Edwin Mullhouse

''Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943–1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright'' is the critically acclaimedhttp://www.ric.edu/faculty/rpotter/millhauser.htm Steven Millhauser by Dr. Russell A. Potter, Rhode Island College debut novel by American author Steven Millhauser, published in 1972 and written in the form of a biography of a fictitious person by a fictitious author.''The Library Journal'', 15th Aug 1972 It was Millhauser's best known novel until the publication of his Pulitzer Prize-winning ''Martin Dressler'' in 1997, and according to Patrick McGrath writing in ''The New York Times'' it is his best work. ''Edwin Mullhouse'' is described by ''Publishers Weekly'' as a 'cult novel'.

Plot introduction

Jeffrey Cartwright plays Boswell to Edwin Mullhouse's Johnson, and writes his biography. Edwin is an "eccentric young show-off who fancied himself something of a literary wonder"; he writes a novel at age ten, but dies mysteriously at age eleven.

The biography is divided into three parts:
# The Early Years: Aug. 1, 1943 – Aug. 1, 1949: The "pre-literate years" in which Cartwright tells of Edwin's birth and childhood in Newfield, Connecticut including time spent in Kindergarten.
# The Middle Years: Aug. 2, 1949 – Aug. 1, 1952: The "literate years" when Edwin attends school; his tragic obsession with Rose Dorn featuring prominently.
# The Late Years: Aug. 2, 1952 – Aug. 1, 1954: The "literary years" cover the writing of Edwin's novel ''Cartoons'' and his untimely death.

Reception

William Hjortsberg from ''The New York Times'' praised the novel, saying it
:displays an enviable amount of craft, the harsh discipline that carves through the scar‐tissue of personality painfully developed during a process known as 'growing‐up.' ... ''Edwin Mullhouse'' evokes the world of children with delicacy and precision... Steven Millhauser has written a rare and carefully evoked novel. He tells us quite a bit about the nature of children and supplies us with a few useful clues about art in the process.

Hjortsberg concluded that

:If the story is sometimes slow, it is never uninteresting, and the high points soar with the breath‐held clarity of true fiction. You won't find the plot in this review; only your bookseller can supply that. The title about sums it up for the pill‐takers.

Zachary Leader in the ''London Review of Books'' was also positive, although his review was written some seven years after the book's American publication:

:Stephen Millhauser, for all his novel's faults, is dazzlingly gifted, not just in the richly sensual precision and wit of his writing (the 'hot blue bulb' of the silver camera flash Edwin's father brings him, 'so that he can press his fingernails into the soft warm bumps of glass'), or his encyclopedic knowledge of the minutiae of American childhood ('paper bags and scraps of waxpaper tumbling across the deserted playground'), but in the gathering menace with which Jeffrey’s Humbert-like obsessiveness is revealed, and the (on the whole) becoming tentativeness with which its relation to the hoary chestnuts 'Art v. Life' and 'Intellect v. Instinct' is suggested.Cartoon Quality, ''London Review of Books'', 5 December 1979
Retrieved 7/1/2023.

References

{{reflist

External links

The Mookse and the Gripes, Book reviews of contemporary literary fiction and modern classics

1972 British novels
1972 debut novels
English novels
Novels set in Connecticut
Novels about writers
Alfred A. Knopf books
Postmodern novels
Biographies about writers