Cover

Praise for IN THE PENNY ARCADE

“These stories are remarkable in range.”

—Maureen Howard, Yale Review

“One of the best, most exhilarating writers in the United States today.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Steven Millhauser is a worthy descendant of Hawthorne. There are only a few stylists left in American writing, but he’s one of them.”

—Guy Davenport

“Millhauser’s new and old-fashioned tales about people confronting their own ordinariness are intelligent, graceful, and magical—told as if by someone part Hans Christian Andersen, part Sherwood Anderson.”

—Lorrie Moore

“As in a penny arcade, all manner of pretty, frightening and amazing things happen in these stories…they are about the ability of artists and children to see things anew, to remake things through the force of their own romantic yearnings, and the dangerous consequence of that gift…. Mr. Millhauser possesses a bountiful imagination, and an ability to catch his perceptions in a bright butterfly net of prose, and these gifts lend these stories a lovely afterlife, colorful and lively, in the reader’s mind.”

—Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

“Exquisitely crafted…startling imagery and breathtaking style. After gracing the ’70s with two of its most intriguing and beautiful novels, Mr. Millhauser has now proven himself a miniaturist of equally astonishing ability.”

—Baltimore Sun

“Steven Millhauser makes our world turn amazing!…He continues to pursue fiction as a mysterious, magical, enlightening experience…. He draws us into his precise, luminous awareness…. We venture with him into the common corners of our ragged world, where the marvelous glows and true meanings breathe life.”

—New York Times Book Review

“In the Penny Arcade is a showcase of style and grace.”

—Washington Post Book World

books by STEVEN MILLHAUSER

Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer

Little Kingdoms

The Barnum Museum

From the Realm of Morpheus

In the Penny Arcade

Portrait of a Romantic

Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer, 1943–1954

IN THE PENNY ARCADE

Steven Millhauser

Dalkey Archive Press

Copyright

“A Protest Against the Sun” and “The Sledding Party” first appeared in The New Yorker; “Cathay,” “Snowmen,” and “A Day in the Country” in Grand Street; “August Eschenburg” in Antaeus; and “In the Penny Arcade” in The Hudson Review.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Millhauser, Steven.

In the penny arcade: stories / by Steven Millhauser.—1st Dalkey Archive ed.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-56478-182-6

I. Title.

PS3563.I422I5 1998

813’.54—dc21

97-51427
CIP

This publication is partially supported by grants from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

Dalkey Archive Press
Illinois State University
Campus Box 4241
Normal, IL 61790-4241

Dedication

To Cathy

Contents

PART I

August Eschenburg

PART II

A Protest Against the Sun

The Sledding Party

A Day in the Country

PART III

Snowmen

In the Penny Arcade

Cathay

I

August Eschenburg

YOUNG ESCHENBURG