Steven Millhauser

Libros del Asteroide publica este mes de septiembre dos novelas de fuerte acento norteamericano: el hito del género negro Los amigos de Eddie Coyle (1970), de George V. Higgins, y Martin Dressler. Historia de un soñador americano (1996; Premio Pulitzer de Ficción, 1997), de Steven Millhauser. Estas novelas, ambientadas en dos grandes urbes: Boston y Nueva York, respectivamente, son obras emblemáticas de la literatura norteamericana de las últimas décadas. Los amigos de Eddie Coyle es una novela de culto cuya influencia en el género policiaco (tanto en literatura como en cine) es incalculable: entre sus admiradores confesos se cuentan John Grisham, Elmore Leonard, David Mamet, Quentin Tarantino, Norman Mailer… Su autor, George V. Higgins (1939-1999), periodista y fiscal, curtido en las calles de Boston, supo despojarse de una épica de buenos y malos y construir personajes reales que hablaban como los criminales de verdad. Eddie Coyle, un delincuente de poca monta con buenos contactos, se enfrenta a una condena por contrabando y su única oportunidad de evitar la cárcel es delatar a un pez gordo. Mientras, se convertirá en un pequeño traficante de armas cuyas conexiones con la mafia y los Panteras Negras tampoco escapan a la policía.

From the Pulitzer Prize winning author hailed by The New Yorker as "a virtuoso of waking dreams" comes a dazzling new collection of darkly comic stories united by their obsession with obsession. In Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser transports us to unknown universes that uncannily resemble our own. Como autor ganador del Premio Pulitzer alabado por 'The New Yorker' como ' un virtuoso en hacernos despertar de los sueños' nos llega una apasionante nueva recopilacion de historias de oscuro humor unidas por su obsesion con la obsesion. En "Dangerous Laughter", Steven Millhauser nos transporta a universos desconocidos que se parecen asombrosamente al nuesto.

Con una visión muy particular del mundo y una prosa llena de matices, Steven Millhauser presenta esta extraordinaria colección de relatos. Ya reflejen enigmáticas desapariciones, inventos precursores que nunca llegaron a ver la luz, los veranos, hastiados y eternos, de la adolescencia, o artefactos insolitos que desafian la mente y los sentidos, sus historias tienen algo en comun: la inquietante certeza de que, al contrario de lo que nos parece, es dificil definir las fronteras de la realidad. Un universo perturbador y sensual envuelve al lector, y una estructura exquisita plantea sucesivos juegos de opuestos que se potencian, en enfrentamientos que no siempre resuelven las reglas que nos damos en la vida cotidiana. Asi, temas como el tiempo, el miedo o la presencia del otro adquieren en Risas Peligrosas una formulacion nueva ysorprendente. Reflexivos, misteriosos, crueles, humoristicos, brillantes, imaginativos, intensos..., multiples facetas, en fin, de unos cuentos nada triviales.

Fines del siglo XIX: la época que dio luz al tren y la fotografía concluye para dejar paso a la del cinematógrafo. Sin embargo, en una avenida bulliciosa de Berlín cientos de paseantes se agolpan contra las vidrieras de un emporio comercial, atonitos ante unos muñecos animados capaces de expresar emociones con todos los rasgos de la cara. El creador de esas maravillas es un joven provinciano que aprendio los secretos de la mecanica en la relojeria de su padre. Su fantastico don para fabricar automatas de vivacidad sobrenatural y un erotismo melancolico le ganara un lugar, primero, en los escaparates de la moda, y luego en la vida nocturna berlinesa. Pero ese talento que hechiza a algunos adeptos no podra con la tosca sensualidad de las nuevas masas urbanas.A August Eschenburg no le importa soñar sueños errados. A Steven Millhauser, tampoco. Y la literatura, y la inquieta prosa del mundo, lo agradecen y se alumbran, por un instante, como vidrieras.Maria Negroni

Three novellas, all about love in some form: REVENGE, which takes place as a woman is showing a stranger around her house; AN ADVENTURE OF DON JUAN, in which the Don attempts a seduction in an English country house; and THE KING IN THE TREE, based on the story of Tristan and Yseult. A New York Times Notable Book for 2003.

A los dos años, Edwin Mullhouse recitaba a Shakespeare. A los diez, escribió Caricaturas, una novela que la crítica jamás leyó, pero que su mejor amigo y biógrafo, Jeffrey Cartwright, considera la obra de un genio. A los once, Edwin murio en circunstancias misteriosas.Jeffrey, obsesionado con documentar la corta pero intensa existencia de su amigo, reconstruye cada momento con un nivel de detalle inquietante. Desde sus primeros balbuceos hasta su fascinacion por los comics y su historia de amor frustrada con Rose Dorn, esta biografia ficticia desafia la frontera entre realidad y narracion.La primera novela de Steven Millhauser, ganador del premio Pulitzer, es una satira brillante sobre el mito del niño prodigio y una parodia de la biografia como genero. Con ecos de Vladimir Nabokov y Thomas Mann, el autor construye un universo de infancia luminosa y oscura, donde la genialidad y la obsesion se mezclan con la inocencia y el misterio.Una novela deslumbrante, inclasificable y llena de humor, que sigue fascinando a los lectores con su juego de espejos literario.

The Barnum Museum is a combination waxworks, masked ball, and circus sideshow masquerading as a collection of short stories. Within its pages, note such sights as: a study of the motives and strategies used by the participants in the game of Clue, including the seduction of Miss Scarlet by Colonel Mustard; the Barnum Museum, a fantastic, monstrous landmark so compelling that an entire town finds its citizens gradually and inexorably disappearing into it; a bored dilettante who constructs an imaginary woman - and loses her to an imaginary man! - and a legendary magician so skilled at sleight-of-hand that he is pursued by police for the crime of erasing the line between the real and the conjured.

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 Martins 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.

Beloved for the lens of the strange he places on small-town life, Steven Millhauser further reveals in Voices in the Night the darkest parts of our inner selves to brilliant and dazzling effect. Here are stories of wondrously imaginative hyperrealism, stories that pose unsettling what-ifs or that find barely perceivable evils within the safe boundaries of our towns, homes, and even our bodies. Here, too, are stories culled from religion and fables: from Samuel, who in the masterly "A Voice in the Night" hears the voice of God calling him in the night; to a young, pre-enlightenment Buddha; to Rapunzel and her Prince awakened only to everyday disappointment. Heightened by magic, the divine, and the uncanny, shot through with sly humour, Voices in the Night seamlessly combines the whimsy and surprise of the familiar with intoxicating fantasies that take us beyond our daily lives, all done with the hallmark sleight of hand and astonishing virtuosity of one of our greatest modern storytellers.

A magnificent collection from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author: stories from across three decades that showcase his indomitable imagination.Steven Millhausers fiction has consistently, and to dazzling effect, dissolved the boundaries between reality and fantasy, waking life and dreams, the past and the future, darkness and light, love and lust. The stories gathered here unfurl in settings as disparate as nineteenth-century Vienna, a contemporary Connecticut town, the corridors of a monstrous museum, and Thomas Edisons laboratory, and they are inhabited by a wide-ranging cast of characters, including a knife thrower and teenage boys, ghosts and a cartoon cat and mouse. But all of the stories are united in their unfailing power to surprise and enchant. From the earliest to the stunning, previously unpublished novella-length title story-in which a man who is dead, but not quite gone, reaches out to two lonely women-Millhauser "makes our world turn amazing" (The New York Times Book Review).With this collection, Steven Millhauser carves out ever more deeply his wondrous place in the American literary canon.Praise for Steven Millhausers Dangerous Laughter"There is a ferocious restlessness in [these] stories, a mingling of desire and dread...mesmerizing" - Cathleen Medwick, O, The Oprah Magazine "Tales fuelled by curiosity and wonder, from a master...dazzling" - Jeff Turrentine, Washington Post Book World"Beautiful and profound...Millhausers work is among the most thought-provoking Ive ever encountered" - David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Millhauser is a marvel...Dangerous Laughter shimmers with eccentric research, sinuous explorations of the mysteries of artistic creation, and his preternatural sensitivity to the inner lives of children and adolescents...an experience that leaves [us] dazzles, enchanted" - Daniel Dyer, Cleveland Plain Dealer "Absorbing, impeccably imagined...the best [stories] linger strangely, like ghostly taps on your shoulder" - Gregory Kirschling, Entertainment Weekly"Prose wizardry...of such melodic wit and finesse that its more akin to musicmaking than story telling" - Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times "Millhausers lifelong loves-of cartoons, magic, board games, mechanical marvels of the 19th century and the quiet moments of daily life-shine through, and his taste for language and grasp of storytelling are flawless. Truly amazing stories." - Stewart ONan

AN NPR AND NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR An exquisite new collection from a Pulitzer Prizewinning master of the short story, the culmination of a five-decade career: work that takes us beneath the placid surface of suburban life into the elusive strangeness of the everydayHere are eighteen stories of astonishing range and precision. A housewife drinks alone in her Connecticut living room. A guillotine glimmers above a sleepy town green. A pre-recorded customer service message sends a caller into a reverie of unspeakable yearning. With the deft touch and funhouse-mirror perspectives for which he has won countless admirers, Steven Millhauser gives us the towns, marriages, and families of a quintessential American lifestyle that is at once instantly recognizable and profoundly unsettling. Disruptions is a collection of provocative, bracingly original new work from a writer at the peak of his form.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler: sixteen new storiesspellbinding, masterly, sublime (The New York Times Book Review)that delve into the secret lives and desires of ordinary people, alongside retellings of myths and legends that highlight the aspirations of the human spirit.Beloved for the lens of the strange he places on small town life, Steven Millhauser further reveals in Voices in the Night the darkest parts of our inner selves to brilliant and dazzling effect. Here are stories of wondrously imaginative hyperrealism, stories that pose unforgettably unsettling what-ifs, or that find barely perceivable evils within the safe boundaries of our towns, homes, and even within our bodies.Here, too, are stories culled from religion and fables: Samuel, who hears the voice of God calling him in the night; a young, pre-enlightenment Buddha, who searches for his purpose in life; Rapunzel and her Prince, who struggle to fit the real world to their dream.Heightened by magic, the divine, and the uncanny, shot through with sly and winning humor, Voices in the Night seamlessly combines the whimsy and surprise of the familiar with intoxicating fantasies that take us beyond our daily lives, all done with the hallmark sleight of hand and astonishing virtuosity of one of our greatest contemporary storytellers.