Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (Vintage Contemporaries) - Softcover

Millhauser, Steven

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679781277 ISBN 13: 9780679781271

Publisher: Vintage Books, 1997

Synopsis

Young Martin Dressler begins his career as a helper in his father's cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top. His visions grow more and more fantastical as he plans his ultimate creation: the Grand Cosmo, in which he attempts to capture the entire world and its dreams. Accompanied on this journey by two sisters - one a dreamlike shadow, the other a wordly business partner - Martin walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry. The Grand Cosmo is his triumph and his undoing, the bold conclusion to this biography of the twentieth-century notion of progress, this mesmerizing journey to the heart of the American dream.

About this title

Review:

"This wonderful, wonder-full book is a fable and phantasmagoria of the sources of our century."--The New York Times Book Review

"The novel is told as a fable, with prose both lush and dreamlike. The characters are intentionally rather shadowy, while the period details- of building construction, interior design, dress styles, street scenes--have a sensuality so palpable you can practically chew on them."--The Wall Street Journal

"A Chronicle of obsession, self-indulgence, and, in a curious way, moral growth, expertly poised between realistic narrative and allegorical fable.... A fascinating and provocative portrayal of turn-of-the-century America that hums with energy and wit." --Kirkus Reviews

"Literature's romance with building-as-metaphor earns new energy through Millhauser's latest novel...which quietly chronicles the life of an entrepreneur whose career peaks when he builds a fabulous hotel.... Taking its place alongside other fine tales of architectural symbology, from Poe to Ayn Rand, this enticing novel becomes at once a tale of life, a marriage and a creative imagination in crisis." --Publishers Weekly

Book Description:

Martin Dressler tells the story of a young entrepreneur in late-nineteenth-century New York City whose ambition to make concrete an elusive dream leads to a fabulous creation that houses the imagination itself. Winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0679781277
• ISBN 13: 9780679781271
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304