Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser
Sunday, August 9th, 1998
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
Steven Millhauser is a contemporary American author who writes and sees through wonderfully Dickensian eyes. His stories are filled with characters whose faces and voices become incredibly distinctive within the first few pages. With “Martin Dressler,” Millhauser follows the life and dreams of an ambitious child growing into adulthood in America at the turn of the century.
We first meet Martin Dressler in the early 1890′s as a child helping his father run a small cigar store in Manhattan. At this time New York was still a city filled with pastoral spaces, undeveloped lots, and infinite possibilities for anyone with a dream and the courage to make it real. At the age of 14 Martin leaves his father’s store to go work at a fancy hotel as a bellboy. Eventually he works himself up to assistant manager and is being groomed to eventually become the manager. But Martin’s dreams are bigger and more entrepreneurial, first opening a cigar store in the hotel lobby and then a franchise of profitable upscale lunchrooms throughout the city and Brooklyn. But it is not the money that drives him, rather it is the desire to break the mold.
(more…)
