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.
Ingeniously written and orchestrated, each exhibit in The Barnum Museum will compel you to continue, each story becoming a lure to the next.
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The Barnum Museum
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.
Ingeniously written and orchestrated, each exhibit in The Barnum Museum will compel you to continue, each story becoming a lure to the next.
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.
Ingeniously written and orchestrated, each exhibit in The Barnum Museum will compel you to continue, each story becoming a lure to the next.
Steven Millhauser was born in 1943 in New York City. He received a B.A. from Columbia University in 1965, and
went on to pursue a doctorate in English at Brown University. He never
completed his dissertation. Millhauser became best known for his short stories; immaculately written, curiously
vivid, they trod on fantastic boards in a manner reminiscent of Poe or
Borges, but with a distinctively American voice. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for his novel Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer. Steven Millhauser taught at Skidmore College for almost thirty years and lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.
What People are Saying About This
Peter Straub
What a pleasure it is to read a writer this good—Millhauser seems sometimes to return us to the original sources of art, the awe and wonder before the untrustworthy but beautiful force of existence. . . . I love this writer and this book.
Magical kingdoms. Mysterious elixirs. A mermaid washed ashore. Contemporary fabulist and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Steven Millhauser’s newest collection of short stories, Voices In The Night, released last month, bringing us more of the modern-day fables and uncanny tales he’s known for. April also marked the premiere of The Sisterhood of Night, a movie based on Millhauser’s story of […]
