Millhauser's first novel received wide critical attention and excellent reviews but few readers. (Although those readers tend to grapple him to their soul with hoops of steel.) If these facts mean anything, they probably mean not that Millhauser is a coterie writer but that he is less confusable with other writers…. We tend not to like new things; for this reason our first question about a novelty is likely to be "what's it like?" If it is like nothing we know, we shy away. In art this happens all the time. When we say that a first-rate writer must create his own audience, we mean little more than that he must bring out latent tastes in his audience since he has chosen not to appeal to those already developed. In Edwin Mullhouse and now in Portrait of a Romantic Millhauser deals with topics that Anglo-American life and art...