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Title: Fancies and Goodnights (New York Review Books) by John Collier, Ray Bradbury ISBN: 1-59017-051-2 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: April, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.64 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A master of the short story
Comment: I have seen John Collier grouped with Poe, O'Henry and Saki--to that list I would add Roald Dahl. Collier is a brilliant, subtle, and powerful writer of wicked little stories that take the reader by surprise. Clever, ingenious, and original are other words that come to mind. Collier himself said he had learned a great deal about writing from reading James Joyce--and we in turn can learn a great deal about some of the darker aspects of human nature (tinged with humor) from reading John Collier. Excellent.
Rating: 5
Summary: Funny, haunting, unforgettable stories
Comment: John Collier has the distinction of being the only writer who wrote a short storywhich I read decades ago, and remembered for years _as having been a novel_.The story was "Youth from Vienna" and it is only twenty pages long. I find that quite a few people remember individual John Collier stories which have been burned indelibly into their minds, without, alas, remembering the name of the author. "Oh, the story of the people living in the in the department stores..." "Oh, the one where Helen of Troy says 'here I am on a bearskin again.'" My continuing quest to replace worn-out, falling-apart paperbacks with new hardbounds continues to frustrate. How can this book possibly be available on cassette, but not in print?
Rating: 4
Summary: Not for the Well-adjusted, Energetic and Ambitious
Comment: Here is the first line of the first story in John Collier's "Fancies and Goodnights."
"Franklin Fletcher dreamed of luxury in the form of tiger-skins and beautiful women. He was prepared, at a pinch, to forego the tiger-skins."
It's a representative beginning. A typical Collier hero is a young man with big dreams, beaten down by poverty and respectability. He longs for seashores and good champagne, but one wonders whether he ever actually has a date (perhaps he wonders himself). His powers are the powers of the weak: sneakiness, sometimes with the aid of the supernatural. The supernatural, as any reader knows, is not always reliable: Franklin Fletcher's tale ends on a note of grisly comedy. The best comparison I can think of is Saki, laced by Gissing and with just a dash of Poe.
These Collier stories were hugely popular among people whom I held in high regard back when I was in college in the 50s. I can't say I entirely liked them - the stories. The snarkiness was entertaining, but unsettling: probably it hit too close to home. Rereading them after nearly half a century, it's easy to see why one would want to put them back in print. They have plenty of intrinsic merit. But I think they have a side-benefit, perhaps unintended: I think they are a bracing reminder of the 50s and what one (read: I) might have hated about them. Try this:
"In Hell, as in other places we know of, conditions are damnably disagreeable. Well-adjusted, energetic, and ambitious devils take this very much in their stride. They expect to improve their lot and ultimately to become fiends of distinction."
That was fine if your deviltry was "well-adjusted, energetic and ambitious." Otherwise you had to settle for smaller consolations, one of which, surely, would have been the stories of John Collier. Reading these stories, then, may be a kind of nostalgia trip. It may not always seem like a nostalgia trip one wants to take, but as Jane Austen says, one may love a place even if one has suffered there. And in any event, Collier is surely good company along the way.
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Title: Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon, Louise Varese, William T. Vollmann ISBN: 1590170431 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 09 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Towers of Trebizond (New York Review Books Classics) by Rose MacAulay, Jan Morris ISBN: 159017058X Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: January, 2004 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History (New York Review Books Classics) by Edmund Wilson, Louis Menand (Introduction) ISBN: 1590170334 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Three Bedrooms in Manhattan (New York Review Books Classics) by Georges Simenon, Marc Romano, Lawrence G. Blochman, Joyce Carol Oates ISBN: 159017044X Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: His Monkey Wife or Married to a Chimp by John Collier, Eva Brann ISBN: 0966491335 Publisher: Paul Dry Books Inc Pub. Date: March, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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