The Barnum Museum is a 1990 collection of fantasy-themed short stories by Steven Millhauser first published by Poseidon Press in 1990.
Its closing story is "Eisenheim the Illusionist", which was adapted to film in 2006 as The Illusionist.Walsh, 2006Ingersoll, 2014 p. 56
Short stories "A Game of Clue" "Behind the Blue Curtain" "The Barnum Museum" (Grand Street, Summer 1987) "The Sepia Postcard" "The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad" (Grand Street, Summer 1988) "Klassik Komix #1" (Grand Street, Autumn 1988) "Rain" (The Paris Review, Fall 1988) "Alice, Falling" (Antaeus) "The Invention of Robert Herendeen" "Eisenheim the Illusionist" (Esquire, December 1989)
Reception Though finding Millhauser's stories to be "irresistible", The Washington Post'''s Michael Dirda can forgive those readers who may detect "an artificiality that makes them seem abstract or even lifeless."Dirda, 1990
Citing the title story as representative of the collection, New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani believes they suffer from a "static" quality:
Aram Saroyan at The New York Times remarks on Millhauser's striving to write postmodern literature:
Saroyan adds rhetorically: "Just how great a writer is Edgar Allan Poe?"Saroyan, 1990: Italics for "is" in original.
Footnotes
Sources Dirda, Michael. 1990. BOOK WORLD: In Which Wonders Never Cease The Washington Post. Accessed 16 April 2025. Ingersoll, Earl G. 2014. Understanding Steven Millhauser. University of South Carolina Press Columbia, SC. Kakutani, Michiko. 1986. Everyday Life Intersects With the Magical The New York Times, June 12, 1990. Accessed April 14, 2025. Millhauser, Steven. 1990. The Barnum Museum. Dalkey Archive Press, New York. Saroyan, Aram. 1990. The Surreal as Substance : THE BARNUM MUSEUM Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1990. Accessed 10 May 2025. Walsh, David. 2006. "The Illusionist: The filmmaker, in fact, can't have it both ways." World Socialist Web Site'', September 4, 2006. Accessed 10 May 2025.