"Snowmen" is a short story by Steven Millhauser originally appearing in Grand Street (Winter 1984) and first collected in In the Penny Arcade (1985) by Alfred A. Knopf.Millhauser, 1986: See Credits opposite Dedication.
Plot "Snowmen" is written from a first-person singular point-of-view by an unnamed pre-adolescent boy serving as a reliable narrator. He provides no information regarding his precise age, his family, or geographical setting. The events are related in the past tense.Ingersoll, 2014 p. 50
The narrator awakes to discover that an unusually heavy snow has fallen. He dresses warmly and joins other boys who are exploring a neighborhood transformed into a winter wonderland. Here and there snowmen representing men, women and children begin to appear assembled by the children. As the day proceeds, the narrator and his cohorts each fashion snowmen with unique themes: a snow girl is rendered in a summer dress, an old woman carries a basket of eggs, a magician-snowman pulls a rabbit out of a top hat. As night falls, the ingenuity and precision demonstrated by the children inspires the narrator. He rises the next morning to find some boys have worked through the night on their creations: An acrobatic snowman walks a snowy tightrope; exquisite snow creatures representing mythical animals are everywhere. Snowy vegetation representing trees in full summer bloom cover backyards and alleyways. The narrator experiences an agony of exultation in the fantastic sculptures.
When a rain storm arrives that evening, the exhausted children welcome the passing of their ecstasy as the snow melts. The old neighborhood is restored and the boys return to their simple winter pursuits.Ingersoll, 2014 p. 50-51: Plot synopsis
Background Steven Millhauser, on conceiving "Snowmen," from a 2023 interview with critic Kevin Koczwara:
Critical appraisal
The impossibly intricate and fantastic sculptures in "Snowmen" are executed in a creative frenzy that, according to the boy-narrator, "show evidence of a skill so excessive, an elaboration so painfully and exquisitely minute, the it could scarcely conceal a desperate restlessness."Ingersoll, 2014 p. 51: Quoted here And p. 54: "...an obsessive effort to push back the limits of what art can represent."Millhauser, 1986 p. 130 According to biographer Earl G. Ingersoll, this passage is key to understanding an element of Millhauser's literary outlook.Ingersoll, 2014 p. 51
The creative fervor cannot be sustained in "Snowmen". Nature intervenes, melting the sculptures and reasserting a welcomed balance to the landscape and community.Ingersoll, 2014 p. 51
Ingersoll locates a parallel between the "Snowmen" narrative to French composer Paul Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1897) citing the relentless proliferation of conjured brooms that threaten to overwhelm the young apprentice and which the master sorcerer subdues, imposing order upon the chaos.Ingersoll, 2010: " a magic that may get out of control as in Paul Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice...the sculpting escalates into such complexities and intricacies of representation as to seem possible only in the realm of imagination, fantasy, or madness."
Reviewer Robert Dunn at The New York Times comments on a thematic limitation in "Snowmen"'s narrative:
Footnotes
Sources Dunn, Robert. 1986. FIRST LOVE AND THE LAST AUTOMATONS The New York Times, January 19, 1986. Accessed 14 April 2025. Ingersoll, Earl G. 2010. Steven Millhauser, a Very Late Modernist in Journal of the Short Story in English, Les Cahiers de la nouvelle. Spring 2010. Accessed 16 April 2025. Ingersoll, Earl G. 2014. Understanding Steven Millhauser. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, SC. Koczwara, Kevin. 2023. Worlds Within Worlds: A Conversation with Steven Millhauser Los Angeles Review of Books, November 14, 2023. Accessed 22 February 2025. Millhauser, Steven. 1986. In the Penny Arcade. Alfred A. Knopf.