Steven Millhauser's first novel, "Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer, 1943–1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright," is probably the best Nabokovian novel not written by the master himself…. As it turns out, the back-and-forths through which the biographer invents his author and the author his biographer stir the mind and agitate the emotions as unexpectedly as do the ins and outs through which nature and art invent each other in Nabokov—through which, for example, the critic Kinbote and the poet John Shade invent each other in "Pale Fire." Millhauser's demonstration that the preadolescent imagination is a lost genius within us all provides the Nabokovian note of pathos. That the author's name is so close to his character's (Millhauser/Mullhouse) adds reflections for us to reflect upon. (p. 13)
"A work of fiction is a radical act of the imagination whose sole purpose is to supplant the world," says Arthur Grumm, the hero of ["Portrait of a Romantic"]; but he is a romantic. Millhauser's second novel, which reflects on his first, is in the form of an account by the 29-year-old Grumm of events that take place mostly during his 12th to 15th years, when genius lapses into adolescence, when myth succumbs to romantic agony. The mere thought of his childhood years bores Grumm…. What he seeks is "not the crude pleasure of sense but the subtle pleasure of transgression." His unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide and his successful attempt to put a finger into the fan are more like premonitions of what is to come.
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