Cathay, Steven Millhauser, Borges, Summer

Borges, Steven Millhauser, Utopia. Recent reading at the end of a summer that was so little summer so long ago. I read a review of a new collection of Steven Millhauser and went back to the ones I already have, In the penny arcade, 1999. The first story, 'August Eschenberg', and the last 'Cathay', both had me. Especially the last. August Eschenberg, a builder of mechanical universes so finely differentiated from the real that you would be dead to think of it, like Flann O'Brien's Third Policeman, Borges' dreamers. These perfectly calibrated tiny worlds. 

The twelve singing birds in the throne room of the Imperial Palace are made of beaten gold, except for the throats, which are of silver, and the eyes, which are of transparent emerald-green jade.

And The Knife Thrower, 1998. Which I'll read next.