Steven Millhauser’s first novel, Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of An American Writer, 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright, is an interesting and valuable book for a consideration of the complexities of the art of biography, especially the relationship between biographer and subject, and an important example of a subgenre of biography-the mock-biography-which combines elements of fiction and nonfiction (sometimes literally, sometimes mockingly by incorporating fictional nonfiction within the fictional construct), and parodies the conventions of biography.