A Wilderness of Size: Steven Millhauser's "Martin Dressler"

New York City as Dwelling Place: Reinventing the American Dream in Steven Millhauser'sMartin Dressler, Joseph O'Neill'sNetherland, and Atticus Lish'sPreparation for the Next Life

“…As a fictional work, Martin Dressler transforms photographic realism, however creative or interpretive, into a fantasy world that mixes “dream and reality”; “the exterior and interior worlds”; and “ghostly hotels” and “their corporeal counterpart” (Rodríguez 114–15). It also mixes the fantastic and the real, technology and tradition, and—in the character of Martin himself—vision and practicality, “economic ambition” and “existential arrogance” (Saltzman 593). Martin walks the streets of New York City, but he walks the streets to dream and to build, not to live in them.…”