Our narrator escapes the Prussians by hot air balloon, hoping to organize a counter-offensive away from Paris.
(from The Knife Thrower and Other Stories, on loan from Ryan Godfrey and Jessica Lowenthal)
It starts as booksmart historical fiction, but ends up dipping its toes in The Edgar Allan Poe Wading Pool of Psychological Torment. In a good way. And not without its humor. I found this interview wherein Millhauser, a Pulitzer Prize winner, compares this story to another thusly:
where it’s made even more explicit. My narrator begins his flight with a clear,
practical, indeed political objective, but he soon finds himself in unearthly regions
that threaten to break his bonds with human things. He returns to earth with a
feeling of gratitude and joy, like the boy in “Flying Carpets” before the final two
paragraphs of that story.
He also had this to say:
of the Franco-Prussian War and the brilliantly detailed journal of
Edmond de Goncourt, but the thoughts and feelings of the narrator
are of course my invention. But even in stories that require no
research, stories that are, so to speak, entirely invented, many
details of setting are based on my memory of particular streets
and houses and rooms — and because memory is itself a form of
history, these stories too may be said to have an historical basis.
Things that make you go ahem.
Anyway, this story is excellent. Although a final twist would have been a bit more satisfactory, I enjoyed the unpredictability of the slow action. And the imagery was top notch, too. Good call, Pulizter people.