Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (30 page)
Read Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer Online
Authors: Steven Millhauser
Tags: #Coming of Age, #Historical, #Fiction
The next morning he went down early to buy his paper in the lobby and wait for the barbershop to open. In the barber’s chair he closed his eyes for a moment and at once he was back in the Vanderlyn: his bellboy jacket felt tight around the chest, luggage creaked, buzzers rang, from the street came a clatter of wheels and hooves. He would transfer the title of the Vanderlyn to Emmeline Vernon, she could do with it as she liked. At breakfast he read his paper over steak and eggs, then folded it twice and left it beside his plate. He pushed back his chair and nodded at the three dream-women, who were just then entering with their demon-smiles, and as he stood up there rose to his nostrils a faint, pleasant odor of violet water and scented soap from his close-shaved cheeks.
He walked through the lobby to the heavy glass entrance doors, and when he pushed one open he stopped: the light was so bright that he had to shut his eyes, even though at this early hour he stood in the building’s shade. Suns danced in the red of his closed eyes. He hadn’t left the Grand Cosmo for a long time.
Carefully shading his eyes he made his way down the
steps and across the light-filled warm shade of the avenue to the low wall of the park. On a dark green bench a white-haired woman in a black dress sat feeding pigeons from a paper bag. The fat sleek birds strutted about with their chests stuck out, their shot-silk throats shimmering pink and green. Martin entered the park and walked along a sunny-and-shady path matted with blackish-brown leaves. Through the trees he could see flashes of the river. After a while he stepped off the path onto a downward slope, into green-black shade spattered with spots of sun. Only then did he look up: through branches crowded with little green leaves he saw a patch of blue—a blue so blue, so richly and strangely blue, that it seemed the kind of blue you might find in pictures of castles in books of fairy tales, after you peeled away the crackly thin paper. It occurred to Martin that it was early spring.
He came to a place where the trees were more widely spaced, and sitting down in the grass he leaned back against a trunk and took off his hat. A light smell of hair oil rose from the leather sweatband. Carefully he placed the hat on one knee. The dark hatband had a silky shimmer that brought to mind the throats of the pigeons. Through the trees he could see the river and the red-brown Palisades. A sunny barge was moving slowly along. Sometimes it failed to come out from behind a trunk at the precise moment he imagined it should, and then he wished it wouldn’t emerge at all, that it would vanish entirely behind a single tree and never be found again, as though it had slipped through a rent in the world and come out in another place, but
immediately it would appear, barely moving, a great cat lazing in the sun. Before him he could see a more open place among the trees, where some boys were playing ball. They had laid down their caps and jackets to serve as bases. At his foot grew a single dandelion, a dark stem bursting into a blaze of yellow.
He had slipped out of his life, he had passed through a crack in the world, into this place. By turning his head slightly he could see the Grand Cosmo through clutches of upper branches. It was still there, it hadn’t vanished quite yet. But neither was it entirely there, half hidden as it was behind the leaves, the faintly moving little leaves, which perhaps were moving only to prevent him from attending closely to the crumbling masonry and falling steel behind them. His neck began to hurt. He turned back to the boys, the trees, and the river.
Martin closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them he was aware of a change in the light. The sky was brighter, the sun higher—the day was getting hot. He felt light, transparent. Here in the other world, here in the world beyond the world, anything was possible. For when the friendly powers let go of your hand, so gently that you were barely aware of it, then you needed to hold on to something, or you would surely be lost. You might float up into the too blue sky and never come back. You might dissolve into flickering spots of sun and shade. For when you woke from a long dream of stone, then you wanted to lie there with closed eyes, trying not to hear the sounds of morning, pressing back into your pillow as if by the sheer
pressure of your head you could sink back beyond sleep, into your own childhood. But the light was too bright, his left buttock hurt, his calves itched. Martin shifted against the tree. The ridges of bark, long diamonds, pressed into his back. He felt like walking.
Martin got up and brushed off the seat of his pants with his hat. He put his hat on his head and started back toward the path. For when you woke from a long dream, into the new morning, then try as you might you couldn’t not hear, beyond your door, the sounds of the new day, the drawer opening in your father’s bureau, the bang of a pot, you couldn’t not see, through your trembling lashes, the stripe of light on the bedroom wall. Boys shouted in the park, on a sunny tree-root he saw a cigar band, red and gold. One of these days he might find something to do in a cigar store, after all he still knew his tobacco, you never forgot a thing like that. But not just yet. Boats moved on the river, somewhere a car horn sounded, on the path a piece of broken glass glowed in a patch of sun as if at any second it would burst into flame. Everything stood out sharply: the red stem of a green leaf, horse clops and the distant clatter of a pneumatic drill, a smell of riverwater and asphalt. Martin felt hungry: chops and beer in a little place he remembered on Columbus Avenue. But not yet. For the time being he would just walk along, keeping a little out of the way of things, admiring the view. It was a warm day. He was in no hurry.
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 with the dream of Walt Disney? How do both the Grand Cosmo and Disney World aim to create alternate worlds that are self-contained and even better than the outside world? How do both of these institutions encourage a blurring in the distinction between "real" and "fake," and what are we to infer from the presence of "authentic German cigarmakers" at the Grand Cosmo Cigar Store?
15. Why does Martin hire an actor to impersonate him in the Grand Cosmo?
16. The Grand Cosmo is so enormous that no one knows what goes on in its further reaches, and rumors are spread by journalists. "But whether the writers spoke of the imaginary world beneath the building, or of the many worlds within, they all acknowledged, even in their puzzlement, a sense not simply of abundance or immensity, but of the inexhaustible" [p. 273]. Is this notion of inexhaustibility a metaphor for America, particularly the industrial and post-industrial America of the twentieth century? What images most completely characterize Millhauser’s America?
17. Considering Martin’s personality and his ambitions, was the ending inevitable? At what point does the end become obvious and why? What does Martin mean when he reflects that the Grand Cosmo is "an act of disobedience" [p. 281]?
Steven Millhauser is the author of numerous works of fiction and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for
Martin Dressler
. His story “Eisenheim the Illusionist” was the basis of the film
The Illusionist
starring Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti. His work has been translated into fourteen languages. He teaches at Skidmore College.
Dangerous Laughter
The King in the Tree
Enchanted Night
The Knife Thrower
Martin Dressler
Little Kingdoms
The Barnum Museum
From the Realm of Morpheus
In the Penny Arcade
Portrait of a Romantic
Edwin Mullhouse
OOKS BY
S
TEVEN
M
ILLHAUSER
EDWIN MULLHOUSE
At the age of two Edwin Mullhouse was reciting Shakespeare. At ten he had written a novel that critics would call “a work of undoubted genius.” At eleven Edwin Mullhouse was mysteriously dead. Documenting every stage of this brief life was Jeffrey Cartwright, Edwin’s best friend and biographer—and the narrator of this dazzling portrait of the artist as a young child. As Jeffrey follows Edwin through his preverbal experiments with language, his infatuations with comic books and the troubled second-grade temptress Rose Dorn, and, finally, into the year of his literary glory and untimely demise,
Edwin Mullhouse
plunges us back into the pleasures and terrors of childhood, even as it plays havoc with our notions of genius and biography.
Fiction/978-0-679-76652-0
ENCHANTED NIGHT
Enchanted Night
is set in a Connecticut town over one incredible summer night. The improbable cast of characters includes a man who flees the attic where he’s been writing his magnum opus every night for the past nine years, a band of teenage girls who break into homes and simply leave notes reading “We Are Your Daughters,” and a young woman who meets a dream-like lover on the tree swing in her backyard. A beautiful mannequin steps down from her department store window, and all the dolls left abandoned in the attic and “no longer believed in” magically come to life.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-70696-7
THE KING IN THE TREE
In
The King in the Tree
Steven Millhauser turns his attention to the transformations of love in these three hypnotic novellas. While ostensibly showing her home to a prospective buyer, the narrator of “Revenge” unfolds an origami-like narrative of betrayal and psychic violence. In “An Adventure of Don Juan” the legendary seducer seeks out new diversion on an English country estate with devastating results. And the title novella retells the story of Tristan and Ysolt from the agonized perspective of King Mark, a husband who compulsively looks for evidence of his wife’s adultery yet compulsively denies what he finds.
Fiction/Literature/978-1-4000-3173-3
THE KNIFE THROWER AND OTHER STORIES
The Knife Thrower
explores the magnificent obsessions of the unfettered imagination, as well as the darker subterranean currents that fuel them. With the panache of an old-fashioned magician, Steven Millhauser conducts his readers from the dark corners beneath the sunlit world to a balloonist’s tour of the heavens. He transforms department stores and amusement parks into alternate universes of infinite plenitude and menace. He unveils the secrets of a maker of automatons and a coven of teenaged girls. And on every page of
The Knife Thrower and Other Stories
, Millhauser confirms his stature as a narrative enchanter in the tradition of Nabokov, Calvino, and Borges.
