SOURCE: Review of Dream Story, by Arthur Schnitzler, translated by Otto P. Schinnerer. Publishers Weekly 237, no. 12 (23 March 1990): 72.

In the following review of Dream Story, translated by Otto P. Schinnerer, the reviewer observes that this translation provides a useful introduction to Schnitzler's stories of “haunting erotic fantasy.”

This reprint of a 1927 American edition [of Dream Story] gives a new generation of English-speaking readers the opportunity to discover the Viennese novelist and dramatist's (1862-1931) haunting erotic fantasy, which blends dreams and reality. Summoned to a patient's bedside, Fridolin, a physician, begins a night-long journey through events in which he is merely an ineffectual observer. Finding his patient dead, Fridolin wanders the streets, is insulted by a student and responds aggressively—in his imagination. He meekly follows a prostitute to her rooms, but is frozen by fear. Entering a bizarre costume party uninvited and arrogantly challenging a guest to a duel...