SOURCE: A review of Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, in Publishers Weekly, March 25, 1996, pp. 62-3.

[Below, the critic provides a brief plot summary and favorable review of Martin Dressler.]

Literature's romance with the building-as-metaphor earns new energy through Millhauser's latest novel [Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer] (after Little Kingdoms, 1993), which quietly chronicles the life of an entrepreneur whose career peaks when he builds a fabulous hotel in turn-of-the-century Manhattan. Beginning with his first jobs—in his father's cigar shop and as a bellhop—young Martin's rise is fueled by a happy blend of pragmatism and imagination. Both inform the design of the cafes and hotels he builds as an adult, though the latter seems to gain sway in the construction of his magnum opus, the Grand Cosmo. Within the rusticated walls of that grand hotel, one floor's elevators open onto "a densely...