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Rating: 
Summary: The Dream Continues
Review: A beautiful collection, worthy of comparison with some of the classics of so-called fantistical literature--Poe, Kafka, Nabokov. Millhauser's stories left me shaking my head in wonder. They just as often leave the heart shaking in wonder as well.
Rating:
Summary: From the Ordinary to the Extraordinary
Review: And if you ever buy Harper's then you already own it - the story was first published there. I'm not a big fan of Millhauser's style (particularly exemplified in "The Mezzanine" and "Vox") - I find him to be clever but ultimately devoid of any emotional meaning. In other words, Millhauser's writing reminds me of a well-written user's manual for some home appliance.The Knife Thrower (the story) has some interesting ideas and would, as some have pointed out, make a good episode for the Twilight Zone. Or you could go see "Girl on A Bridge" ("La Fille sur le Pont" since it is a subtitled French import) for a great version of this idea. Perhaps this is some universal archetype since the idea seems to appeal to many. Ultimately in the realm of short stories Millhauser does not, in my opinion, rank near the top. If you enjoy his style you would probably like some of Bradbury's early work or even Ian Banks. The rest of the stories in this volume do not leave any lasting impression, much like drinking some 'lite' soft drink.
Rating:
Summary: A well-written collection of stories asking What If?
Review: I had read the knife thrower story some time ago. It's a gripping tale of a somewhat small town, and what happens when the knife thrower comes to town. He's not just any knife thrower. He is, shall we say, somewhat extreme. He wounds his targets, he asks for volunteers. The audience gets excited. He's beyond the pale, yet they can't look away. Many of the stories in this book carry a "what if" theme. What if kids growing up could have flying carpets? What if amusement parks could be any way we imagined them? What if we could marry frogs? What if Kaspar Hauser had told us what he really thought about us? These possibilities are injected into otherwise normal situations and people react to them through their normal paradigms. They glimpse the magical through a preponderance of the mundane. Every story carries a tinge of danger or a trace of uneasiness. Millhauser seems to take great joy with the worlds he creates and that joy is passed on to the reader.
Rating:
Summary: From the Ordinary to the Extraordinary
Review: Steven Millhauser, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his wonderful period novel, Martin Dressler, is an author who is strikingly different from his contemporaries. The Knife Thrower is pure Millhauser and in this collection of stories he once again looks at almost everything except ordinary, earthbound, twentieth-century American life. Even those stories that do have a mundane, contemporary setting, such as The Dream of the Consortium, also contain something of the mysterious as well. In this story, an ordinary shopping mall becomes a world of Moorish courtyards and Aztec pyramids. In The Sisterhood of the Night, a secret society of girls, not so unusual in itself, manages to encompass the mysterious when the girls slip out of their homes to indulge in nothing more than silence. In Clair de Lune, a boy finds himself at a baseball game. But this is a nocturnal baseball game, played by girls who are dressed as boys. Flying Carpets is a fascinating story that details both the joys and the problems inherent in that particular mode of travel. At first glance, Millhauser's stories might appear to be little more than surreal melodramas, stories that definitely have virtues but stories that also cause the reader to give up in despair. This, however, is certainly not the case. Millhauser, like Kafka, draws us effortlessly into the shimmering worlds of his imagination through his poignant and expert use of detail and the elegance and beauty of his poetic prose. In five of these twelve stories, Millhauser uses the first person plural to wonderful effect and effectively allows his narrators to speak, not only for themselves, but for their community as well. The title story, one of the collection's best, centers around a knife thrower named Hensch and the single performance given by Hensch and his assistant which involves a series of increasingly dangerous tricks. Like the audience, we remain uncertain about what it is we really witness as the story draws to a surprising close. Those already familiar with Millhauser's work will be reminded of his gorgeous story, Einsenheim the Illusionist which also follows the path from ordinary to extraordinary. Other stories in this fascinating collection also bear a debt to Millhauser's earlier work, most notably The New Automaton Theater which is reminiscent of Millhauser's novella, August Eschenburg. Both offer a biography of a master automaton maker. While August Eschenberg finds himself trumped by a fellow creator, the central character in The New Automaton Theater, Heinrich Graum, stops work at the height of his success and remains silent for a period of a dozen years. When Graum finally does return to the theater he finds something very surprising and disturbing has happened to his work. Although the first person plural seems to dominate these stories, some of the most vivid and intimate are written in the first person singular. In, A Visit, the narrator goes to see an old friend in a remote town and finds that he is married, quite happily, to a very large frog. As implausible as this story sounds, it becomes quite believable, mostly due to Millhauser's extraordinary talent for visual detail. No Way Out is the sometimes humorous story, reminiscent of South American writer Julio Cortazar, in which a man learns the dubious distinction of honor versus dishonor. Balloon Flight, 1870 is an account of an attempt to escape occupied Paris in a balloon. The narrator is at first exhilarated by his new perspective of the world from the air, but as the balloon ascends to 10,000 feet, he begins to experience dread, instead. Like the narrator of Balloon Flight, 1870, Millhauser is an author whose protagonists are always seeking escape, by ascending into the air or burrowing into the earth or perfecting their art, e.g., knife throwing. Sometimes these protagonists go too far, but in their struggles between the real and the surreal, art and life, they help to shed light on both the ordinariness and the extraordinariness of our own daily lives as well.
Rating: 
Summary: not sure...
Review: The few stories I could read were good BUT most of them were very difficult for me to get into. I have a wandering mind if Im not hooked immediately and this is NOT the type of writing to catch it. Maybe I just dont "get" it, but to me these stories are pointless and uneventful. I found myself making grocery lists in my mind and fantasizing about turtle cheesecake or a foot massage before reaching the bottom of the first pages on many of these stories. I was starting over and over again and had to eventually give up. It was pointless. My rating of "3" is only because I feel bad giving it any less. I am a nice person, just a scattered reader.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful prose
Review: The oneiric quality of Millhauser's prose reminds me that of such masters as Neil Gaiman,
Ray Bradbury and Lord Dunsany.His poetic, poignant and disturbing short stories are carefully crafted little gems with a fantastical bent that
frequently exude a sense of otherworldliness and evoke feelings of melancholy and dread.
There's a poetic beauty in Millhauser's prose unmatched by any conteporary writer
This collection is a fine display of Millhauser's talent and shouldn't be missed.
7 * The Knife Thrower ================== *****
25 * A Visit =========================== **1/2
45 * The Sisterhood of Night =========== ******
63 * The Way Out ======================= ****1/2
89 * Flying Carpets ==================== ****
103 * The New Automaton Theater ======== *****
129 * Clair de Lune ==================== ***
143 * The Dream of the Consortium ====== *****
165 * Balloon Flight, 1870 =============
181 * Paradise Park ==================== ***
225 * Kaspar Hauser Speaks ============= ****1/2
237 * Beneath the Cellars of Our Town == *****
Rating: 
Summary: Very curious ... do I or don't I like them?
Review: These truly are curious tales - fascinating, disturbing, unsatisfying. Many of the stories are told with an editorial "we" narrator coldly providing the "facts"; even the stories told in first person are surprisingly unemotional - the emotion of the narrator being described as a fact, not shown through action. But on the flip side, Millhauser is a master at setting emotional tone through highly observed details so that these tales do carry an emotional charge. The stories themselves all revolve in some manner around the image of a fascination, a macabre day dream, an imagination taken too far; around the dividing line between normal and obsessive behavior. Often the stories dance around the dividing line between the real and the artifical. The Knife Thrower tests the limits of knife throwing as entertainment. A Visit tests the limits of the frog/person dichotomy of fairy tales. The Sisterhood of Night shows the exaggerations that fill the void when facts are missing or unacceptable. The Way Out shows an anachronism of honorable behavior catching a modern man unaware. Flying Carpets plays with the fears that would arise if you truly rode a carpet. The New Automaton Theater tests the limits of theater of minature mechanical actors. Clair de Lune follows an adoloscent into the moonlight and a "first love". The Dream of the Consortium takes the image of a department store to its unachievable limits. Balloon Flight is a soldier's breaking above the enemy blockage only to question the value of his trip. Paradise Park follows the growth of a Coney Island amusement park to its mechanical limit, its fantasy limit, its moral limit. Kaspar Hauser Speaks displays the innermost desires of "a freak"; freak because of being deprived of light, space, food in his early years. Beneath the Cellars of Our Town praises the meditative wanderings in rough tunnels under the city, tunnels for which no map can be drawn. Obviously, Millhauser has allowed his imagination to wander freely. As entertaining, disturbing stories they are excellent. As stories representative of something true about human existence, I'm not sure. I am truly left puzzling "I like them, I like them not, I like them ..."
Rating:
Summary: Very curious ... do I or don't I like them?
Review: These truly are curious tales - fascinating, disturbing, unsatisfying. Many of the stories are told with an editorial "we" narrator coldly providing the "facts"; even the stories told in first person are surprisingly unemotional - the emotion of the narrator being described as a fact, not shown through action. But on the flip side, Millhauser is a master at setting emotional tone through highly observed details so that these tales do carry an emotional charge. The stories themselves all revolve in some manner around the image of a fascination, a macabre day dream, an imagination taken too far; around the dividing line between normal and obsessive behavior. Often the stories dance around the dividing line between the real and the artifical. The Knife Thrower tests the limits of knife throwing as entertainment. A Visit tests the limits of the frog/person dichotomy of fairy tales. The Sisterhood of Night shows the exaggerations that fill the void when facts are missing or unacceptable. The Way Out shows an anachronism of honorable behavior catching a modern man unaware. Flying Carpets plays with the fears that would arise if you truly rode a carpet. The New Automaton Theater tests the limits of theater of minature mechanical actors. Clair de Lune follows an adoloscent into the moonlight and a "first love". The Dream of the Consortium takes the image of a department store to its unachievable limits. Balloon Flight is a soldier's breaking above the enemy blockage only to question the value of his trip. Paradise Park follows the growth of a Coney Island amusement park to its mechanical limit, its fantasy limit, its moral limit. Kaspar Hauser Speaks displays the innermost desires of "a freak"; freak because of being deprived of light, space, food in his early years. Beneath the Cellars of Our Town praises the meditative wanderings in rough tunnels under the city, tunnels for which no map can be drawn. Obviously, Millhauser has allowed his imagination to wander freely. As entertaining, disturbing stories they are excellent. As stories representative of something true about human existence, I'm not sure. I am truly left puzzling "I like them, I like them not, I like them ..."
Rating:
Summary: dood! milhauser is off da hook!
Review: This guy writes wicked good short stories about some of the crazyiest stuff I ever heard. What if your best friend married a freakin' frog?!? He even wrote a study of the logical stages of pleasure examined from the standpoint of the chronolgical advancements of an extroidinary amusement park. Mullhauser has a delicate sense of dark humor and a remarkable voice that he sometimes incorporates to give the reader the effect that he or she is reading an attempted account of pure facts, which lend more heft to the always fantastical subject matter. I'd compare this to some of H.P. Lovecraft's early work and perhaps Ray Bradbury as well, although Millhauser is a bit more intellectual.
Rating:
Summary: Moving, creepy and exhiliarating at the same time
Review: You never know where you're going in a Steven Millhauser story, but you are always glad you came along for the ride. (This reader is not a huge fan of the short-story form, but I make an exception for Millhauser and other modern masters like Stuart Dybek.) Millhauser's genius in "Knife Thrower" is his narrator's voice-a spooky, spectral "we" who seems to be both watching the bizarre spectacle below and a part of it. After a few stories, the reader becomes part of the "we," and is transported into a very strange world. It's like mainlining Frank Baum or C.S. Lewis: you start feeling like a visitor on your own planet. The atmosphere of these stories is addictive and entrancing, and it almost hurt to come to the end of this collection. Try Jeffrey Eugenides "Virgin Suicides" for another successful variation on this theme.
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