Take a Nightcap and Say Goodnight to Your Fancy…John Collier is somewhere halfway between E.T.A. Hoffmann and Edgar Allan Poe but he doesn’t spare his sense of humour and he always wants it painted black.Why, for God's sake, don't you read the news? Don't you remember the Pittsburgh cleaver murder?No? Then these stories are for you – you’ll know many natural and supernatural, normal and paranormal phenomena of this world.The tablets were not long in taking effect. Our hero closed his eyes. He pu...

New York Review Books is to be commended on two counts: firstly, for making this overlooked John Collier classic collection of short stories available to a wider audience; secondly, for including an introductory essay by Ray Bradbury where Ray proffers three memorable lines: "There is no umbilical cord between the characters in Collier’s world and the world we live in. It is a world were anything can happen and always does." "The stories here are not serious and thank God for that." "John Collie...

Collier's 30 fanciful "fables" make Aesop's seem likeDisney creations. Discomforting, disturbing, hislooney tunes encompassing murder, love, death,delusion and gender-bending can leave you feelinglike you just banged your head -- badly -- and youaren't sure of anything. To quote Collier (1901-1980): "Howinteresting life is when things get like that!""Bottle Party" -- A lonely fella buys a bottle with a full-rigged ship inside. With intense effort, he flows himself into the bottle and the stopper...

3.45 stars…If you are looking for a short story collection that contain tales that are bizarre and weird then this book is for you. Several about devils, at least two about genies, a number about murders or soon-to-be committed murders. Some of it dark material but I knew it was so weird, often fantastical, it did not trouble my soul to read the stories. It is a NYRB edition which means it has that imprimatur going for it. They brought a writer I guess long forgotten and out of print (1951, Doub...

This man is a genius. He can write a story about a man falling in love with a department store mannequin and make it more touching than any romance novel. He's clever to the point of hilarity. His wit makes it feel like he's winking at you between the pages. The opening to one of my favourite stories, Hell Hath No Fury, goes like this: "As soon as Einstein declared that space was finite, the price of building sites, both in Heaven and Hell, soared outrageously."

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGgit...Featured in my Top 20 Books I Read in 2017Reading Collier is like using a jewel-encrusted onyx knife to slice up a wheel of Camembert. Decadent, rewarding, sinister and wonderful. (Man look who's turning all fancy poetsy!)

These stories by John Collier--who spent most of his career in Hollywood, where he was instrumental in the tone and style of such shows as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone--are marvelous examples of a sort of short story that hardly exists anymore: sharp, satirical, and mordant flights of fantasy where every O. Henry twist is a twist of the knife. The introduction to this NYRB edition (bless the NYRB for all of the out-of-print authors they've been bringing back to light in recent...

In a world filled with unread stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Jorge Luis Borges, and Raymond Carver, one does not have the time to read John Collier. I was hoping this Collier collection was one of those forgotten classics, as I was led to believe by the introduction of the book and by all these 5-star reviews on Goodreads. But don't be fooled - these are slight, inconsequential tales, cute, worth a smirk (occasionally), but otherwise formulaic, predictable, and dull.

This book had something of everything, and I will say that this author writes in one of those ways that made me enjoy almost every single story – even the ones that should be boring. I can’t really explain what in the writing was so good, but I loved it, it felt homely and somehow safe.Overall I loved the book, the whole thing gets 4 stars. However, I will do a review/rating of each of these stories so others can see (if they want) which one I did and did not like, but also so that I can look ba...

I started off really enjoying this collection of stories. They are mostly very short tales, many of which have an ordinary setting but contain some element of the fantastical or macabre; others are more explicitly fantasy, but somehow the style is too traditional and matter-of-fact for the book to really feel like it belongs within the fantasy genre. The main problem that it is simply too long, consisting of 50 stories, and after a while they begin to feel very repetitive. The themes frequently

A handful of these stories are truly amazing, the rest are merely good reads. And I mean "good reads" as a high compliment. The best, I think, are "Evening Primrose," "Witch Money," and "Thus, I Refute Beelzy." It's remarkable that such dark but smart and witty stories were such a staple of magazines like The New Yorker once. Bring 'em back!

John Collier wrote short stories like no one else. They are formulaic, always with a twist, usually a husband realizing he's been cuckolded and then killing his wife, mostly violent. I would say more misanthropic than misogynist, though there's a bit of that too.What makes them great is his objective, clear style than calmly watches as people's lives fall apart within the space of three pages. The Devil arrives and behaves like any young man with lots of confidence, experience, and money. You ha...

Stories where characters get their comeuppance in odd and clever ways. Reminds me of Roald Dahl's short stories for adults, but to my mind Dahl is the better writer. Dahl's stories tend to be a little longer, as he spends more time on character and on creating suspense. But a fun read. "Youth from Vienna," may be my favorite of the collection. (Didn't read the NYRB edition, don't know if that has more or other/better stories).

A pass-along from my mom some time ago, I finally took a look at this collection of short stories.The reviews on Amazon compare Collier's short stories to Saki or Roald Dahl, but I got more of an early Theodore Sturgeon feel, with perhaps a touch of Flannery O'Connor. The copyrights on the stories run from the early 30's to the early 50's; so the material does feel a little dated at times. However, the dark humour and twist endings make for some entertaining reading. At least one of the stories

A classic collection of Collier's fantasiesThis is an excellent collection, which has stayed in print since 1951 for good reasons. These are amazingly good stories from the 1930s and 40s, and most haven't dated a bit.There are a number of partial reprints of this book. The current New York Review Books is a full reprint, but you can currently (2014) get the 1951 hardback for about the price of the ebook. Worth seriously considering, in my opinion. And, of course, watch the library/charity booksh...

Clever, I guess in odd bits. But why all the pretensions of Literary merit? For the most part these are simple SF zingers, even more anecdotal and less narratively rich than episodes of "Twilight Zone." Is it because somehow the macabre is awarded esteem solely on account of the cynical sardonic effect it has on the pseudo-intellectual (I'm thinking of Edward Gorey...)? Eh, not that it matters. I really cannot recommend this in any case. Not only is it appallingly sexist, it's trivial. And *two*...

Knowing these were once acclaimed as models of the genre says a lot about the transient nature of taste, and reassures anyone at odds with the time that fashions may seem monolithic, even hegemonic--but aren't.Still, I am at least somewhat a creature of my time, susceptible for better or for worse to its tastes... The best these stories might hope for is being resurrected not as a revolutionary alternative to today's dominant ideas of the short story genre, but as simply an alternative, a predil...

Collier writes short, very intense stories, often making blithe and skillful use of all sorts of fairy tale and fantasy tropes such as angels, devils, demons, mannequins, and anthropomorphised fleas. His best stories are on par with Roald Dahl's short fiction, although a handful of the stories in the "Fancies and Goodnights" collections seem to be random and under-cooked to my taste, almost as if they were exquisite corpse excercises concocted during happy hour with fellow Twilight Zone screenwr...

I grew up reading the stories of E.T.A Hoffmann, and Collier's stories are a more modern version of Hoffmann's romantic masterpieces: fantastic and fantastical, whimsy and witty, comical and terrifying at the same time. Collier has a flair for language, and it is a simple pleasure reading his stories. Most are not more than a few pages in length, but he conveys a lot in a few well chosen sentences. I cannot help but chuckle as I picture his stories in my mind, who knew that the drudgery life of

Collier has just entered my personal pantheon of great gripping/uncanny story authors, with Roald Dahl, Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson and Patricia Highsmith. Got a nice old used copy of this the other day, and am loving it, and plan to read his 'Evening Primrose' for my Thriling Tales Adult Storytime at the library.

Yeah. Uhhh…I can’t really remember if I had so much trouble finishing this because I’m a lazy, miserable person or because they weren’t the most riveting collection of stories. It certainly should have fit the bill, forgotten mid-century American magical realism (or whatever), and there were some strong ones now that I pull them out of my memory…I was reading these when I was in Utah, I was faculty at this beautiful resort in the mountains there, I had like a cabin, in the morning I would drink

Contents ▪️"Bottle Party" (Presenting Moonshine 1939)▪️"De Mortuis" (The New Yorker 1942)▪️"Evening Primrose" (Presenting Moonshine 1941)▪️"Witch's Money" (The New Yorker 1939)▪️"Are You Too Late or Was I Too Early?" (The New Yorker 1951)▪️"Fallen Star" (original)▪️"The Touch of Nutmeg Makes It" (The New Yorker 1941)▪️"Three Bears Cottage" (original)▪️"Pictures in the Fire" (original)▪️"Wet Saturday" (The New Yorker 1938)▪️"Squirrels Have Bright Eyes" (Presenting Moonshine 1941)▪️"Halfway to Hel...

These stories are full of dark humor and wit. With some creepy thrown in. A nice mental vacation at present. His stories have a slightly Twilight Zoney vibe. And they stay with you. I absolutely love the one about the couple with their own “ Groundhog Day”, constantly reliving a nightmarish but hilarious scenario.

I had been looking forward to reading this collection of short stories for literally over ten years. I was first introduced to it via one of its stories, “Are You Too Late or Was I Too Early,” while taking classes for my Master’s Degree in the mid-2000s. That brief story, with its never-saw-it-coming twist ending, enchanted me. And Ray Bradbury, my all-time favorite author, wrote the introduction. How could I not enjoy the other 49 stories?Well, it turns out that the book in total, and the indiv...

I enjoyed John Collier’s sardonic tales. They’re imaginative and strange, and we can cleary see its influence on many authors after him (like Ray Bradbury and Roald Dahl), but many of the stories are a bit dated and one can easily predict where they’re heading.I also felt that it is a huge book of short stories not to be read on one take. I believe these stories will better be appreciated if read with some other books in between. Nevertheless, I appreciated his writing and imagination, and would...

I read an earlier edition, which for a while was my favorite gift to give to friends and family. I also used to keep extra copies on hand in case I was invited along to a friend-of-a-friend's birthday at the last minute.Full of imagination, humanity, and plot twists befitting a writer for The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (as Collier was), this collection of short stories comes off as one part Evelyn Waugh, two parts Roald Dahl. There are some perfect stories in here, and they will...

Urban Fantasy - Short StoriesWhat a fun, quirky and gem of a book! Originally published in 1931, John Collier's stories feature black humor, wild twists, "the bizarre, the weird and the surrealistic ".Preface: " ... what if ... a hothouse orchid suddenly developed a bud that looked curiously like the face of Cousin Jane's missing cat?" "in the story "Green Thoughts", it also strikes him even more forcefully ... that Cousin Jane herself has mysteriously disappeared."An excellent choice for reader...

This almost gets a five star. The fifty (FIFTY!) stories in this book are just about uniformly concise and excellent. The whole book has a fantastic-realistic tone, in which midcentury characters might either meet up with a demon or discover their lover's secret, and often both in conjunction. The dry approach works very well here. It's a great book to read in fits and starts on the subway, since you're always only about two pages from the end of a given story.

John Collier's short stories are a potent cocktail of fantasy, horror, and black humor: a seemingly whimsical trifle may nevertheless end with a bone-chilling twist, while a story of cold-blooded murder may be told with a twinkle in the eye. Fans of Saki or Roald Dahl, who both mined similar territory, owe it to themselves to read them if they haven't already.

An English Twilight Zone. Alice In Wonderland grows up. Roald Dahl's wittier brother. Saki's cleverer cousin. The best read I've had in several years. When will NYRB publish more of him? Or find another comparable.