Like great actors in mediocre plays, there are some writers whose talent seems larger than the vehicles they have chosen to contain it. A case in point is [Edwin Mullhouse], a remarkably well-written and sometimes funny account of the hitherto unrecognized genius Edwin Mullhouse…. [The] narrative takes us from Edwin's first gurgles to his creative Later Years and, as such, is a devilish satire on those exhaustive biographies that weigh down shelves with their bulky worthiness and unrelieved tedium. The tone is sly and articulate, as if written by one of Salinger's Glass children, and though the initial idea is admittedly small and even fey, Millhauser makes the most (if not too much) of it, detailing for us the most ordinary of childhoods through Jeffrey's pompous New Crit perspective. (The two boys react to each other like a sinister Holmes and Watson—Edwin makes fun of Jeffrey, whom...