SOURCE: Howe, Irving. “An Afterword.” Salmagundi, no. 92 (fall 1991): 110-14.

In the following essay, Howe offers a close reading of Millhauser's Catalogue of the Exhibition.

Since Steven Millhauser's novella is experimental in form—I'm not aware of another prose fiction structured as an art show catalogue—let me try, by way of response, a little experiment in criticism. Instead of offering a “finished” analysis of this piece, I propose to reconstruct the steps by which I tried to apprehend it. Anyone familiar with the practice of criticism knows of course that we cannot really break down the process of reading and judgment into a series of ordered steps. Our responses are rarely so orderly. If they occur over a length of time, we may well begin with a clear judgment and only later notice the details that might sustain that judgment. The whole business of criticism is more jumbled...