Unlike the plot of Theodore Dreiser's Jennie Gerhardt—a novel lent to the scholarly character at the center of Enchanted Night in order to "increase his social consciousness"—the typical Steven Millhauser story line tends to eschew obvious sociopolitical commentary. Indeed, as Douglas Fowler has noted in an article published in Critique, much of Millhauser's work could accurately be described as "exquisite," but decidedly "apolitical" and "socially indifferent". Millhauser's Pulitzer Prize-winning Martin Dressier (1996), which concerned itself with the commercial as well as the fanciful aspects of architectural design, seems something of an anomaly when compared to the more fantastic interludes of In the Penny Arcade (1986), The Barnum Museum (1990), or The Knife Thrower and Other Stories (1998).

While Millhauser's fiction has been categorized as magical realism, as solipsistic minimalism, and as a postmodern expression of "art for art's sake," some critics say that Millhauser's compressed narratives...