Martin Dressler: the Tale of an American Dreamer [Hardcover]

Steve Millhauser, in both the subtitle of this book and the opening lines quoted above, notifies the reader that the story of Martin Dressler is the stuff of myth, and an intensely American myth at that. In the New York City of the 1890s, Martin rises from humble beginnings in his father's cigar store to become the City's greatest hotelier. With each new wildly successful venture, Martin's dreams grow in scope. Until he arrives at his final creation, the Grand Cosmo, with subterranean levels and hidden rooms. It houses impossibilities like trout streams and geysers, boardwalks and bazaars :

[T]he Grand Cosmo was not a tourist attraction or a hotel for transients, but a world within the world, rivaling the world; and whoever entered its walls had no further need of that other world.

But when it starts to fail, Martin wonders if he is at last a victim of hubris :

For surely the Grand Cosmo was an act of disobedience. Or he was being punished for something deeper than crime, for a desire, a forbidden desire, the desire to create the world ?

Indeed, this time Martin has gone too far and not all the genius of his creation, nor the power of his advertisements and promotions can save the Grand Cosmo from failure. But as the story ends and he looks back on his life he is relatively content :

For he had done as he liked, he had gone his own way, built his castle in the air. And if in the end he had dreamed the wrong dream, the dream that others didn't wish to enter, then that was the way of dreams, it was only to be expected, he had no desire to have dreamt otherwise.

Besides the magic tinged prose, something like a cross between E. L Doctorow and Mark Helprin, what gives the book its great power is this essential vision. Of course Martin has dared too much and has left his patrons behind, but there's a strong sense throughout, even as he's failing, that such extravagant dreamers are central to American innovation, even central to human progress. For what may have started out as a comment on the all-consuming nature of capitalism and of the American Dream, ends up partaking of the Fall of Man and dealing with the mad ambitions that drive the species. Martin's dreams may ultimately come a cropper, but how much worse never to have dreamed ? This is an ambitious attempt at epic mythmaking which succeeds brilliantly.

GRADE : A+

This novel is as textually rich as a novel can be, but one must dig a little deeper, as Martin digs deeper into the earth in each successive structure he creates. It is also a novel of psychology, as Martin also digs deeper and deeper into his subconscious mind as the novel progresses. This is a multi-tiered work, operating on so many levels as to leave one dazzled at the sheer scope of the enterprise. Such works are easily dismissed by the masses, which is why it is surprising that the Pulitzer committee, so often gravitating to the successful and the obvious, definitely got one right in this instance.

The structure of the novel parallels the themes and "plot" of Millhauser's story. In the first few chapters we find ourselves inhabiting a rather mundane, prosaic, grounded reality, as Martin, the son of a cigar-store owner (as was William Paley), is presented as an industrious, intelligent young man who is liked by everyone he encounters. He is, in these early stages, marked more by his efficiency than his imagination. As the novel progresses, we find ourselves venturing further and further from the ordinary and the possible, into the realm of the extraordinary and then the impossible. The move is from terra-firma to terra incognita, from reality as we understand it to the realm of fantasy and magical-realism. It is also as if Martin's mind deteriorates (transmutates?) from sanity to insanity as he descends (or is it ascends?) into his dreamscape.

There is also an element of Greek fatalism at work here, as Martin is led along in his voyage of discovery by powers greater than himself: "...again he had the old dream-sense that friendly powers were leading him along, powers sympathetic to his deepest desires." Whether or not the gods at work here are truly benign is one of the issues that are not thoroughly resolved in the course of the book, just as they never were in Greek tragedy. Those desiring neat resolutions, should in fact, stick to more mundane, uni-dimensional novels.

Martin's relationship with his wife, Caroline, is also the subject of much criticism at this site. Millhauser is enigmatic on this score as well. He makes obvious her position as the sleeping beauty alone in her tower, whom the prince (Martin) cannot awaken. Yet the mythic elements go deeper than that. The Vernon women also connote the three godesses (Hera, Athena and Aphrodite) at the judgement of Paris, with Martin obviously representing Paris. Martin's/Paris' selection of Aphrodite sets in motion the final catastrophe.

Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of Martin's character is his invisibility (though one reviewer did mention Ellison in passing). Martin starts out as substantive and real, but is transformed further and further until at last he, like his dream, "was left behind to fade slowly into the blue-gray mist of dawn..." In the final chapter he is described as feeling "light, transparent," yet he has actually become transparent long before this. Martin is a ghost haunting the various regions of turn-of-the-century New York. His erotic impulses involve approaching women from behind, so that no faces are involved. It may also be noted that Millhauser never really shows us what Martin looks like, except for a passing remark about clean-shaven cheeks or a slightly bushy mustache. This is an obvious choice on the author's part as he is highly descriptive about many other characters.

For those of you who have dismissed this book for its lack of substance or coherence, it may be suggested that you have indeed missed the boat on this one. This is a novel of rich texture and meaning that may require more than a cursory reading if you are to discover its truths and its ultimate "message." Read it again in the context of myth and possibly even as a companion piece to a work such as C.S. Lewis' <Till We Have Faces> to fathom just how deep this novel is. My only slight criticism is that in the final chapters Millhauser descends to spelling out the allegory for those who hadn't gotten it up that point. Great artists leave that up to the reader/spectator. If not for that slight flaw, this novel would have stood in the front ranks of recent storytelling.