Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (1997, Paperback, Reprint)

Synopsis
Martin Dressler works in his father's cigar store in 1890s Manhattan, where he learns the basics of business. He goes into hotel work--first as a bellhop, but eventually rising to own a hotel before he's 30. Alternating Martin's dreams with the day-to-day detail of his life, Millhauser evokes the business and personal world of turn-of-the-century America.

Key Details
Author:	Steven Millhauser
Language:	English
Publisher:	Vintage Books
Series:	Vintage Contemporaries
Format:	Paperback
ISBN-10:	0679781277
ISBN-13:	9780679781271

Additional Details
Edition Description:	Reprint

Size
Thickness:	0.8 in
Weight:	8.8 oz

Publisher's Note
1. The first paragraph of Martin Dressler is written as though it were the introduction to a fairy tale. Could this novel be described as a fairy tale? In an interview (Publishers Weekly, 5/6/96), Steven Millhauser said that with the Grand Cosmo, 'I wanted to stretch the real into the fantastic without actually snapping it.' At what point does the narrative depart from the real and become fantastic? 2. Why does the troupe of actors at the Vanderlyn [pp. 11-12] make such an impression on Martin's imagination? What do they symbolize to him? At what points in his life does the image of the two feet on the bed come back to him, and how does that image affect his decisions? 3. What is it about Caroline, apart from her sexuality, that attracts and fascinates Martin? How would you describe or characterize Caroline? Does her air of mystery cover secret passions, or is she simply stupid and inert? What do you think she really wants from life? What are her feelings toward Martin? 4. Why does Martin find it impossible to look on Emmeline in a sexual light? To what degree does Emmeline share and believe in Martin's dreams? Is it possible to deduce her own feelings for Martin? What is significant about the evening visit she and Martin pay to the building site for The Dressler [pp. 201-202]? 5. What roles does Martin mentally assign to the various women in his life: Mrs. Hamilton, Alice Bell, Dora and Gerda, Marie Haskova, Caroline, Emmeline, Mrs. Vernon? Does Martin compartmentalize love and sex, and if so, what effect does that compartmentalization have upon his emotions? 6. How would you describe the four-way relationship between the three Vernon women and Martin? 7. Why are Caroline and Emmeline so dependent upon each other? Martin feels that Caroline is married to her sister rather than to himself, even that a fairy-tale spell has been cast upon them. Can you think of any fairy tales with a complementary pair of sisters like Caroline and Emmeline? Why might Millhauser have chosen this pattern, and what does it mean? 8. Why does Martin compare Harwinton with God? How have the theories and opinions of Harwinton, and those who followed him, characterized the twentieth century and how do they continue to rule our world? 9. Mr. Westerhoven likes to call himself a 'preserver' or 'reconciler' [p. 116]. What does he represent to Martin? 10. Martin Dressler is subtitled 'The Tale of an American Dreamer.' Why is Martin described as a dreamer, and what is his dream? What has this novel to say about the American dream and the quintessential American myth of the self-made man? What are the causes of the dissatisfaction Martin often feels, as on page 129, 'he felt, even as he turned over the idea of a fourth cafe in Brooklyn, a little sharp burst of restlessness, of dissatisfaction, as if he were supposed to be doing something else, something grander, higher, more difficult, more dangerous, more daring'? 11. Martin is well aware that the grand hotels of his youth embody a paradox: they must be both old-fashioned and aggressively modern. 'People liked telephones and the new electric elevators and private toilets and incandescent lights, but at the same time they liked old-world architecture, period furniture, dim suggestions of the very world that was being annihilated by American efficiency and know-how' [p. 70]. What does it say about people's desires and dreams to want the old with the new? 12. When Martin is a child, one of his tasks is to wheel Tecumseh out onto the sidewalk. How does the image of the cigar-store Indian change and develop over the course of the novel? In what guise do Indians appear in the Grand Cosmo, and what does that appearance tell us about how Martin's life, and the world itself, has changed during the intervening years? 13. Is it possible to compare Martin's fantasy of 'a world within the world, rivaling the world' [p. 284] with the contemporary notion of the 'global village'? 14. How does Martin's dream compare ...

A young entrepreneur in late-nineteenth-century New York City, Martin Dressler rises from assistant in his father's cigar store as an elusive dream and his love for two sisters comes to fruition in the Grand Cosmo, an extravagant luxury hotel. Reprint. 17,500 first printing.

In Steven Millhauser's new novel set in turn-of-the-century New York City, we watch young entrepreneur Martin Dressler like many of his day make the ascent from hotel bellhop to builder of hotels. . . . This mesmerizing novel brings us face to face with the ambiguity beneath the optimism of the American dream with a swiftness and intensity that are in themselves magnificently dreamlike.

Tells the story of Martin Dressler's rise from bellhop to builder of hotels and his plans to build the Grand Cosmo

Young Martin Dressler begins his career as an industrious helper in his fathers cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top, accompanied by two sisters--one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner. As the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry, a sense of doom builds piece-by-hypnotic piece until this mesmerizing journey into the heart of an American dreamer reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion.

Industry Reviews
"As should be self-evident, Millhauser has taken on big themes in 'Martin Dressler'. These include not merely the American longing for illusion and escape, but also the pitfalls of great ambition and the rise and fall of the modern city. In embracing these themes it is therefore a transparently American novel, and a most convincing one, and well worth the long wait since 'Edwin Mullhouse'."
Washington Post Book World - Jonathan Yardley (04/28/1996)

"To call 'Martin Dressler' a cautionary tale about the lures of American capitalism would be to misunderstand the book's intentions. Its subtitle is 'The Tale of an American Dreamer', and dreams, or alternative worlds, are an important motif. In fact Mr. Millhauser's novel is a fable about the power of the imagination: Dressler's hotels, with their ever more elaborate simulations of reality, are each, in a way, a house of fiction, and the act of imagining them is more vital to Dressler's existence than any wealth of prestige the buildings themselves might bring."
Wall Street Journal - Donna Rifkind (04/24/1996)

"A fascinating and provocative portrayal of turn-of-the-century America that hums with energy and wit. It might be another of Dreiser's densely packed tales of financiers and titans, written at characteristic white heat, but by an immeasurably more graceful stylist."
Kirkus Reviews (03/01/1996)

"...Millhauser's delight in physical detail is too powerful; the book is suspended on a latticework of carefully described things--buildings, furnishings and bric-a-brac, the expanding city, and the wholly impossible rooms of the author's imagination--which become [the book's] real characters, while its animate population recedes into a dim and uncertain background. It is a singular and strange effect, resulting in an altogether disarming novel--a charm, rather than a masterpiece, but a wonderful thing to read."
Voice Literary Supplement - Jim Lewis (05/01/1996)

"Millhauser's ornate prose and hypnotic accumulation of period detail are the camouflage for a very modern story about how the rush to embrace the future--ever more, bigger, newer--can finally leave everything human behind."
Los Angeles Times Book Review - Michael Harris (05/26/1996)

"'Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer' gives a wonderfully weird sense of being not QUITE a novel at all, but some new hybrid--half-biography, half-history--ripped from real life....Millhauser clearly means us...to challenge the limits of the form. This novel is a rich mediation on both late 19th-century America and on the novel itself."
Philadelphia Inquirer - Lisa Zeidner (05/26/1996)