SOURCE: "Cities of the Mind," in The Nation, May 6, 1996, pp. 68-72.

[In the following review, Postlethwaite compares the development of the theme of the world of the imagination in Edwin Mullhouse and Martin Dressler.]

On the surface, Steven Millhauser's first novel, Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943–1954, and his most recent, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, appear radically different in subject and scope. Edwin Mullhouse—the outrageously exhaustive literary biography (written by an 11-year-old!) of a writer whose "Early," "Middle" and "Late" periods span kindergarten through fifth grade—counts the angels on the head of a pin. Martin Dressler, in contrast, constructs a grand cosmology (a vast, turn-of-the-century New York City hotel named—what else?—The Grand Cosmo) to rival Dante's road map of heaven and hell. But both Edwin Mullhouse's biography and Martin Dressler's hotel are really cities of the...