Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer

Summary

A fable like novel set in late nineteenth century New York, in which an ambitious cigar shop boy rises through hotel work to build ever larger and more fantastical establishments, culminating in a vast, dreamlike pleasure palace. Millhauser writes in a cool, formal prose that turns the Gilded Age city into a half magical landscape of arcades, lobbies, and imagined interiors. The book is a sly, melancholy parable of American ambition and the limits of invention.