Customer Reviews

The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Tales and Conjurations

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What is important to remember when reading any of Charles Johnson's work is that he is highly philosophical. He's learned in many disciplines and is usually inclined to merge difficult and seemingly incongruent ideas. His work at times can seem jarring and ethereal--giving readers an over-the-head feeling. I find that if you can work through the areas in his work that go from familiar to foreign, and keep on pace with the story line, by the end you'll find Johnson's work highly rewarding. Faith and the Good Thing is by far my favorite Johnson novel, and Menagerie is indeed the best short story in the whole body of the fiction literature landscape. His short story China will make you re-calibrate your literary compass--it challenges writers to strive to bring more life meanings (usefulness) to their entertainment stories.
Johnson is my favorite author. Some of his work is quite difficult. He is the author who will write 1200 pages then distill the content to 250. He's careful, he's purposeful. He's brilliant. He ain't easy.

--Solomohn "Piebald" Ennis

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is a good example for writing, and the inability to write. Exchange Value was chosen by Gardner as one of the best American short stories of 1982 and has become Johnson's most anthologized short story. Two kids steal from a dead old woman who hoarded her money in fear, and they become as eccentric as she. How ironic. Popper's Disease has some interesting insights into racial matters, but then it degrades into a science-fiction story and anti-solipsistic philosophy. Similarly, Alethia starts out promising, with a sexy black woman blackmailing her philosophy professor, but then is swallowed up in dreamlike imagery and the tired notion that thinking is too much dangerous.

Occasionally Johnson displays that Ron Hansen tic of turning respectable nouns into clumsy verbs, while his classroom admonishment to get as specific as possible, is here shown to date stories. Several times he mentions Sanka rather than coffee. Who drinks Sanka anymore? Wendy Barnes in Alethia also uses trim in the sexual sense at one point, which seems terribly dated to me. But the stories aren't bad, entertaining enough, and there are early references to the Allmuseri, Johnson's fictional African tribe in Middle Passage. But I wouldn't seek out other Charles Johnson efforts as a result of this book.