We Others

There’s something wonderfully off-key about this collection of Pulitzer winner Steven Millhauser’s short stories. Taking in a 30 year survey of his work, it’s fascinating to see that while his style has warped and shifted over time, he has remained faithful throughout to a strand of unadulterated oddness. Here are stories about knife throwers and magicians, disappointing alien invasions and weird slapping sprees afflicting small American towns. While he often returns to a Norman Rockwell America built on dreamy suburbs and cool glasses of lemonade sipped on creaking verandas, the fact remains:  we’re not exactly in Carver territory.

I hadn’t come across his work before so it was a pleasant surprise to immerse myself in his series of strange, inverted worlds. I was reminded at times of 60s post-modernists like John Barth and Donald Barthelme, especially for the way Millhauser takes pop culture tropes and twists them to his peculiar design. One particular highlight, ‘Cat n’ Mouse,’ deals with the existential dilemma faced by a Tom and Jerry-like duo when a possible end to their Sisyphean battle arises. 

This is a handsomely put together volume of curious fragments which serve as a winning introduction to Millhauser’s work, one in which every next story offers something different to the last.