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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ian Myles Slater on: A Complete Reprint, October 20, 2004
"Fancies and Goodnights" is a superb selection of John Collier's short stories: the enthusiastic reviews on Amazon are a good measure of the response of many readers to his mixture of whimsy, satire, understatement, ingenious concepts, and very polite English bemusement -- with the first half of the twentieth century in general, and New York and Hollywood in particular.
I am adding this review to the chorus of praise because there is some possible bibliographical confusion (as an earlier reviewer briefly warned).
The title "Fancies and Goodnights" has been used for two related collections, one a shorter version of the other. The 1951 version, of which this "New York Review Books" edition is a complete reprinting, contained fifty stories. This is far and away the better of the two. It has been reprinted before; I have a copy of a "Bantam Giant" mass-market paperback from 1953.
A shorter edition, with only thirty-two of the stories, has also been published under the same title. A copy of this shorter "Fancies and Goodnights" I have on hand is an edition issued in the old Time Reading Program Special Edition series (1965). It includes much praise of Collier by Fred Hoyle (then at the height of his fame as an astronomer/cosmologist/novelist), but no notice (so far as I can see) that it was not the full version, and that a reader who knew the older form could search it in vain for a remembered story. Copies of this "revised edition" dated at least as late as 1980 are available.
I am not sure if the Time Reading Program edition was the first short-text version. I once did a library search for copies, twenty-some years ago, and I believe that I found at least one other such cut edition, from a different publisher, with the same reduced selection.
If you have one of these shorter versions, and are happy with it, you will almost certainly want the extra material available in the full version; some of the eighteen additional stories, at least, will be a real treat. If you are ordering a used copy, even if the publisher is not Time Life Books, you should try to compare the length to other editions.
To add to the complications, forty-one of these fifty stories were included, with some others not in "Fancies," in the collection "The Best of John Collier" (Pocket Books paperback, 1975). The six added stories *may* make that volume an attractive acquisition to a Collier fan, despite the extensive overlap; and if you already have a copy, you *might* want to consider a full copy of "Fancies and Goodnights."
However, "The Best ..." was itself a cut version of a larger volume!
"The John Collier Reader," a long-out-of-print omnibus, included, in addition to the forty-seven short stories found in "The Best...," two chapters from "Defy the Foul Fiend, or, The Misadventures of a Heart" (1934), and a complete text of another of Collier's novels, "His Monkey Wife, or, Married to a Chimp " (1930).
See what I mean about confusion?
(Unlike "Defy the Foul Fiend," "His Monkey Wife" is currently in print, also as a New York Review Book. The adventures of an educated chimpanzee who attempts to look after her feckless Englishman, it is, depending on your point of view, an attack on men, or on women, or on marriage, with just a touch of satire on the Empire. For many of those who react to it strongly, it is either offensive but very funny, or just offensive. There are those who find it too funny to be offensive. I don't find it *successful* enough to have a strong opinion against it... or for it. It seems to me to contain a brilliant shorter work stretched beyond its limits.)
It is great to have "Fancies and Goodnights" back in print. For John Collier's fans -- or at least the fans of his short fiction -- there is an unmet need for a really comprehensive collection of his stories. In a more ideal world -- perhaps one arranged by one of Collier's polished fiends or bewildered angels -- a large, and non-overlapping, collection of additional Collier stories would be available as well.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't lend this book to anyone if you want to keep it!, April 4, 2002
I know from bitter experience, having done just that to a "friend" who proceeded to "lose" it. The stories, many of which feature a tongue-in-cheek use of supernatural or other fantastic elements, are generally of a somewhat cynical bent. Some, however, are actually quite moving, like one (the title of which I forget) about a lovable pyromaniac. Warning! There are at least two editions of this book, one of which has fewer stories. Be sure to get the full version. If you like Collier, you will also like Roald Dahl, Charles Beaumont, Stanley Ellin and Fredric Brown.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Logic of Elfland Revisited, July 31, 2000
The book comes as a revelation. One simply does not expect such invention on such a scale and with such constant intensity. These short stories ought to be strictly rationed so that one will read no more than a single example per day. This way the maximum pleasure can be obtained and that sly, wry smile of the connoisseur will surface often. Collier can do more with a paragraph than King does in a whole volume. This is what truly excellent writing is all about.
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