Enchanted Night Summary
Steven Millhauser

Enchanted Night Summary

Although Millhauser appears to be winking at critics who argue that he, like Haverstraw, ought to contend with larger social issues in his work, he also appears to be returning to the subject that preoccupies much of his fiction. In short stories like "The Invention of Robert Herendeen" and "Eisenheim the Illusionist," and in novels— including Edwin Mullhouse (1972), Portrait of a Romantic (1977), and Martin Dressier— Millhauser has repeatedly concerned himself with artistic conflict. His creative characters struggle with ambition and alienation, with intuition (joie de vivre) and its absence (ennui). They are generally lonely people, who create imaginary playfellows and universes that can never fulfill their need to reconstruct reality for long. Each illusion must eventually be supplanted by a grander illusion. Why do writers like Millhauser write? As one of his fictional counterparts explains, "Stories, like conjuring tricks, are invented because history is inadequate to...

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