a handful of truly awesome moments. There was more than one opportunity where I felt to reread a passage so that I would have a chance to take a nice soak in the picture of a time that I had all but forgotten. It made me miss being a kid.
I loved this book in small doses, but it is not something that I would be overly excited to reread anytime soon. I do believe that the experiences contained within are worth the journey through a few hundred pages at least once.
Read
April 18, 2024Really not sure what to make out of this one. It really was very well written, but the plot threw me off. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t something this dark. And it’s hard to rate something that talks so much (ironically? Unsure) about its own genius. This was my book club pick so I’m excited to see how the discussion goes
Editing after book club discussion:
I still don't really have coherent thoughts on this, but after talking about it with Theresa I feel a sort of appreciation for this novel. I think you just need to approach it from a different genre—maybe I'd categorize it as a dark psychological horror(?). The book is much more about Jeffrey, the narrator, than Edwin—Edwin himself is not so interesting, but his life is constructed to serve Jeffrey's purpose to prove himself and make a mark on history. The whole story is made so dark by the fact that they're children—the writing style, the sequence of events, the way they interact with each other, is much older than their age; maybe it's making a point, in some dark twisted way, about how too much of childhood is all about being obsessed with growing up, but also obsessing over adulthood is part of what defines childhood.
I saw a comment saying that this book would have worked much better as a short story, and I agree. Parts continued for too long, and a confusing genre like this would fit much better in a shorter format. Nevertheless, I have never read anything like this before; it is a completely unique novel and will leave me thinking about it and trying to put together the pieces for a long time. I understand why it's considered a cult favorite.
Editing after book club discussion:
I still don't really have coherent thoughts on this, but after talking about it with Theresa I feel a sort of appreciation for this novel. I think you just need to approach it from a different genre—maybe I'd categorize it as a dark psychological horror(?). The book is much more about Jeffrey, the narrator, than Edwin—Edwin himself is not so interesting, but his life is constructed to serve Jeffrey's purpose to prove himself and make a mark on history. The whole story is made so dark by the fact that they're children—the writing style, the sequence of events, the way they interact with each other, is much older than their age; maybe it's making a point, in some dark twisted way, about how too much of childhood is all about being obsessed with growing up, but also obsessing over adulthood is part of what defines childhood.
I saw a comment saying that this book would have worked much better as a short story, and I agree. Parts continued for too long, and a confusing genre like this would fit much better in a shorter format. Nevertheless, I have never read anything like this before; it is a completely unique novel and will leave me thinking about it and trying to put together the pieces for a long time. I understand why it's considered a cult favorite.
November 15, 2008
On the one hand, I found this a wholly original and interesting novel, but on the other hand, I sometimes found the execution of its premise (the biography of an 11-year-old by the subject's next-door neighbor and obsessive admirer) wearying in its detail and layers of imagery. This the the kind of book that presents itself a particular challenge, which is to make its narrative true to its conceits while simultaneously engaging readers. It's on this point that I found the novel lacking at times, because I wanted the story to come more fully alive for me, but I understood that the tone of the narrator had a purpose of its own, and that purpose didn't fall into line with my own desire to see the story move along at a faster clip.
I think, therefore, that this will be a novel I appreciate more in hindsight than I did in the reading. There is a lot being said about language, creativity, childhood, and the nature of friendship. Also about interest vs. obsession. I won't forget some of the incidents or imagery, I know. I'm just sorry that I found myself at times feeling frustrated with the narrator and wanting to skim portions of the text. This is a well-written novel, and Millhauser creates some very affecting passages, so it's all the more frustrating to feel the impulse to avoid such craft out of impatience.
I think, therefore, that this will be a novel I appreciate more in hindsight than I did in the reading. There is a lot being said about language, creativity, childhood, and the nature of friendship. Also about interest vs. obsession. I won't forget some of the incidents or imagery, I know. I'm just sorry that I found myself at times feeling frustrated with the narrator and wanting to skim portions of the text. This is a well-written novel, and Millhauser creates some very affecting passages, so it's all the more frustrating to feel the impulse to avoid such craft out of impatience.
Read
September 24, 2018My god but Millhauser does run on. I was charmed at first by the Nabokovian curlicues but by about page 145 this thing started to feel like Ben Folds' proverbial brick. Buddy! Enough already! I can't finish your fucking book!
October 16, 2021
DNF-- I really tried but I couldn't get myself to enjoy this book. I hate leaving books unfinished, but this one was just too much.
December 13, 2022
a nonpareil novel of childhood is the truest, deepest evocation of American childhood I’ve ever come across, capturing childhood and life in the suburbs in the 1940s and ‘50s with perfect pitch. It magically brought back a flood of memories and long-forgotten emotions evoked by paste jars in elementary school; the feverish excitement of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Valentine’s Day; the clothes and mannerism of the aspiring grade-school hoods; and childhood infatuations and friendships.
I swear I too had attended Franklin Pierce Elementary School along with Jeffrey and Edwin. This was my childhood.
The pleasures of “Edwin Mullhouse” are visceral, emotional and intellectual, and Jeffrey’s voice as a pompous scholarly biographer, documenting every key moment in his subject/victim’s life is laugh-aloud funny. It is “overwhelming in its veridical detail,” as the original dust-jacket blurb by poet Richard Wilbur said.
The wildly outrageous conceit of “Edwin Mullhouse” is that it is an exhaustive biography written by the young narrator, Jeffrey Cartwright. Divided into three parts—the early years, the middle year and the late years—the parody has all the landmarks of biography, including an obsession with minor details. It’s a high-wire act in which one stumble could pull the whole enterprise down, but Millhauser never lets Jeffrey take a false step.
Jeffrey, who claims he has a “truly inspired memory,” takes us back to age 6 months, 3 days old—his first meeting with the newborn Edwin. “As I bumped along the sidewalk under the dark blue shadow of my carriage top, I wiggled my toes delightedly in a warm band of light. The shadows of passing trees rippled over my sunlit legs and in one corner of the carriage a delicate silky spider web sparkled like a jeweled maze. Over the rim of the carriage I saw the dark spars of a telephone pole sailing in the bright blue sky. I also recall a little white cloud, very like a rubber whale I played with in the bathtub.”
Six months later, the future biographer dutifully little Edwin’s pre-speech vocalizations: “whole salivary sonatas enhanced by gushing crescendos and hissing fortimisimi, gurgling glissandi and trickling pianissimi, streaming prestissimos, spouting arpeggios.” Fiction has often taken us back to the exotic land of childhood, but has any other serious writer taken us back to infancy? Perhaps the closest thing is the opening of “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”
The tour de force evocation of babyhood is wry and wonderful, but since none of us, except the preternaturally talented Cartwright, can remember it, this is a preface to the real meat of the book—childhood, which we can remember in bright patches shining through mists. Millhauser clears the fog and childhood shines with physical and emotional clarity. There isn’t one sentimental sentence in the entire book. In “Peanuts,” Charles Schultz’s strip, the characters are little adults shrunk down to child size. Edwin Mullhouse is the anti-Peanuts, capturing the secret fevers of childhood in impeccable prose.
Consider that pre-school Edwin discovers endlessly fascinating icicles and stores one in the freezer. In the spring Mrs. Mullhouse throws it out; Edwin is heartbroken. Edwin and Jeffrey progress through kindergarten and first grade; they meet Edward Penn, who has “an obscure nervous ailment that was just serious enough to prevent him from attending school but not quite serious enough to prevent him from doing precisely as he pleased.” At seven, Penn lives in a heated basement whose walls he’s covered with hundreds of cartoon characters—“a fiery cartoon vision, an intricate map of Penn’s feverish and patient brain.”
In the second grade, Edwin one day becomes feverish. With images of polio tormenting him, Jeffrey suffers the agonizing passing of the school day: “on the big round clock…the tormented minute-hand, like a wounded bird, dragged its wing painfully forward in tiny dying jerks.” But Edwin’s not sick; he’s “deathly in love” with Rose Dorn, a witch’s child. He lavishes her with dozens of gifts from the corner store: penny candies (each described precisely), wax false teeth, and a rubber dog-dirt. He writes love poems to her in vain.
Rose perishes in a fire. Soon Edwin becomes obsessed, much to Jeffrey’s displeasure, with the silent, surly, violent Arnold Hasselstrom—an anti-Edwin, a burgeoning juvenile delinquent. When Arnold meets a violent end, Edwin starts on his “immortal novel,” “Cartoons,” working on it with the same kind of fever that Rose infected him with. (We get one paragraph of “Cartoons,” and it is brilliant.)
Jeffrey then declares himself Edwin’s biographer, which he sees as a lofty mission. “Isn’t it true that the biographer performs a function nearly as great as, or precisely as great as, or greater by far than the function performed by the artist himself? For the artist creates the work of art, but the biographer, so to speak, creates the artist.” Unlike art, life is messy, and Jeffrey will ensure that Edwin’s life will have the perfect symmetry his perfect biography requires.
Jeffrey stands as one of literature’s great first-person voices, so compelling the reader forgets the impossibility of the premise. His tales of preschool and elementary-school intrigues are more believable than anything an omniscient adult third-person narrator could spin—because he is a child.
Millhauser cites Nabokov as an influence, and Jeffrey’s spiritual forefather is Charles Kinbote, the pompous, delusional, unreliable narrator of “Pale Fire.” Both are self-anointed literary scholars and biographers desperately latching on to their subjects with the loneliness of a spurned lover. Kinbote is a self-deluded harmless windbag. But Jeffrey turns out to be far from benign.
“Edwin Mullhouse,” is a magnificent work of the imagination.
I swear I too had attended Franklin Pierce Elementary School along with Jeffrey and Edwin. This was my childhood.
The pleasures of “Edwin Mullhouse” are visceral, emotional and intellectual, and Jeffrey’s voice as a pompous scholarly biographer, documenting every key moment in his subject/victim’s life is laugh-aloud funny. It is “overwhelming in its veridical detail,” as the original dust-jacket blurb by poet Richard Wilbur said.
The wildly outrageous conceit of “Edwin Mullhouse” is that it is an exhaustive biography written by the young narrator, Jeffrey Cartwright. Divided into three parts—the early years, the middle year and the late years—the parody has all the landmarks of biography, including an obsession with minor details. It’s a high-wire act in which one stumble could pull the whole enterprise down, but Millhauser never lets Jeffrey take a false step.
Jeffrey, who claims he has a “truly inspired memory,” takes us back to age 6 months, 3 days old—his first meeting with the newborn Edwin. “As I bumped along the sidewalk under the dark blue shadow of my carriage top, I wiggled my toes delightedly in a warm band of light. The shadows of passing trees rippled over my sunlit legs and in one corner of the carriage a delicate silky spider web sparkled like a jeweled maze. Over the rim of the carriage I saw the dark spars of a telephone pole sailing in the bright blue sky. I also recall a little white cloud, very like a rubber whale I played with in the bathtub.”
Six months later, the future biographer dutifully little Edwin’s pre-speech vocalizations: “whole salivary sonatas enhanced by gushing crescendos and hissing fortimisimi, gurgling glissandi and trickling pianissimi, streaming prestissimos, spouting arpeggios.” Fiction has often taken us back to the exotic land of childhood, but has any other serious writer taken us back to infancy? Perhaps the closest thing is the opening of “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”
The tour de force evocation of babyhood is wry and wonderful, but since none of us, except the preternaturally talented Cartwright, can remember it, this is a preface to the real meat of the book—childhood, which we can remember in bright patches shining through mists. Millhauser clears the fog and childhood shines with physical and emotional clarity. There isn’t one sentimental sentence in the entire book. In “Peanuts,” Charles Schultz’s strip, the characters are little adults shrunk down to child size. Edwin Mullhouse is the anti-Peanuts, capturing the secret fevers of childhood in impeccable prose.
Consider that pre-school Edwin discovers endlessly fascinating icicles and stores one in the freezer. In the spring Mrs. Mullhouse throws it out; Edwin is heartbroken. Edwin and Jeffrey progress through kindergarten and first grade; they meet Edward Penn, who has “an obscure nervous ailment that was just serious enough to prevent him from attending school but not quite serious enough to prevent him from doing precisely as he pleased.” At seven, Penn lives in a heated basement whose walls he’s covered with hundreds of cartoon characters—“a fiery cartoon vision, an intricate map of Penn’s feverish and patient brain.”
In the second grade, Edwin one day becomes feverish. With images of polio tormenting him, Jeffrey suffers the agonizing passing of the school day: “on the big round clock…the tormented minute-hand, like a wounded bird, dragged its wing painfully forward in tiny dying jerks.” But Edwin’s not sick; he’s “deathly in love” with Rose Dorn, a witch’s child. He lavishes her with dozens of gifts from the corner store: penny candies (each described precisely), wax false teeth, and a rubber dog-dirt. He writes love poems to her in vain.
Rose perishes in a fire. Soon Edwin becomes obsessed, much to Jeffrey’s displeasure, with the silent, surly, violent Arnold Hasselstrom—an anti-Edwin, a burgeoning juvenile delinquent. When Arnold meets a violent end, Edwin starts on his “immortal novel,” “Cartoons,” working on it with the same kind of fever that Rose infected him with. (We get one paragraph of “Cartoons,” and it is brilliant.)
Jeffrey then declares himself Edwin’s biographer, which he sees as a lofty mission. “Isn’t it true that the biographer performs a function nearly as great as, or precisely as great as, or greater by far than the function performed by the artist himself? For the artist creates the work of art, but the biographer, so to speak, creates the artist.” Unlike art, life is messy, and Jeffrey will ensure that Edwin’s life will have the perfect symmetry his perfect biography requires.
Jeffrey stands as one of literature’s great first-person voices, so compelling the reader forgets the impossibility of the premise. His tales of preschool and elementary-school intrigues are more believable than anything an omniscient adult third-person narrator could spin—because he is a child.
Millhauser cites Nabokov as an influence, and Jeffrey’s spiritual forefather is Charles Kinbote, the pompous, delusional, unreliable narrator of “Pale Fire.” Both are self-anointed literary scholars and biographers desperately latching on to their subjects with the loneliness of a spurned lover. Kinbote is a self-deluded harmless windbag. But Jeffrey turns out to be far from benign.
“Edwin Mullhouse,” is a magnificent work of the imagination.
May 11, 2007
A truly strange read, best absorbed by those with a taste for the minutae of childhood -- toys, stray books, the ephemeral artifacts of long ago postWWII suburbia. Premise is consistent with Boswell's =Life of Johnson= and VN's =Pale Fire=. Form, though, is very different, with an all-knowing child biographer memorializing a life still in its preteen years. The relentless detail can sometimes be a bit much, but then again that is the point: cataloging the pieces may or may not capture the elusive quality of remembered childhood. Those whose childhood years match the subtitle may enjoy this novel the most.
February 6, 2016
Boring. I don't understand why Jeffrey is so much attracted to Edwin. He seems like an ordinary kid to me, especially a selfish and grumpy one. I find Jeff's devotion to Edwin rather creepy.
I also find it weird that Jeff doesn't show grief and gets to work on a biography right after Edwin's death.
And why should other young characters die suddenly as well? Are their deaths necessary in the story?
This book is creepy.
I also find it weird that Jeff doesn't show grief and gets to work on a biography right after Edwin's death.
And why should other young characters die suddenly as well? Are their deaths necessary in the story?
This book is creepy.
October 3, 2007
the novel i keep recommending to my students and anyone who will listen - no one ever reads it - it is a marvel!
My best of the 20th century pick - i love this novel in every way possible - also read his other marvel - "portrait of a romantic"
p.s. if you saw the movie "The Illusionist" - this was based on a short story by Stehphen M.
My best of the 20th century pick - i love this novel in every way possible - also read his other marvel - "portrait of a romantic"
p.s. if you saw the movie "The Illusionist" - this was based on a short story by Stehphen M.
January 5, 2009
Along with JR, this is father and the God of the superkid smart-beyond-their-years trend, and it drives a skewer through its infantile heart before it even gets a chance to be born. Also part Boswell parody and part Pale Fire (which is also a parody, of course). So ahead of its time that it exists out-of-time.
March 25, 2014
I wanted to like this more than I did. I'm a fan of Steven Millhauser and I get that he likes to use lots of detail. But in this story the detail gets so laborious, the lists so long and obscure, the sidetracks and permutations so great--I lost the story somewhere along the way. I don't even really know what happened.
September 24, 2007
I tried, and tried, and tried some more, to finish this book. (I'm stubborn like that.) I never got through this. From what I remember, it chronicles the life of an extremely gifted, and boring child. I'm guessing by the title that he died somewhere in there, but I didn't get that far.
July 27, 2011
Millhauser mines familiar ground as he blurs the borders between fiction and reality, calling into question historical veracity, memoir "truth" and possibility of objectivity. Jeffrey Cartwright is my new favorite unreliable narrator.
July 27, 2008
good book but i wasn't in the right state of mind.
there were some good hearty guffaws.
there were some good hearty guffaws.
November 28, 2011
I understand that this is a spoof on biographies: for a 25 page New Yorker story, interesting; for a 305 page book tedious. I did not enjoy reading this.
April 28, 2024
I am grateful to the readers whose reviews explain why this book is loved by many readers. I could not figure that out when I read it, and it was painfully slow going. (Some of that is because the book is typographically compressed which makes reading tiresome).
Yes, Millhauser aims high here. This is the kind of novel for a college English class. There is a recondite element to the volume which apparently works well for the initiated. Sadly, I am not one of them, and as a story it was pretty darn slow-moving. I read it as a novel, and in that sense it was not very satisfying.
Since I read for pleasure and was not an English major in college, I fail to get the satire or higher purpose of the story. There also appears to be some symbolism, though I did not see other readers commenting on it. The book abounds in colors, and I expect they relate to something. Red and yellow often appear together (in Rose Dorn, in a fire and elsewhere), and there is a similar connection between black and dark blue. Black, in particular, appears very frequently. But I can't for the life of me figure out what this is supposed to convey to the reader.
And a pet peeve for me in reading is books where all the major characters are unlikable. I suppose it is satirical for the biography to be about a guy who can't get a joke, is self-absorbed and often not responsive in conversation, and whose novel is unintelligible, at least to me. It's harder to describe Jeffrey, except in terms of his sense of his own importance. The three other principal characters, Edward Penn, Rose Dorn and Arnold Hasselstrom, were just irritating..
In fairness, I must admit that there is some fun for me in those pages. Millhauser has recreated mid-Century America very effectively, including lots of lists (board games, foods, etc.). I have not thought about Studebakers and DeSotos in years, though I am old enough to have ridden in both. Edwin's parents are amusingly charming stock figures: a mother who talks entirely in cliches and a father addicted to "dad jokes."
I acknowledge with respect to other readers that this book appears to be worth reading. Unfortunately, I can't report that I enjoyed it.
Yes, Millhauser aims high here. This is the kind of novel for a college English class. There is a recondite element to the volume which apparently works well for the initiated. Sadly, I am not one of them, and as a story it was pretty darn slow-moving. I read it as a novel, and in that sense it was not very satisfying.
Since I read for pleasure and was not an English major in college, I fail to get the satire or higher purpose of the story. There also appears to be some symbolism, though I did not see other readers commenting on it. The book abounds in colors, and I expect they relate to something. Red and yellow often appear together (in Rose Dorn, in a fire and elsewhere), and there is a similar connection between black and dark blue. Black, in particular, appears very frequently. But I can't for the life of me figure out what this is supposed to convey to the reader.
And a pet peeve for me in reading is books where all the major characters are unlikable. I suppose it is satirical for the biography to be about a guy who can't get a joke, is self-absorbed and often not responsive in conversation, and whose novel is unintelligible, at least to me. It's harder to describe Jeffrey, except in terms of his sense of his own importance. The three other principal characters, Edward Penn, Rose Dorn and Arnold Hasselstrom, were just irritating..
In fairness, I must admit that there is some fun for me in those pages. Millhauser has recreated mid-Century America very effectively, including lots of lists (board games, foods, etc.). I have not thought about Studebakers and DeSotos in years, though I am old enough to have ridden in both. Edwin's parents are amusingly charming stock figures: a mother who talks entirely in cliches and a father addicted to "dad jokes."
I acknowledge with respect to other readers that this book appears to be worth reading. Unfortunately, I can't report that I enjoyed it.
October 28, 2023
This is a book whose conceit definitely starts to wear out its welcome in the middle but finishes strong enough that I'm rounding up my 3.5* to a 4*.
I read this on the heels of the Biography of X specifically because it was another fake biography. A critical difference here is that this book seems to have more of a purpose in its craft. While no doubt the Biography of X at times thinks about biographers, in Edwin Mullhouse, that is at the heart of the story.
Edwin Mullhouse is written by an 11 year old curmudgeon about an entirely unspectacular boy that does normal boy things, including generate creative output, in this case an entirely normal book called Comics. Here, the biographer completely misses the point of Mullhouse's life, despite writing about it voluminously. In desiring to tackle a particular form of biography, where ephemera is expounded upon in thick layers of detail, the book definitely risks becoming tedious. However, what pulls the book's narrative through is that, while Jeffrey can't see the magical intricacies of childhood, here the reader can. And, on top of that, the snobbish writing style creates so many ridiculous turns of phrase, some which are funny because of Jeffrey's approach and others which feel like Millhauser having a laugh.
I am not surprised to read so many reviews where folks DNF, giving up around the halfway mark. The Rose Dorn phase dragged on and on for me, and while it was a fun look at childhood love, there wasn't enough there there to warrant such a large chunk of the book, IMO. However, it does at least pay off with an uproarious opening chunk about Jeffrey's own experience that is just a delight. And I feel like the entirety of that last section of the book is exceptionally good, such that if you can make it through the Middle Years, you are rewarded.
I won't say much about the ending, but I will say that while it works really well in the meta way that Millhauser mainly seemed to be writing this, when it comes to biography/biographers, it is the roughest cut at humanity and was for me the toughest part of the read when it came to visualizing the actual characters in the book as people (because they do feel fleshed out).
Anyway, there's a lot of words when they aren't always needed, and definitely some filler, but I do have to say it felt like Millhauser was going out there with two main intents (critique the biography genre and write a love letter to childhood), and he succeeded on both accounts, IMO. Given how hard it can feel to capture some of the realism of childhood, even of a particular era and type of childhood that is as well enmeshed in American culture as this, and how well it ended, I feel like it deserves my rounding up. Aspects of it feels dated, but graded on its own merits and intent, it definitely passes the class.
I read this on the heels of the Biography of X specifically because it was another fake biography. A critical difference here is that this book seems to have more of a purpose in its craft. While no doubt the Biography of X at times thinks about biographers, in Edwin Mullhouse, that is at the heart of the story.
Edwin Mullhouse is written by an 11 year old curmudgeon about an entirely unspectacular boy that does normal boy things, including generate creative output, in this case an entirely normal book called Comics. Here, the biographer completely misses the point of Mullhouse's life, despite writing about it voluminously. In desiring to tackle a particular form of biography, where ephemera is expounded upon in thick layers of detail, the book definitely risks becoming tedious. However, what pulls the book's narrative through is that, while Jeffrey can't see the magical intricacies of childhood, here the reader can. And, on top of that, the snobbish writing style creates so many ridiculous turns of phrase, some which are funny because of Jeffrey's approach and others which feel like Millhauser having a laugh.
I am not surprised to read so many reviews where folks DNF, giving up around the halfway mark. The Rose Dorn phase dragged on and on for me, and while it was a fun look at childhood love, there wasn't enough there there to warrant such a large chunk of the book, IMO. However, it does at least pay off with an uproarious opening chunk about Jeffrey's own experience that is just a delight. And I feel like the entirety of that last section of the book is exceptionally good, such that if you can make it through the Middle Years, you are rewarded.
I won't say much about the ending, but I will say that while it works really well in the meta way that Millhauser mainly seemed to be writing this, when it comes to biography/biographers, it is the roughest cut at humanity and was for me the toughest part of the read when it came to visualizing the actual characters in the book as people (because they do feel fleshed out).
Anyway, there's a lot of words when they aren't always needed, and definitely some filler, but I do have to say it felt like Millhauser was going out there with two main intents (critique the biography genre and write a love letter to childhood), and he succeeded on both accounts, IMO. Given how hard it can feel to capture some of the realism of childhood, even of a particular era and type of childhood that is as well enmeshed in American culture as this, and how well it ended, I feel like it deserves my rounding up. Aspects of it feels dated, but graded on its own merits and intent, it definitely passes the class.
July 7, 2024
Millhouse's short stories both did and did not prepare me for this novel, his first published book. It's got all the elements of meta-literary play, but also a core that I have to imagine is autobiographical, and it gets gradually darker until its deeply unsettling, read-it-twice-to-be-sure climax. The conceit of one little kid not only identifying his best friend as a literary genius but also vowing to become his Boswell is spectacular, and hilarious. Jeffrey's compulsive compiling of the minutiae of life in 1950s suburban Connecticut is why I consider the book a sort of shadow memoir (because that's when and where Millhauser grew up, and Mullhouse is plainly his doppelganger). That level of detail is part of the conceit, but it's also where the novel drags a bit. But overall this is brilliant stuff that, like so much of Millhauser's short fiction, interrogates the structure and limits of art and artmaking within a highly imaginative narrative.
June 26, 2022
I've always been suspicious of young characters just a bit too wise beyond their years. But Millhauser pushes this notion so aggressively, meticulously and wondrously - through both his narrator and subject - that the novel/biography works exceedingly well. In addition to insight about genius necessarily connecting to obsession and Edwin's fare thee well - "I aspire to the condition of fiction" - is the pitch perfect litany of early fifties cultural artifacts, lifestyles and temperments - especially those of grade schoolers - that enrich this odd, yet superb "life and death of an American writer."
December 17, 2024
We often trivialize childhood because we imagine ourselves facing their little worlds. But for the kids, their worlds are as profound as any. Millhauser artfully plunges us into Edwin and Jeffrey's world of comics, friendships, bullies, love, and death with grace and hilarity. What I admire most is Millhauser's prose: I don't know a better word for it than "sturdy", like encountering furniture made by a true carpenter rather than from some pre-packaged kit. His writing (or little Jeffrey's, rather) is a nearly lost art, where precision and economy serve to reveal the silent beauty of the world.
February 16, 2014
I recall reading this book sometime in the late 70s; a recommendation of a college classmate addicted to novels. The subtitle sets up the novel’s premise: “The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943 – 1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright.” One notes that this American writer might be no more than 11 years old at his death, and I wonder, “Just what could this wunderkind write that might earn him the honor of a biography?”
The perception that Millhauser is presenting an elaborate farce is further supported by the “Introductory Note,” whose fictive author claims to have known the biographer, Jeffrey Cartwright, when he wrote the biography in 1954-1955. This farce, then, is the story of an “author,” 11 years old, told by a “biographer” who is himself 11 years old. The stage is nearly set. An epigraph, a quote by Edwin Mullhouse (“Phew! A biographer is a devil.”), stands on a facing page before the Jeffrey’s “Preface to the First Edition” (1955), which lauds his (the biographer’s) own efforts to complete the book. A “Chronological Table” appears on the next page and it divides the author’s life into “Early,” “Middle,” and “Late” periods, which pretty well sums up the tri-partite structure of the biography Jeffrey constructs.
Millhauser has the biographer intersperse metacommentary about the respective roles of biographer and fiction writer, achronological asides, and faithful transcriptions of the author’s life, as he perceives it. This faithful recording is typical of novels with a recessive first-person narrator, one who withdraws into the shadows while trying to account events and characters to whom he is fortunate to have tangential access. Jeffrey is a precocious pedant, and he writes as such, grandiosely and ponderously verbose, though the actual events and situations remain essentially juvenile. In fulfilling his role as biographer, Jeffrey indulges in some high-flown lit-crit jargon, especially when discussing the particular "influences" for the author Edwin's masterpiece, “Cartoons.”
During a 15-month period, Edwin wrote his novel “Cartoons,” composing it entirely with cartoon tropes, seemingly a transcription/description of what one might seen in a 30s-, 40s-, or 50s-style cinematic cartoon, all of this done up as a longer three-part story. Jeffrey is in awe of the work, envious too, and he types it up for Edwin, and, after Edwin’s suicide, sees to it that the books are published. (“Cartoons” is, alas, misunderstood and mis-marketed, as explained in the “Introductory Note,” and it came to languish, unread in the section of libraries and stores designated for 5- to 8-year-olds.) After typing up the 28 handwritten blue books that compose the novel, Jeffrey decides he must become Edwin's biographer, and Edwin laughs at him, saying, "…but anyway I'm not dead."
Millhauser’s art in this is having created a pedantic biographer, albeit with the naive persona of a child (incapable of seeing beyond the evocative landscape of toys, cartoons, books, games, and other childish activities that surround him and Edwin). Millhauser has Jeffrey recount three primary events in Edwin’s life, which exactly synch up with the three episodes in Edwin’s novel. While these life events are narrated almost straight, there are proleptic hints about how the events will re-appear, transformed in Edwin's novel, which is to suggest that Jeffrey is fudging the biographical process, especially as there are numerous instances when he thoroughly discounts Edwin's activities as puerile and unworthy of being recounted.
Millhauser has created in Jeffrey a psychopath or a naïf, but enough leeches out in Jeffrey’s account of Edwin's suicide that we knowing readers see that it is probably the former. By all reckoning Jeffrey must be a creepy little boy (he is the lone child of the next door Cartwrights), a dark cloud/shadow hovering about, always insinuating himself in Edwin’s company and often into the company of Edwin’s family when Edwin has made himself scarce. Jeffrey is insincere and smarmy, both to those around him and with his readers. Millhauser modulates Jeffrey’s voice so that he is at times reliably transparent (sincere) and at other times variably opaque (being disingenuous and sometimes unself-aware) in his distortion of the facts.
All of this is fun to contemplate, but Millhauser has to take this concept and continue to execute it over the length of 300 pages, and some of the sprightly kick in the concept begins to lag. The prospects for great things loom large, and there are some very funny moments and episodes, and there are even moments when the farce verges into an elegiac evocation of the appurtenances of childhood. I categorize this novel as kin to “Lolita,” comparing favorably in concept and authorial control of voices and style, just a tad jejune, a child’s story that goes on too long.
One favorite part of the novel is Edwin’s poem to Hass, which is emblematic of the style employed in his novel “Cartoons”:
To A.H.
Streetlamps, fellas, all in a row,
Like cartoon men with ideas in your heads,
Come walk in a loonytune night with me.
Changing, a stoplight blues red
As the big-eyed moon looks winding down—
And blows out a star with a sudden sneeze.
A skeleton dressed in a tall silk hat
Chases a mailbox (rattling knees)
And mails a DEAD LETTER. Close-up, now:
My eyes show waves with sinking boats,
And terrified tears jump overboard
As the circle closes. That’s all, folks.
The perception that Millhauser is presenting an elaborate farce is further supported by the “Introductory Note,” whose fictive author claims to have known the biographer, Jeffrey Cartwright, when he wrote the biography in 1954-1955. This farce, then, is the story of an “author,” 11 years old, told by a “biographer” who is himself 11 years old. The stage is nearly set. An epigraph, a quote by Edwin Mullhouse (“Phew! A biographer is a devil.”), stands on a facing page before the Jeffrey’s “Preface to the First Edition” (1955), which lauds his (the biographer’s) own efforts to complete the book. A “Chronological Table” appears on the next page and it divides the author’s life into “Early,” “Middle,” and “Late” periods, which pretty well sums up the tri-partite structure of the biography Jeffrey constructs.
Millhauser has the biographer intersperse metacommentary about the respective roles of biographer and fiction writer, achronological asides, and faithful transcriptions of the author’s life, as he perceives it. This faithful recording is typical of novels with a recessive first-person narrator, one who withdraws into the shadows while trying to account events and characters to whom he is fortunate to have tangential access. Jeffrey is a precocious pedant, and he writes as such, grandiosely and ponderously verbose, though the actual events and situations remain essentially juvenile. In fulfilling his role as biographer, Jeffrey indulges in some high-flown lit-crit jargon, especially when discussing the particular "influences" for the author Edwin's masterpiece, “Cartoons.”
During a 15-month period, Edwin wrote his novel “Cartoons,” composing it entirely with cartoon tropes, seemingly a transcription/description of what one might seen in a 30s-, 40s-, or 50s-style cinematic cartoon, all of this done up as a longer three-part story. Jeffrey is in awe of the work, envious too, and he types it up for Edwin, and, after Edwin’s suicide, sees to it that the books are published. (“Cartoons” is, alas, misunderstood and mis-marketed, as explained in the “Introductory Note,” and it came to languish, unread in the section of libraries and stores designated for 5- to 8-year-olds.) After typing up the 28 handwritten blue books that compose the novel, Jeffrey decides he must become Edwin's biographer, and Edwin laughs at him, saying, "…but anyway I'm not dead."
Millhauser’s art in this is having created a pedantic biographer, albeit with the naive persona of a child (incapable of seeing beyond the evocative landscape of toys, cartoons, books, games, and other childish activities that surround him and Edwin). Millhauser has Jeffrey recount three primary events in Edwin’s life, which exactly synch up with the three episodes in Edwin’s novel. While these life events are narrated almost straight, there are proleptic hints about how the events will re-appear, transformed in Edwin's novel, which is to suggest that Jeffrey is fudging the biographical process, especially as there are numerous instances when he thoroughly discounts Edwin's activities as puerile and unworthy of being recounted.
Millhauser has created in Jeffrey a psychopath or a naïf, but enough leeches out in Jeffrey’s account of Edwin's suicide that we knowing readers see that it is probably the former. By all reckoning Jeffrey must be a creepy little boy (he is the lone child of the next door Cartwrights), a dark cloud/shadow hovering about, always insinuating himself in Edwin’s company and often into the company of Edwin’s family when Edwin has made himself scarce. Jeffrey is insincere and smarmy, both to those around him and with his readers. Millhauser modulates Jeffrey’s voice so that he is at times reliably transparent (sincere) and at other times variably opaque (being disingenuous and sometimes unself-aware) in his distortion of the facts.
All of this is fun to contemplate, but Millhauser has to take this concept and continue to execute it over the length of 300 pages, and some of the sprightly kick in the concept begins to lag. The prospects for great things loom large, and there are some very funny moments and episodes, and there are even moments when the farce verges into an elegiac evocation of the appurtenances of childhood. I categorize this novel as kin to “Lolita,” comparing favorably in concept and authorial control of voices and style, just a tad jejune, a child’s story that goes on too long.
One favorite part of the novel is Edwin’s poem to Hass, which is emblematic of the style employed in his novel “Cartoons”:
To A.H.
Streetlamps, fellas, all in a row,
Like cartoon men with ideas in your heads,
Come walk in a loonytune night with me.
Changing, a stoplight blues red
As the big-eyed moon looks winding down—
And blows out a star with a sudden sneeze.
A skeleton dressed in a tall silk hat
Chases a mailbox (rattling knees)
And mails a DEAD LETTER. Close-up, now:
My eyes show waves with sinking boats,
And terrified tears jump overboard
As the circle closes. That’s all, folks.
May 25, 2017
It seemed like a cute premise, but I did not like much about this book at all. It was difficult for me to read due to the heaps of description and OH MY GOODNESS the lists! If they walk into a store, the author provides a list of every item they saw in the store, sometimes taking up more than a whole page. It's not cute, it's completely useless, unnecessary, and incredibly annoying.
Also, I won't spoil it, but WTF - that ending?! That's all kinds of messed up.
Also, I won't spoil it, but WTF - that ending?! That's all kinds of messed up.
March 21, 2022
This is a work of genius. On one level it's a warm nostalgic look at childhood, but on a deeper level it's brilliant satire colored with dark humor. The ending is amazing--and raises some serious questions about what the first-person biographer has left out of his account.
Millhauser and John Gardner are truly two of the most underrated American novelists.
Millhauser and John Gardner are truly two of the most underrated American novelists.
April 28, 2020
Un bonbon empoisonné. Plongez ds la vie d'un génie inconnu raconté par son fidèle voisin, meilleur ami, bras droit, âme damnée. Laissez vous distraire et amusez, vous ne perdez rien pour attendre. Lisez !
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