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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN num: 9781590170519
ISBN number: 1590170512
Label: NYRB Classics
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 440
Printing Date: 2003-04
Publishing house: NYRB Classics
Release Date: May 31, 2003
Sale Popularity Level: 357365
Studio: NYRB Classics
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Product Description:
John Collier's wild and sardonic tales, which were for many years a fixture in the pages of The New Yorker, are, in the opinion of his many devoted admirers, as good as - indeed better than - the best of Saki and Roald Dahl. In stories that explore the logic of lunacy, presenting the most fantastical occurrences as commonplace fact, Collier not only tickles the fancy, but tests our nerve, making us wonder just how deep and firmly placed are the foundations of the (seemingly) real world. Here longtime Collier fan Ray Bradbury offers a new selection of the most inspired works of this singular modern genius.
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Rated by buyers 
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John Collier belongs in the ingenious, ironic, supernatural short story Pantheon of H.H.Munro (Saki), O'Henry, Edgar Allen Poe, Shirley Jackson, and Roald Dahl. His deft touch with delicious deviltry and humorous horror is unparalleled. "Fancies & Goodnights" is a selection of some of his best works. Laugh, shudder, and enjoy!
Rated by buyers 
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This collection of 50 short stories and fables won the International Fantasy Award in 1952. Many of the stories were from much earlier though, and the collection covers stories from 1931 - 1951, including many that had not appeared in print before. Ray Bradbury writes a wonderful introduction to the collection, and if you have read Bradbury without reading Collier, you will definitely see that Collier had a big influence on Bradbury.
There are simply too many stories here to talk about them all, but for the most part they are very enjoyable. Many are fables; almost all have twists to them. All in all, this is a very fun collection to read.
Rated by buyers -
Mr. Collier's writing is superb. I am no critic, but simply an avid reader who loves to be entertained by intelligent words and stories. Mr. Collier does it so well with this collection. I wish he could produce one of these a year! This is a collection you will have for years. Don't lend it out you may not get it back!
Rated by buyers -
"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 very 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 very 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.
Rated by buyers -
Here is the very first line of the very 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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