Poll

This one is harder than it should be for me. I love them both, and I especially love both authors. I'd love to push Millhauser further in the contest, but I do think Babel's "The Story of My Dovecoat" gets better each time I read it.

Both stories were 4 stars to me - so it's a close call - the quirkiness of Eisenheim resounded slightly more with me though.

DNF either. Can't, won't vote for either or The Intolerable Ethos of the intellectual, artistic, moral.... superiority and pureness of "my people".

Besides, after suffering through Millhauser's, Dangerous Laughter, I swore never again.

This one is really hard...! I'm tempted to give it to Eisenheim if only because it shines as a neat little nugget of perfection compared to its cinematic adaptation. On the other hand, there's something about Dovecot that really instills in me a sense of magic without it being explicitly about magic. Maybe the presence of doves kind of discredits that feeling, maybe it was always meant to be magical.

But beyond that, I do think Eisenheim is quite flawless. Millhauser has some misses, but this wasn't one of them. It has my vote.

This is tough. I've gone for Millhauser but might change my mind.

Although I appreciated the Babel story, I propbably wouldn’t go out of my way to read it again. But I really like Eisenheim, the Illusionist, and Millhauser in particular

I gave the nod to Babel. Despite reading "Eisenheim..." twice, I couldn't shake a recent viewing of the film out of my head while reading the story and that ruined my reading.

Oh boy, the first one that's neck and neck! I went with Babel but could easily be persuaded to change my vote . . .

I love Millhauser - Dangerous Laughter is a truly great collection - but this is Babel we're talking about.

This one was a squeaker, and I would have been okay with either.