[PDF] ✓ Free Download ☆ The Barnum Museum : by Steven Millhauser ↠

By Steven Millhauser | Comments: ( 146 ) | Date: ( Dec 06, 2019 )

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 thThe 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.

  • Title: The Barnum Museum
  • Author: Steven Millhauser
  • ISBN: 9781564781796
  • Page: 384
  • Format: Paperback

About Author:

Steven Millhauser

Steven Millhauser Is a well-known author, some of his books are a fascination for readers like in the The Barnum Museum book, this is one of the most wanted Steven Millhauser author readers around the world.

Comments The Barnum Museum

  • Pantelis

    Kafka at the mall, Hoffmann in suburbia. A good story is a wonder, it makes you wonder what makes a good story A good story is more than an illusion. A good story is real magic. Millhauser is the real Eisenheim

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  • Krok Zero

    The driest and most difficult of Millhauser's collections, with only maybe a 50-60% success rate, but more richly varied than the others and full of alluring ideas even in the stories that don't work. It's hard to talk about Millhauser in general terms -- you can say things like, "he's interested in imagination and creation and the mysteries of art and narrative, and the relationship between reality and artifice, and he loves to overload the reader with physical details," and that would be true, [...]

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  • Rick Davis

    I read this collection of stories by Steven Millhauser for two reasons. First, I read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern last year, and I've seen several people comparing that book to The Barnum Museum and Millhauser in general. Second, I really enjoyed the movie The Illusionist, and this collection contains the short story that inspired the film.So how did it turn out? Overall, it was good. Millhauser writes like a slightly more surrealist Borges with a dash of Eco thrown in. Some of the stor [...]

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  • Daniel

    Mostly these stories are forgettable and in many cases, a struggle to read and enjoy. In fact, I felt that most of these weren't even stories, but rather, long treatise on subject, or location, or mood.Only the last story, "Eisenheim the Illusionist" struck any chord in me. It was as if all the other pieces were working up to putting the various elements together and producing "Eisenheim" -- though even the story of "Eisenheim" is not worthy of such a long preamble.I love the short story as a li [...]

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  • Neale Osborne

    While doing a little research on ‘The Arabian Nights’ (for a novel of my own) I read, on , that this collection boasted an ‘Eighth Voyage of Sinbad’. Intrigued, I bought a copy and found a fascinating variety of stories (ten in all).The shortest of these fictional vignettes were the least successful for me (‘Beyond the Blue Curtain’ and ‘Rain’; also ‘The Sepia Postcard’ which was whimsically promising - the postcard of the title reminding me of Montague James' ghost story 'Th [...]

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  • Casey Hampton

    Ten short stories gently probing secret boundaries of the imagined, and beyond.Thrilling, thought-provoking, seductive.It's the sort of writing one reads without realizing they're holding their breath, and, when arriving at this realization, it doesn't much matter as remembering how to breathe without conscious thought to its bodily mechanics seems secondary to what's truly important.I enjoyed these quite a bit, and would have liked to wander a bit more in underground exhibits or through the bac [...]

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  • Tom Nash

    This book is going to be all about personal preference. This is a great example of the literary short story that places detail over plot. His writing is very accomplished, and he uses detail to a level that makes everything he describes perfectly real in your mind.But for me, holy smoking Mary, I was bored.Personal story highlights within this collection: The Barnum Museum, Eisenheim The Illusionist. The rest all have merits, but if you're looking for stories with a beginning, middle and end, yo [...]

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  • Jim

    Steven Millhauser sure has a flair for detail. I don't think I'll ever approach the game of Clue again without imagining the personalities of each of the characters in rich detail. Also, I really want one of those little pink rubber balls. You know the ones that have the little line of flashing all the way around? About 3 inches in diameter? But I don't think I would even call these stories. Some are. I don't even know how to characterize the other ones. The reason I read this was for the story [...]

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  • Brian

    Very interesting. The "Clue" story was fascinating, and the title story was enthralling. Millhauser creates a great atmosphere with his words, and really puts the reader into the location. However, many of the stories lacked sufficient plot or motivation or resolution to really feel satisfying. Definitely worth a read, though.

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  • Alexandra

    Contains the story "Eisenheim the Illusionist" on which the move "The Illusionist" was based.

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  • Katie

    Three of the stories really appealed to me and sparked interest. The others were a bit of a slog.

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  • Elijah

    The Barnum Museum is hailed on the back cover as "Ingeniously written and orchestrated," with "each story becoming a lure to the next." Unfortunately my experience with it was more often the opposite. At its best, it reminds me of Borges, Bradbury, and Wolfe. At its worst, it reminds me of failed imitations of those masters. I'll give my thoughts on each story in brief."A Game of Clue" is like several stories mashed together with little purpose. There is the (hi)story of the board game, the stor [...]

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  • Craig

    The first short story in this collection, "A Game of Clue," brings the rooms and characters of the popular board game to life. It is a clever tale, but somewhat disappointing. However the next two stories -- "Behind the Blue Curtain" and "The Sepia Postcard" are exceptional. Millhauser's gift is in his descriptions of vivid and magical settings. In "Behind the Blue Curtain," the young narrator discovers endless, ornate rooms, long winding halls, and richly costumed film characters hidden in the [...]

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  • Usuyitik

    sabitfikir/elestiri/hisselEdward Norton’lu İllüzyonist’i bilirsiniz. Filmin hikayesinin uyarlandığı “Sihirbaz Eisenheim” ise, Steven Millhauser’ın Barnum Müzesi’ndeki öykülerinden biri. İsterseniz önce “Yeni Başlayanlar İçin Steven Millhauser” turuna çıkalım, ardından da “Barnum Müzesi”ni gezeriz! Millhauser 1943 doğumlu ABD’li meşhur bir öykücü ve romancı. Akademiyi terk edip dört elle yazmaya sarılanlardan. Uluslararası tanınırlığını İll [...]

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  • Mike

    I don't think I knew anything about the author before grabbing this book off the shelf. I'm very happy that I did and would be willing to rate this collection a "4.5".While Millhauser writes in great, perhaps excruciating, detail his themes like those of Shakespeare are universal. Since I have not read anything else that he has written, I can only guess that most of his work shares the deep point-of-view and motivational aspects of these stories. Several of the tales strongly resonated with me, [...]

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  • Todd Stockslager

    Very well-written almost-classic short stories defy classification. Millhauser writes descriptively but sparingly, a seemingly contradictory characterization that makes his bare-bones stories deeper and more complex than their length would otherwise allow.Interestingly, the story that spurred me to read this collection, :Eisenheim the Illusionist" that was the basis for the recent movie The Illusionist, wasn't the best story of the lot. While the movie did a good job of capturing the aura of mat [...]

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  • Godlarvae

    As I had viewed Edward Norton's "The Impressionist", I sought out the short story from which the movie was adapted. I was amazed. I couldn't decide what the author's intent is. He obviously is a master wordsmith, an excellent writer of descriptive prose, one whose imagination would find few equals, but, I didn't get him. It wasn't until I was beginning his last short story that it became clear to me as I'd had similar experience while dreaming! We may all have dreams that seem eminently logical [...]

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  • Dan

    I would like to only write a review for the last short story (Eisenheim, the Illusionist) within this book, but i can't. The 10 short stories in this book are very descriptive, are word heavy, and with little to no dialogue. This combined to make for a dreary read. I found most of the short stories to be lacking in finish - they merely started then finished with no point (or one that I failed to discover). But I kept reading anxious to get to the Illusionist mainly because I really enjoyed the m [...]

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  • Tara

    Arrrrgh! I really wanted to like this collection of stories. I am late to discovering Millhauser, but he has quickly become one of my favorite contemporary authors. I have really enjoyed his other works, and love getting lost in his quasi-fantasy worlds. But these stories were such drudgery. Long on description and details of minutia, short on story/narrative, few of the tales in this collection held my attention. Reading them felt more like viewing mystical vignettes through one of Millhauser's [...]

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  • John Porter

    A three and half star book. Just reread it and was surprised (and a little pleased) to find I felt the same way about it as when I originally read it. I'm a fan of Millhauser and I enjoyed both the story and movie of "Eisenheim." That being said, I think this collection trips over its format. Without a unifying theme (or, perhaps, with a more subtly used one), I think Millhauser's writing and maybe even story choices would have been freer. This is quite good--he's a terrific writer--but you can [...]

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  • Sam

    This is a strange collection of tales some of which I enjoyed, some of which I didn't. I loved The Sepia Postcard and Eisenheim the Illusionist, both of which I found very well written and inventive with just enough hints at reality to suck the reader in and keep you thoroughly engrossed from start to finish. The remaining tales were a little odd and I found I just couldn't get into them that much, particularly the first story, A Game of Clue, I just didn't see the purpose of that at all. Rain I [...]

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  • Mark

    I struggled with whether to give this book three or four stars. If you're a creative writer, then I would give this book 4 stars because there is much to learn from Millhauser's technique. If you're looking for something strictly for pleasure I'd give this a 3. Pleasure readers will likely skip over a few of the stories, but the ones you don't want to miss are "Eisenheim the Illusionist" (which the movie The Illusionist is based on), "The Invention of Robert Herendeen," "Rain," and "The Sepia Po [...]

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  • Chronographia

    For best effect, proceed directly to the eponymous short story, then to Eisenheim the Illusionist, and round things out with The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad. (The first shares a kinship with Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus; the second with Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus, and the third has nothing to do with circuses although its attachment to A Thousand and One Arabian Nights fulfills the nocturnal requirement.)The rest of the short stories may be read if you are perhaps waiting in a docto [...]

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  • Leah Lucci

    The fantasy stories in here, most notably the title story and the final story about the magician, are astoundingly good. Wow. There are also a few others in here that are nice, which also have fantasy/magical realism elements. But there are quite a few that feel like filler. He has this old-fashioned style of writing that goes really well with fantasy, but when applied to more realistic fare, becomes tedious. Overall, though, if you can, say, check it out of the library, it's worth it, just to r [...]

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  • Emily Brown

    I could not get into this book at all. The characters were shallow, the writing was dull. I have no idea why he won a Pulitzer prize. To be fair, I didn't actually finish any of the stories, but I did read six pages of Alice, Falling before I got bored. I also tried to read two pages of A Game of Clue, but was put off by the lack of ANYTHING INTERESTING HAPPENING AT ALL. I'd be interested in the description of something as mundane as a Clue board game if it had any life or beauty, but this was l [...]

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  • David

    Of course, I have the idea in my head that I'm "not being clever enough" or "not understanding" what is being told to me through this book. But, ultimately, I read what I read and I found it boring and tedious. Positively, the metaphors and description in this book are good and sometimes lovely, but the narrative is appalling and non-existent in most places. The whole book feels completely pointless, except for "Eisenheim The Illusionist" which is the only worthwhile story in the book and recomm [...]

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  • Jennifer

    I can't review the entire book as I only read Eisenheim the Illusionist, the last short story in this collection. The Illusionist is one of my favourite films and I wnated to read the short story that inspired it. I really liked the story, even though it lacked the romance seen in the film. I loved the way Millhauser described the magic tricks and how they all worked, and how all the magicians couldn't figure out how Eisenheim's tricks worked. Might end up reading the entire collection after all [...]

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  • martha

    [Review from 2004.] My relationship with Steven Millhauser runs wildly hot and cold; I'm constantly switching from thinking he's brilliant to deciding he's a one-trick pony. I loved Martin Dressler, and you get a lot of the same obsession with buildings and lists in this short story collection. Sometimes it verges on the tedious, but he often uses it to good effect, especially in "The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad," which was absolutely superb.[Another one I can't remember at all

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  • Parrish Lantern

    Although this is a collection of short stories, I feel this is a misnomer, as these tales may appear finite on the page, but escape these limitations through the authors own sleight of hand. Steven Millhauser is the puppet master behind the illusionist, he is the Wizard of Oz, with such a panoply of devices, tricks, magic mirrors and secret panels. A wondrous array of machinery that one mind could possibly conceiverrishlantern/20

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  • Jeffrey

    This is why you shouldn't get a book of short stories just to read one story. I wanted to read Eisenheim the Illusionist because I enjoyed the movie, The Illusionist. The story and the movie had almost nothing in common, and the rest of the collection was so uninspiring that I almost gave up trying to finish the book. The overly detailed stories bogged me down, and I had a difficult time keeping up with the plots.

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  • [PDF] ✓ Free Download ☆ The Barnum Museum : by Steven Millhauser ↠
    384 Steven Millhauser
  • thumbnail Title: [PDF] ✓ Free Download ☆ The Barnum Museum : by Steven Millhauser ↠
    Posted by:Steven Millhauser
    Published :2019-09-18T08:19:21+00:00