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Little Kingdoms
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler delivers an inventive collection of three novellas that are a magical companion to his acclaimed longer fictions. • "Millhauser makes our world turn amazing!" — The New York Times Book Review
Cartoons that draw their creator into another world; demonic paintings that exert a sinister influence on our own. Fairy tales that express the secret losses and anxieties of their tellers. These are the elements that Steven Millhauser employs to such marvelous—and often disquieting—effect in Little Kingdoms.
In "The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne," a gentle eccentric constructs an elaborate alternate universe that is all the more appealing for being transparently unreal. "The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon" is at once a gothic tale of nightmarish jealousy and a meditation on the human need for exaltation and horror. And "Catalogue of the Exhibition" introduces us to the oeuvre of Edmund Moorash, a Romantic painter who might have been imagined by Nabokov or Poe. Exuberantly inventive, as mysterious as dreams, these novellas will delight, mesmerize, and transport anyone who reads them.
Cartoons that draw their creator into another world; demonic paintings that exert a sinister influence on our own. Fairy tales that express the secret losses and anxieties of their tellers. These are the elements that Steven Millhauser employs to such marvelous—and often disquieting—effect in Little Kingdoms.
In "The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne," a gentle eccentric constructs an elaborate alternate universe that is all the more appealing for being transparently unreal. "The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon" is at once a gothic tale of nightmarish jealousy and a meditation on the human need for exaltation and horror. And "Catalogue of the Exhibition" introduces us to the oeuvre of Edmund Moorash, a Romantic painter who might have been imagined by Nabokov or Poe. Exuberantly inventive, as mysterious as dreams, these novellas will delight, mesmerize, and transport anyone who reads them.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
18 people are currently reading
607 people want to read
About the author
Steven Millhauser
67 books473 followersMillhauser was born in New York City, grew up in Connecticut, and earned a B.A. from Columbia University in 1965. He then pursued a doctorate in English at Brown University. He never completed his dissertation but wrote parts of Edwin Mullhouse and From the Realm of Morpheus in two separate stays at Brown. Between times at the university, he wrote Portrait of a Romantic at his parents' house in Connecticut. His story "The Invention of Robert Herendeen" (in The Barnum Museum) features a failed student who has moved back in with his parents; the story is loosely based on this period of Millhauser's life.
Until the Pulitzer Prize, Millhauser was best known for his 1972 debut novel, Edwin Mullhouse. This novel, about a precocious writer whose career ends abruptly with his death at age eleven, features the fictional Jeffrey Cartwright playing Boswell to Edwin's Johnson. Edwin Mullhouse brought critical acclaim, and Millhauser followed with a second novel, Portrait of a Romantic, in 1977, and his first collection of short stories, In The Penny Arcade, in 1986.
Possibly the most well-known of his short stories is "Eisenheim the Illusionist" (published in "The Barnum Museum"), based on a pseudo-mythical tale of a magician who stunned audiences in Vienna in the latter part of the 19th century. It was made into the film, The Illusionist (2006).
Millhauser's stories often treat fantasy themes in a manner reminiscent of Poe or Borges, with a distinctively American voice. As critic Russell Potter has noted, "in (Millhauser's stories), mechanical cowboys at penny arcades come to life; curious amusement parks, museums, or catacombs beckon with secret passageways and walking automata; dreamers dream and children fly out their windows at night on magic carpets."
Millhauser's collections of stories continued with The Barnum Museum (1990), Little Kingdoms (1993), and The Knife Thrower and Other Stories (1998). The unexpected success of Martin Dressler in 1997 brought Millhauser increased attention. Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories made the New York Times Book Review list of "10 Best Books of 2008".
Millhauser lives in Saratoga Springs, New York and teaches at Skidmore College.
Until the Pulitzer Prize, Millhauser was best known for his 1972 debut novel, Edwin Mullhouse. This novel, about a precocious writer whose career ends abruptly with his death at age eleven, features the fictional Jeffrey Cartwright playing Boswell to Edwin's Johnson. Edwin Mullhouse brought critical acclaim, and Millhauser followed with a second novel, Portrait of a Romantic, in 1977, and his first collection of short stories, In The Penny Arcade, in 1986.
Possibly the most well-known of his short stories is "Eisenheim the Illusionist" (published in "The Barnum Museum"), based on a pseudo-mythical tale of a magician who stunned audiences in Vienna in the latter part of the 19th century. It was made into the film, The Illusionist (2006).
Millhauser's stories often treat fantasy themes in a manner reminiscent of Poe or Borges, with a distinctively American voice. As critic Russell Potter has noted, "in (Millhauser's stories), mechanical cowboys at penny arcades come to life; curious amusement parks, museums, or catacombs beckon with secret passageways and walking automata; dreamers dream and children fly out their windows at night on magic carpets."
Millhauser's collections of stories continued with The Barnum Museum (1990), Little Kingdoms (1993), and The Knife Thrower and Other Stories (1998). The unexpected success of Martin Dressler in 1997 brought Millhauser increased attention. Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories made the New York Times Book Review list of "10 Best Books of 2008".
Millhauser lives in Saratoga Springs, New York and teaches at Skidmore College.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
September 13, 2016
Hay escritores secretos, y Steven Millhauser es uno de ellos. Son de ese tipo de escritores que quieren pasar desapercibidos y no conceden entrevistas, aunque sin llegar a los extremos de Salinger o Pynchon. En cuanto a sus historias, residen en un territorio indefinido, entre lo real y lo fantástico. Millhauser crea, imagina personajes históricos que nunca existieron pero que podrían haber existido. Su bella, perfecta y pulcra prosa (he leído cuatro libros de Millhauser traducidos al castellano por tres traductores diferentes y la calidad sigue estando ahí) narra sobre artistas de todo tipo que intentan escapar de la realidad dejando atrás lo real por los sueños.
’Pequeños reinos’ consta de tres cuentos largos:
El pequeño reino de John Franklin Payne es la historia de un caricaturista de principios del siglo XX. Todo comienza una madrugada de julio de 1920, en que Franklin, abstraído en su trabajo, decide salir a pasear por el tejado de su casa. Este tono de melancolía impregna y marca el resto del relato, donde asistimos al camino escogido por Franklin para la consecución de su sueño. El relato es luminoso, sencillamente maravilloso.
La princesa, el enano y la mazmorra parece un cuento de hadas, pero es más bien un relato histórico sobre una ciudad y su castillo. La historia está despojada de magia, y el tema central son el amor, los celos y la pérdida. El relato está dividido en diferentes segmentos, contándose en unos la narración de los protagonistas del castillo, y en otros la historia de la comarca, de tal manera que las vidas de los habitantes del pueblo están presididas por las historias que se cuentan del castillo, que se han convertido casi en leyendas. Resulta fascinante cómo Millhauser va desarrollando la historia.
Catálogo de la exposición: el arte de Edmund Moorash, 1810-1846 es un relato complejo en su construcción, que no en su comprensión. Millhauser nos da a conocer la vida de este pintor ficticio a través de sus cuadros. Mediante la descripción de sus cuadros, como si de postales se tratase, vamos conociendo cómo surgió la idea, y sobre todo cómo era Moorash y su hermana Elizabeth y sus amigos más allegados. El compilador del catálogo realiza un profundo análisis psicológico de los personajes, haciendo uso también de diversos fragmentos de los diarios de Elizabeth y de una de sus amigas. Mediante el examen de los lienzos por parte de este erudito compilador, se nos va desvelando una historia fascinante, donde la experiencia humana y el arte se conjugan para dar lugar al retrato de este artista.
Leer a Millhauser es toda una experiencia a la que es difícil resistirse. Sin lugar a dudas, Millhauser es todo un alquimista.
’Pequeños reinos’ consta de tres cuentos largos:
El pequeño reino de John Franklin Payne es la historia de un caricaturista de principios del siglo XX. Todo comienza una madrugada de julio de 1920, en que Franklin, abstraído en su trabajo, decide salir a pasear por el tejado de su casa. Este tono de melancolía impregna y marca el resto del relato, donde asistimos al camino escogido por Franklin para la consecución de su sueño. El relato es luminoso, sencillamente maravilloso.
La princesa, el enano y la mazmorra parece un cuento de hadas, pero es más bien un relato histórico sobre una ciudad y su castillo. La historia está despojada de magia, y el tema central son el amor, los celos y la pérdida. El relato está dividido en diferentes segmentos, contándose en unos la narración de los protagonistas del castillo, y en otros la historia de la comarca, de tal manera que las vidas de los habitantes del pueblo están presididas por las historias que se cuentan del castillo, que se han convertido casi en leyendas. Resulta fascinante cómo Millhauser va desarrollando la historia.
Catálogo de la exposición: el arte de Edmund Moorash, 1810-1846 es un relato complejo en su construcción, que no en su comprensión. Millhauser nos da a conocer la vida de este pintor ficticio a través de sus cuadros. Mediante la descripción de sus cuadros, como si de postales se tratase, vamos conociendo cómo surgió la idea, y sobre todo cómo era Moorash y su hermana Elizabeth y sus amigos más allegados. El compilador del catálogo realiza un profundo análisis psicológico de los personajes, haciendo uso también de diversos fragmentos de los diarios de Elizabeth y de una de sus amigas. Mediante el examen de los lienzos por parte de este erudito compilador, se nos va desvelando una historia fascinante, donde la experiencia humana y el arte se conjugan para dar lugar al retrato de este artista.
Leer a Millhauser es toda una experiencia a la que es difícil resistirse. Sin lugar a dudas, Millhauser es todo un alquimista.
October 15, 2022
My favorite of the four books I’ve read by Millhauser. And probably in my top 5 of all time.
couldn-t-get-through-it
January 30, 2020DNF about a quarter of the way through the first novella. The tedious far outweighed the quaint for me. I'll give this author another chance some day.
March 29, 2016
Other Princesses, Other Castles
Steven Millhauser is a wizard. Or better yet, a magician. Observe:
A sly trick, Steven: where an ordinary writer would describe a snowstorm in accurate, realistic detail to produce a familiar scene, Millhauser describes an image better than the real thing. A passage like this doesn't make me yearn for the snows of yesteryear; I want Millhauser's snowstorms, dammit. The effect of the prose is unmistakable, but from our side of the page it's hard to say just how it happened. Again, magician. And as with magic tricks, it's not a matter of incantations, but of good craftsmanship: pull a single word or comma from the page, and the passage collapses. Look at those adjectives; our craftsman doesn't have the novice's over-reliance on adjectives, nor the journeyman's ascetic denial of them, but the master's sense of the right one in the right place. And reader, there's a lot of mastery in Little Kingdoms.
That one's from "The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne," the first and finest piece in the book. Our eponymous hero, an illustrator for the papers in 1920's New York, seeks refuge from daily troubles of work and wife in nightly voyages to his eponymous attic. In his little moonlit kingdom, Payne animates his daydreams, drawing elaborate, metaphysical cartoons about carnival tricks and living dolls large enough to dribble the Moon over the Brooklyn Bridge. Out in the real, venal world, his work frays his health and relationships, and unkind allies try to profit from his brilliance. It's classic künstlerroman kitsch, but there are no soul-smithies or overwrought sorrows here: Payne is a stoic man, and his inner fantasias are visions of another existence, not coloring-book therapy or declarations of What Art Means. Whether those visions are redemptive or maddening is, thankfully, unclear. Millhauser leaves enough space in the soft, trippy ending to let you draw your own conclusions. This is a masterful story, an opening cartoon good enough to justify the whole ticket. But there's more.
J. Franklin Payne deliberately avoids using cels in animation because he likes to manipulate the backgrounds of his stories; in the next novella, "The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon," Millhauser does the same with the background to a very familiar type of chivalric story about, well, you can guess. Unlike "Payne," though, this one makes its uncertainty the point: there is no single tale of the Princess, the Dwarf, the Dungeon, the Prince, and the Margrave in the castle over the city, but rather an endless variety of combinatoric possibilities between them, each worked out and interpreted by the townsfolk. Even in their bourgeois prosperity, the age of chivalry long gone, they live in the long shadow of their castle and its legend, which proves hospitable to their every dream, longing, and wish.
"Catalogue of the Exhibition" is the slightest of the three novellas, although given its bedfellows this is no insult. The overriding theme is the Gothic: the artist-catalog conceit is a modern twist on the oldest Gothic device, the found manuscript, and the story told in the description of some two dozen paintings is the most Gothic of stories, the Cursed Artwork. The ekphrasis is weaker than "Payne, "the structural device is put to less use than "The Princess" and its massive tangents occasionally strain credibility (assuming we're not dealing with a Kinbote type, that is), but you could do much, much worse if you're looking for some morbidity. Savor the foreshadowing by noting the death dates for characters, all given early on for the careful reader's attention.
This turned out longer than I thought--not very Millhauserian. There's a lot more that we could say about Little Kingdoms--the shared themes of artists and imagination, the difficulties of interpretation, ekphrasis--but let's follow the example of the master and leave just enough to pique the interest.
Steven Millhauser is a wizard. Or better yet, a magician. Observe:
The swirling lines of snow were composed of separate flakes, and each flake was a cluster of separate ice crystals--scientists had counted over a hundred of them in a single flake. Under the microscope each minuscule crystal, colorless and transparent, revealed a secret symmetry: six sides, the outward expression of an inward geometry of frozen molecules of water. But the real wonder was that no two crystals were precisely alike. In one of this father's camera magazines he had seen a stunning display of photomicrographs, and what was most amazing about the enlarged crystals was that each contained in its center a whole world of intricate six-sided designs, caused by microscopic air pockets. For no conceivable reason, Nature in a kind of exuberance created an inexhaustible outpouring of variations on a single form. A snowstorm was a fall of jewels, a delirium of hexagons--clearly the work of a master animator.
A sly trick, Steven: where an ordinary writer would describe a snowstorm in accurate, realistic detail to produce a familiar scene, Millhauser describes an image better than the real thing. A passage like this doesn't make me yearn for the snows of yesteryear; I want Millhauser's snowstorms, dammit. The effect of the prose is unmistakable, but from our side of the page it's hard to say just how it happened. Again, magician. And as with magic tricks, it's not a matter of incantations, but of good craftsmanship: pull a single word or comma from the page, and the passage collapses. Look at those adjectives; our craftsman doesn't have the novice's over-reliance on adjectives, nor the journeyman's ascetic denial of them, but the master's sense of the right one in the right place. And reader, there's a lot of mastery in Little Kingdoms.
That one's from "The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne," the first and finest piece in the book. Our eponymous hero, an illustrator for the papers in 1920's New York, seeks refuge from daily troubles of work and wife in nightly voyages to his eponymous attic. In his little moonlit kingdom, Payne animates his daydreams, drawing elaborate, metaphysical cartoons about carnival tricks and living dolls large enough to dribble the Moon over the Brooklyn Bridge. Out in the real, venal world, his work frays his health and relationships, and unkind allies try to profit from his brilliance. It's classic künstlerroman kitsch, but there are no soul-smithies or overwrought sorrows here: Payne is a stoic man, and his inner fantasias are visions of another existence, not coloring-book therapy or declarations of What Art Means. Whether those visions are redemptive or maddening is, thankfully, unclear. Millhauser leaves enough space in the soft, trippy ending to let you draw your own conclusions. This is a masterful story, an opening cartoon good enough to justify the whole ticket. But there's more.
J. Franklin Payne deliberately avoids using cels in animation because he likes to manipulate the backgrounds of his stories; in the next novella, "The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon," Millhauser does the same with the background to a very familiar type of chivalric story about, well, you can guess. Unlike "Payne," though, this one makes its uncertainty the point: there is no single tale of the Princess, the Dwarf, the Dungeon, the Prince, and the Margrave in the castle over the city, but rather an endless variety of combinatoric possibilities between them, each worked out and interpreted by the townsfolk. Even in their bourgeois prosperity, the age of chivalry long gone, they live in the long shadow of their castle and its legend, which proves hospitable to their every dream, longing, and wish.
"Catalogue of the Exhibition" is the slightest of the three novellas, although given its bedfellows this is no insult. The overriding theme is the Gothic: the artist-catalog conceit is a modern twist on the oldest Gothic device, the found manuscript, and the story told in the description of some two dozen paintings is the most Gothic of stories, the Cursed Artwork. The ekphrasis is weaker than "Payne, "the structural device is put to less use than "The Princess" and its massive tangents occasionally strain credibility (assuming we're not dealing with a Kinbote type, that is), but you could do much, much worse if you're looking for some morbidity. Savor the foreshadowing by noting the death dates for characters, all given early on for the careful reader's attention.
This turned out longer than I thought--not very Millhauserian. There's a lot more that we could say about Little Kingdoms--the shared themes of artists and imagination, the difficulties of interpretation, ekphrasis--but let's follow the example of the master and leave just enough to pique the interest.
March 4, 2009
Wonderful! My feelings toward Millhauser and a little like my feelings about Murakami: once I start reading him I never want to stop.
March 30, 2013
This book blew me away. At the same time, it made me feel as though I have never had an original thought in my entire life--at least compared to Millhauser.
November 21, 2020
Many of Steven Millhauser's stories tell of a peculiarly obsessive artist, often a practitioner of anachronistic art (building mechanical figures, knife-throwing, fully hand-drawn cartoons) whose creative process leads him further and further from the “real” world into what I believe Millhauser thinks of as a more real-than-”real” world. There is a fascination with magic, illusion, the fantastic. Not a reversal of “reality” with the the imaginary and the impossible, more a declaration that “reality” gives way under intense, honest scrutiny, to something beyond. And whether or not this review is sensible, I don't anticipate much argument on two points: 1) Millhauser is one of the most exceptionally gifted writers for vivid recollection of the most pertinent details of childhood (real or imagined or perhaps researched, it doesn't matter), and 2) the point of his stories is to not to revel in that beauty, but to use those details as a springboard into a meta-reality.
Consider this excerpt from The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne, the first of three novellas in Little Kingdoms, p. 72, describing Franklin's evolving technique in drawing his “fantasy” cartoons: “As the violations of the real became more marked, the perspective backgrounds became fuller and more detailed; and as he gave way to impulses of wild, sweet freedom, he found himself paying close attention to the look of things in the actual world: the exact unfolding of metal steps at the top of a down escalator, the precise pattern of reflections in the panes of a revolving door seen from inside.” (Surely there's significance in the choice of the metaphor of the descent, and of reflection, but we don't even have to go there to get the point.)
The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne is an escalating sequence, a bridge from our world to another, from the real to the unreal, a succession of: three cartoons of increasing detail, length and complexity; of the arrival of three uninvited parties to a private event, the unlikelihood of whose appearance increases exponentially with each arrival, from yet deeper past. Or is it only the recounting of a descent into madness, or at the least, into an intensely private existence, as Franklin loses contact with the adult world as a result of his increasingly obsessive imaginative work?
The narrator of the story who is not quite Franklin, but perhaps the voice of Franklin's own inner narrator, puts it like this (p. 107): “The animated cartoon was a far more honest expression of the cinematic illusion than the so-called realistic film, because the cartoon reveled in its own illusory nature, exulted in the impossible – indeed it claimed the impossible as its own, exalted it as its own highest end, found in impossibility, in the negation of the actual, its profoundest reason for being. The animated cartoon was nothing but the poetry of the impossible – therein lay its exhilaration and its secret melancholy.”
These observations lead naturally to the question of what Millhauser's own artistic pursuit is doing for and to him. Of course, all artists are altered by their work, but Millhauser's work is often explicitly about that topic. I'm not saying that he is actually attempting to perform real magic through his writing. Or maybe I am suggesting that he is – or at least a sort of personal transformation – that his aims are as much to transform reality as to depict it.
Of the other two novellas in Little Kingdoms, The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon is the more interesting. It is told in first person plural, as the collective or editorial voice of common people living in a town across the river from a brooding castle. Millhauser has several castle stories, perhaps the most similar being Cathay. Castles being magical places, in which objects and people are built and bred to their most ingrown extremes, and about which there is always much speculation and invention. But I need to return to my own magical realms, so we'll rely on others to continue this review.
Consider this excerpt from The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne, the first of three novellas in Little Kingdoms, p. 72, describing Franklin's evolving technique in drawing his “fantasy” cartoons: “As the violations of the real became more marked, the perspective backgrounds became fuller and more detailed; and as he gave way to impulses of wild, sweet freedom, he found himself paying close attention to the look of things in the actual world: the exact unfolding of metal steps at the top of a down escalator, the precise pattern of reflections in the panes of a revolving door seen from inside.” (Surely there's significance in the choice of the metaphor of the descent, and of reflection, but we don't even have to go there to get the point.)
The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne is an escalating sequence, a bridge from our world to another, from the real to the unreal, a succession of: three cartoons of increasing detail, length and complexity; of the arrival of three uninvited parties to a private event, the unlikelihood of whose appearance increases exponentially with each arrival, from yet deeper past. Or is it only the recounting of a descent into madness, or at the least, into an intensely private existence, as Franklin loses contact with the adult world as a result of his increasingly obsessive imaginative work?
The narrator of the story who is not quite Franklin, but perhaps the voice of Franklin's own inner narrator, puts it like this (p. 107): “The animated cartoon was a far more honest expression of the cinematic illusion than the so-called realistic film, because the cartoon reveled in its own illusory nature, exulted in the impossible – indeed it claimed the impossible as its own, exalted it as its own highest end, found in impossibility, in the negation of the actual, its profoundest reason for being. The animated cartoon was nothing but the poetry of the impossible – therein lay its exhilaration and its secret melancholy.”
These observations lead naturally to the question of what Millhauser's own artistic pursuit is doing for and to him. Of course, all artists are altered by their work, but Millhauser's work is often explicitly about that topic. I'm not saying that he is actually attempting to perform real magic through his writing. Or maybe I am suggesting that he is – or at least a sort of personal transformation – that his aims are as much to transform reality as to depict it.
Of the other two novellas in Little Kingdoms, The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon is the more interesting. It is told in first person plural, as the collective or editorial voice of common people living in a town across the river from a brooding castle. Millhauser has several castle stories, perhaps the most similar being Cathay. Castles being magical places, in which objects and people are built and bred to their most ingrown extremes, and about which there is always much speculation and invention. But I need to return to my own magical realms, so we'll rely on others to continue this review.
August 3, 2024
Steven,
I really adored this book. I haven't read very many novellas so I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I found it very fun to read three very different stories that all had similar styles in a way.
My favourite was certainly the first, and longest, 'The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne'. This story was so magical, yet simultaneously grounded. Franklin's huge imagination often led to things happening that weren't quite real - like the midnight walk around the gables of his house. Or maybe that did really happen. I thought Max was an incredibly funny character, with a brilliant introduction. I saw the affair between Max and Cora a long time before Franklin did, but then, Franklin was off in his imagination. The ending made me cry, because I'm pretty sure that the people who came to see his animation's first showing - Cora, Max, Kroll, and his parents - were not really there. I believed it at first until his parents showed up. Then I realized he was probably imagining everyone who was in attendance, except his daughter. Absolutely heartbreaking.
The second story, 'The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon' was very interesting. It was a cool format, telling it from the point of view of the villagers telling stories of what was going on up in the castle. The way that the prince's jealousy festered and grew and caused him to treat the princess so poorly, despite the wonderful start of their relationship, was a very good lesson for those having their first relationships - the importance of trust and good communication. I liked the characterization of Scarbo - completely out for himself, very clever, but still susceptible to falling in love. I do wish it had had a specific ending, though. I understand that the point was the in the village people tell all sorts of endings to these stories - but I want to know what happens to the margrave, and the princess, and Scarbo!
The third story, 'Catalogue of the Exhibition: The Art of Edmund Moorash (1810-1846)' was in a very interesting format (which I wasn't sure about at first, but grew to like) and reminded me a bit of the episode of Cabinet of Curiosities named 'Pickman's Model' (I haven't read the original H.P. Lovecraft story). That episode also has paintings which seem haunted and cause extreme reactions in those who see them. It was a cool bit of foreshadowing that the year of birth and death were shown with the introduction of all characters - eventually I realized they all died the same year and had a growing sense of doom about it. I found it very eerie and liked it a lot. I could imagine all the pictures perfectly, the descriptions were very comprehensive.
Thank you for this book,
Jordan
I really adored this book. I haven't read very many novellas so I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I found it very fun to read three very different stories that all had similar styles in a way.
My favourite was certainly the first, and longest, 'The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne'. This story was so magical, yet simultaneously grounded. Franklin's huge imagination often led to things happening that weren't quite real - like the midnight walk around the gables of his house. Or maybe that did really happen. I thought Max was an incredibly funny character, with a brilliant introduction. I saw the affair between Max and Cora a long time before Franklin did, but then, Franklin was off in his imagination. The ending made me cry, because I'm pretty sure that the people who came to see his animation's first showing - Cora, Max, Kroll, and his parents - were not really there. I believed it at first until his parents showed up. Then I realized he was probably imagining everyone who was in attendance, except his daughter. Absolutely heartbreaking.
The second story, 'The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon' was very interesting. It was a cool format, telling it from the point of view of the villagers telling stories of what was going on up in the castle. The way that the prince's jealousy festered and grew and caused him to treat the princess so poorly, despite the wonderful start of their relationship, was a very good lesson for those having their first relationships - the importance of trust and good communication. I liked the characterization of Scarbo - completely out for himself, very clever, but still susceptible to falling in love. I do wish it had had a specific ending, though. I understand that the point was the in the village people tell all sorts of endings to these stories - but I want to know what happens to the margrave, and the princess, and Scarbo!
The third story, 'Catalogue of the Exhibition: The Art of Edmund Moorash (1810-1846)' was in a very interesting format (which I wasn't sure about at first, but grew to like) and reminded me a bit of the episode of Cabinet of Curiosities named 'Pickman's Model' (I haven't read the original H.P. Lovecraft story). That episode also has paintings which seem haunted and cause extreme reactions in those who see them. It was a cool bit of foreshadowing that the year of birth and death were shown with the introduction of all characters - eventually I realized they all died the same year and had a growing sense of doom about it. I found it very eerie and liked it a lot. I could imagine all the pictures perfectly, the descriptions were very comprehensive.
Thank you for this book,
Jordan
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 19, 2020
Pequeños reinos es mi segunda aproximación al personal universo de Steven Millhauser. Antes había disfrutado de la colección de relatos que se publicara bajo el título de Risas peligrosas.
Recuerdo aquellos relatos por la fina ironía, la meticulosidad y la capacidad del autor de construir universos con pequeñas piezas. No encontré ningún otro título que contuviese relatos. Pequeños reinos fue lo que más se asemejaba a lo que pretendía. Contiene 3 nouevelles. En ellas el estilo del autor queda en todo momento manifiesto.
El pequeño reino de John Frankilin Payne es las primera de las 3 historia que recoge. Se centra en los universos, que como el propio Millhauser, construye un dibujante. No recordaba no obstante a un Millhauser tan descriptivo. No llegué a terminar la historia. Al contrario, La princesa, el enano y ma mazmorra me pareció un simpático y finamente tejido ejercicio de metanarración. Se erige respetando la tradición de los cuentos infantiles clásicos. Sin lugar a dudas, lo más sobresaliente de la obra. Por último, el volumen se cierra con Catálogo de la exposición: el arte de Edmund Moorash, 1810-1846. De nuevo un ejercicio de metanarración. En este caso, construido desde la cronología plástica de un pintor. Cada obra pictórica es una pieza en el puzle de su vida. Una historia que en su narración emplea recursos de la obra y biografía de cualquier pintor.
Si hay algo que rompe mi idilio con Millhauser es su propensión a las escenas descripticas. Pero en cualquier caso, se trata de un autor inteligente, con una voz personal. Probablemente, mi siguiente incursión me lleve a la novela.
Otras opiniones en Otro estúpido blog de un escritor.
Recuerdo aquellos relatos por la fina ironía, la meticulosidad y la capacidad del autor de construir universos con pequeñas piezas. No encontré ningún otro título que contuviese relatos. Pequeños reinos fue lo que más se asemejaba a lo que pretendía. Contiene 3 nouevelles. En ellas el estilo del autor queda en todo momento manifiesto.
El pequeño reino de John Frankilin Payne es las primera de las 3 historia que recoge. Se centra en los universos, que como el propio Millhauser, construye un dibujante. No recordaba no obstante a un Millhauser tan descriptivo. No llegué a terminar la historia. Al contrario, La princesa, el enano y ma mazmorra me pareció un simpático y finamente tejido ejercicio de metanarración. Se erige respetando la tradición de los cuentos infantiles clásicos. Sin lugar a dudas, lo más sobresaliente de la obra. Por último, el volumen se cierra con Catálogo de la exposición: el arte de Edmund Moorash, 1810-1846. De nuevo un ejercicio de metanarración. En este caso, construido desde la cronología plástica de un pintor. Cada obra pictórica es una pieza en el puzle de su vida. Una historia que en su narración emplea recursos de la obra y biografía de cualquier pintor.
Si hay algo que rompe mi idilio con Millhauser es su propensión a las escenas descripticas. Pero en cualquier caso, se trata de un autor inteligente, con una voz personal. Probablemente, mi siguiente incursión me lleve a la novela.
Otras opiniones en Otro estúpido blog de un escritor.
November 10, 2025
Three novellas, two of them superb, one about a maker of cartoons/animated films, another in the form of an art catalogue of a fictional, failed artist. Each offers, alongs with severe strains in personal relationships, Millhauser's singular sense of detail, oddness and a Kafka-like foreboding. "Catalogue of the Exposition" is stunning in its descriptions of the dark art of Edmund Moorash as tt builds to a fitting final moment. And this gem: "The sound of time was the sound of a continual effort to escape from somethong that held you back."
March 22, 2018
Three novellas from one of our most interesting writers. A fairy tale political sex scandal in which the prince makes the princess sleep with the military leader in order to prove the loyalty of both. It is organized in a unique way that allows us to ponder each characters motivation, including the storytellers. Little Kingdoms shows us the price of being an artist and perfectionist. It rates with some of Milhauser’s best stories. Catalogue of the Exhibition was above my head, didn’t really have the patience or understanding to finish it.
August 16, 2018
These novellas are beautifully written; the prose is amazing - but just a little to slow and quiet for me right now... Two days to read 200 pages is not like me at all. I kept drifting away...
April 22, 2020
Two enjoyable novellas followed by a fantastic third.
July 17, 2020
first two stories great, third one ehh
all stories patriarchal but i could take it
all stories patriarchal but i could take it
November 10, 2021
The first novella (The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne) is phenomenal! Five stars for sure. The other stories didn't stand out as much to me, but were still solid reads.
May 12, 2025
I'm not a fan of short stories. I'm even less of a fan of fairy tales. I gave it a go and while I liked the first story, it felt like a nod to Crockett Johnson. Okay fine.
November 3, 2014
Millhauser's collection of three novellas was of varying interest and quality. The first story, The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne was the clear standout; emotionally engaging and an imaginative look at both the concept of art as an extension of its creator as well as early animated cinema. The next two novellas, though, were significantly less interesting, both felt more like experiments in form rather than solid narratives.
The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon wasn't of any real interest to me, a play on oral storytelling as history and medieval fairytales that lacked real connection and seemed an overlong genre exercize.
Catalogue of the Exhibition was better than the novella that preceded it, although it only really picked up as it neared its Gothic movement at the end. The listlike reference points for these fictional paintings was tedious and, although it acted to maintain some sense of historical reality, merely drew me away from the narrative.
I am interested in reading his full-length novels, though, purely based on my enjoyment of the Payne story.
The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon wasn't of any real interest to me, a play on oral storytelling as history and medieval fairytales that lacked real connection and seemed an overlong genre exercize.
Catalogue of the Exhibition was better than the novella that preceded it, although it only really picked up as it neared its Gothic movement at the end. The listlike reference points for these fictional paintings was tedious and, although it acted to maintain some sense of historical reality, merely drew me away from the narrative.
I am interested in reading his full-length novels, though, purely based on my enjoyment of the Payne story.
October 27, 2008
three novellas.
each has a different approach to voice and subtext. the narrator of the first is completely un-self-conscious, and presents description of suggestive details to suggest subplot developments that the POV protagonist may not follow, but we readers are obviously allowed to trace. after that, the self-aware narrator of the second novella directly and explicitly asks us, the readers, to consider questions of context and how that affects our ability to read into subtext. lastly, a present-but-distant narrator (idealized as a 'museum curator') consciously offers clues towards subtextual shifts, but doesn't overtly emphasize one or another conclusion.
these alterations make for an uneven, not entirely satisfying read, but one that seems more invested in investigations than easy affect.
each has a different approach to voice and subtext. the narrator of the first is completely un-self-conscious, and presents description of suggestive details to suggest subplot developments that the POV protagonist may not follow, but we readers are obviously allowed to trace. after that, the self-aware narrator of the second novella directly and explicitly asks us, the readers, to consider questions of context and how that affects our ability to read into subtext. lastly, a present-but-distant narrator (idealized as a 'museum curator') consciously offers clues towards subtextual shifts, but doesn't overtly emphasize one or another conclusion.
these alterations make for an uneven, not entirely satisfying read, but one that seems more invested in investigations than easy affect.
July 22, 2014
Millhauser spins three haunting tales that exist on the very edge of reality in Little Kingdoms. A collection of three novellas, each has a dark charm of its own.
The first happens to be my favorite, dealing with a quiet cartoonist creating fanciful and scary images from his real life.
The second is a story of a castle, told by a bystander. Interestingly, it is the broken commentary of the teller throughout the story that adds a touch of suspicion throughout the tale.
The third is told through a description of a painter through passages regarding his paintings. The paintings are dark and sinister, and correspond with his real life, in a way that hints on magic, but is not truly so.
Overall, Millhauser's writing was excellent, effectively rendering a creeping feeling in the dark corners of a readers mind. Through this, he has created a brilliant work of literary art.
The first happens to be my favorite, dealing with a quiet cartoonist creating fanciful and scary images from his real life.
The second is a story of a castle, told by a bystander. Interestingly, it is the broken commentary of the teller throughout the story that adds a touch of suspicion throughout the tale.
The third is told through a description of a painter through passages regarding his paintings. The paintings are dark and sinister, and correspond with his real life, in a way that hints on magic, but is not truly so.
Overall, Millhauser's writing was excellent, effectively rendering a creeping feeling in the dark corners of a readers mind. Through this, he has created a brilliant work of literary art.
June 30, 2008
The novellas in this collection aren't necessarily what I'd call the most fun of reads, but the writing is really superb and I enjoyed the experimental structures of the last two stories. The last story was by far my favorite - at first it put me off because it is, literally, a catalogue of a series of paintings, but the way in which he used the descriptions of the paintings to tell the Usher/Dorian Gray-esque story was really cool. I almost felt guilty that he had to read my written the night before short stories in school.
November 29, 2008
I thought these stories had very unique concepts. Conceptually, I liked the novellas and would recommend them for their originality. In terms of the stories themselves, I was pretty unimpressed. The first one was the only one I liked much at all. The third had the best trick, but I can't stand it when writers try to do something unique with the narrative but don't stick with it (same reason I gave Amos Oz's Black Box low marks.
August 12, 2013
Errrrrmmmmm. I say: Vanilla ice cream. Like, "Yeah, okay, vanilla ice cream...?" It's sweet, it's reasonably tasty. I'm gonna take a bite of yours and be like, "Alright." And you're gonna be like "If you want you can--" and I'm gonna be like, "No, thanks," and give you back the spoon, and it's gonna melt before you can finish it all because, I mean, come on. It's vanilla.
Are you following me here?
Are you following me here?
November 22, 2016
I was hoping to like this. I am hoping to like every book I read. But when it's a prizewinner and it does nothing for me I always feel that I must be missing something obvious to everyone else.
I read 'The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne'. It was beautifully detailed, cleverly understated. But it was a bit of a slog, and emotionally it left me flat. I did dip into the other two stories but decided to skip them. So many more things to read.
I read 'The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne'. It was beautifully detailed, cleverly understated. But it was a bit of a slog, and emotionally it left me flat. I did dip into the other two stories but decided to skip them. So many more things to read.
October 16, 2017
I really loved this book of three novellas. The book jacket has a blurb that describes Millhauser's writing as "dazzling," and I'm inclined to agree. The first two stories feel like they should be read out loud at bedtime. The third feels like a Poe story, but told as faux-nonfiction. Really enjoyable read. Check it out if you're looking for a little whimsy.
June 20, 2011
Steven Millhauser continues to be a favorite author of mine--though I think, having read this one, thus far I can say I like the short stories over the novellas. Still, all three novellas are engaging, with twists, turns, and maybe a little bit of magic, too...well worth checking out.
March 29, 2010
Great story of a guy who really gets immersed in his work, to the point of losing himself in his own creation. Great dreamlike quality and description of the comic strip world during the early part of the last century. A golden age, to be sure.
January 8, 2014
I thought that the first and last novellas were the strongest out of the three, perhaps because they resonated with my artist self. The structure of the central one I found interesting, and definitely worth exploring as a story structure, but the story itself just didn't hold enough for me.
December 12, 2016
A triumph of the imagination. Millhauser masterfully combines words and images that they cease to be one or the other and take on a life of their own. A wonderful book that explores the psychology, and sets to push the limits of, fantasy and creativity.
August 3, 2012
Wonderful writing, fun stories, but lacking in punch.
October 11, 2013
Beautifully written book comprising three novellas. Worth reading for the prose and language alone. Ultimately a little sad overall, but always quite moving. Full of insight and imagination.
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