Millhauser touches on many of the same themes in his other fiction that he is concerned with in these three novellas. His novel Edwin Mullhouse relates the story of a boy genius who dies mysteriously at a very young age and in some ways is very similar to "Catalogue of the Exhibition" in its concentration on one particular artist. A close friend of Edwin's narrates this novel, which is similar to the reliance on Elizabeth's journal for information. Likewise, Millhauser's novel Martin Dressier, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, takes the form of a biography about an entrepreneur. Millhauser's short stories vary in the use of fantastical elements; "The Visit" from his collection The Knife Thrower and Other Stories is a particular example of mixing the extraordinary with the ordinary.