Fancies and Goodnights
by John Collier
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John Collier's edgy, sardonic tales are works of rare wit, curious insight, and scary implication. They stand out as one of the pinnacles in the critically neglected but perennially popular tradition of weird writing that includes E.T.A. Hoffmann and Charles Dickens as well as more recent masters like Jorge Luis Borges and Roald Dahl. With a cast of characters that ranges from man-eating flora to disgruntled devils and suburban salarymen (not that it's always easy to tell one from another), show more Collier's dazzling stories explore the implacable logic of lunacy, revealing a surreal landscape whose unstable surface is depth-charged with surprise. show lessTags
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SomeGuyInVirginia Another master. 'Evening Primrose' is one of the most unsettling stories I have read.
Member Reviews
Another book from 1951, but these short stories were mostly written a decade or two earlier. They now appear in a kindle version in two volumes. I read the 32 stories in volume 1. John Collier was British born but lived for a time in Hollywood where he earned his living as a screenwriter for film and television, but he had success as a short story writer with many of these stories being published in the New Yorker.
The stories could be classed as entertainments with many of them having elements of fancy. Some of them were adapted for the television series Alfred Hitchcock presents and they would have been equally at home in The Twilight Zone. They are generally well written with Collier showing his screenwriting skills by introducing show more his scenarios quickly and effectively. Several of the best stories are crime dramas for example The Touch of Nutmeg Makes it. In this story two friends working in a research library befriend a newcomer from out of town, he is difficult to get to know but eventually opens up to reveal that he has recently been acquitted in a big murder trial; he tells his new friends it was a particularly frenzied murderous attack and they cannot believe that there new friend would be capable of such a crime, he invites them up to his apartment and mixes some drinks......
About half way through the collection I came across Great Possibilities and things began to get a little weirder; stuffed animals coming to life. Then there is Gavin O'Leary which is a story about a performing flea called Gavin O'Leary and Thus I Refute Beelzy which is a story of a child's imaginary friend coming horribly to life. This vein continues with Special Delivery where a shy young man falls in love with a mannequin in a Department store; Green Thoughts tells of a man eating plant that holds its victims still half alive within itself and we seem to have spilled over into Alien territory. There are a couple more crime stories before the final story The Chaser where a loving celebrity couple have acquired just one potion of eternal youth, which one of them should use it?
The stories are clever rather than being emotional portraits and they all work towards an interesting ending, which does not always feature a plot twist, but can leave the reader to make up his own mind how it might end. The dialogue is handled well enough and these scenarios take place in America, England and France; all places familiar to the author. I suppose the stories may seem a little old fashioned now, with many of them familiar to television audiences, but I found them amusing to read and so 3.5 stars. show less
The stories could be classed as entertainments with many of them having elements of fancy. Some of them were adapted for the television series Alfred Hitchcock presents and they would have been equally at home in The Twilight Zone. They are generally well written with Collier showing his screenwriting skills by introducing show more his scenarios quickly and effectively. Several of the best stories are crime dramas for example The Touch of Nutmeg Makes it. In this story two friends working in a research library befriend a newcomer from out of town, he is difficult to get to know but eventually opens up to reveal that he has recently been acquitted in a big murder trial; he tells his new friends it was a particularly frenzied murderous attack and they cannot believe that there new friend would be capable of such a crime, he invites them up to his apartment and mixes some drinks......
About half way through the collection I came across Great Possibilities and things began to get a little weirder; stuffed animals coming to life. Then there is Gavin O'Leary which is a story about a performing flea called Gavin O'Leary and Thus I Refute Beelzy which is a story of a child's imaginary friend coming horribly to life. This vein continues with Special Delivery where a shy young man falls in love with a mannequin in a Department store; Green Thoughts tells of a man eating plant that holds its victims still half alive within itself and we seem to have spilled over into Alien territory. There are a couple more crime stories before the final story The Chaser where a loving celebrity couple have acquired just one potion of eternal youth, which one of them should use it?
The stories are clever rather than being emotional portraits and they all work towards an interesting ending, which does not always feature a plot twist, but can leave the reader to make up his own mind how it might end. The dialogue is handled well enough and these scenarios take place in America, England and France; all places familiar to the author. I suppose the stories may seem a little old fashioned now, with many of them familiar to television audiences, but I found them amusing to read and so 3.5 stars. show less
This is a great, great collection. I had no idea who John Collier was, but got the recommendation for this collection. (From where? I don’t remember.) I was more than pleasantly surprised; I was dumbfounded by the quality, the weirdness, the twists and turns of these stories.
Now, it is fair to warn you that, in some small measure, these have a touch of aging. (The stories are from the 30s and 40s.) I see this most reflected in the fact that some of the “surprise” endings are telegraphed. In general, these twists are not shocking surprises. I feel some of this is because they are the type of twists readers see so often we begin to expect them. And yet, there wasn’t a single story that, to me, was damaged by this foreknowledge.
I show more laughed out loud at some (you should have seen the looks on the airplane), I was enthralled with all of them, I was entertained, and I just flat liked every page of this collection. (Okay, I lie – one story didn’t work for me – one story – one story in 328 pages. That ain’t bad.)
And then I got to the last story, “The Chaser.” Imagine my surprise when I remembered it. A story I read in high school that I have remembered this whole time, but never knew what it was and who wrote it.
The fact that I didn’t know the name speaks to my ignorance. The continuing power of the stories speaks to the power of John Collier’s stories – they are all so good any one of them may be the one that comes back to you 40 years later. show less
Now, it is fair to warn you that, in some small measure, these have a touch of aging. (The stories are from the 30s and 40s.) I see this most reflected in the fact that some of the “surprise” endings are telegraphed. In general, these twists are not shocking surprises. I feel some of this is because they are the type of twists readers see so often we begin to expect them. And yet, there wasn’t a single story that, to me, was damaged by this foreknowledge.
I show more laughed out loud at some (you should have seen the looks on the airplane), I was enthralled with all of them, I was entertained, and I just flat liked every page of this collection. (Okay, I lie – one story didn’t work for me – one story – one story in 328 pages. That ain’t bad.)
And then I got to the last story, “The Chaser.” Imagine my surprise when I remembered it. A story I read in high school that I have remembered this whole time, but never knew what it was and who wrote it.
The fact that I didn’t know the name speaks to my ignorance. The continuing power of the stories speaks to the power of John Collier’s stories – they are all so good any one of them may be the one that comes back to you 40 years later. show less
A few pages into this book, I was ready to declare Collier my new favorite writer. He has the delicious wit and dizzyingly addictive enthusiasm of Bradbury at his short best; his way with a phrase is positively Wildeian; when his endings are heat, they're really great.
But after a dozen or so stories, I started to think this collection is a bit less than the sum of its parts. Collier's stories concern the same general types of characters: young men with youthful obsessions, primed for an ironic education. Where Bradbury switches between gothic horror, southern pastoral nostalgia, and goofy comedy, Collier glides on more evenly. That makes his voice that much more recognizable, but it deflates this particular book as a whole.
This may show more just be a first-read impression, though. There's so much to like here—the extremely short form, the unforgettable phrases, the instantly classic twists—that despite its flaws, 'Fancies and Goodnights' is a story collection made to fall in love with. show less
But after a dozen or so stories, I started to think this collection is a bit less than the sum of its parts. Collier's stories concern the same general types of characters: young men with youthful obsessions, primed for an ironic education. Where Bradbury switches between gothic horror, southern pastoral nostalgia, and goofy comedy, Collier glides on more evenly. That makes his voice that much more recognizable, but it deflates this particular book as a whole.
This may show more just be a first-read impression, though. There's so much to like here—the extremely short form, the unforgettable phrases, the instantly classic twists—that despite its flaws, 'Fancies and Goodnights' is a story collection made to fall in love with. show less
I can't even remember how I stumbled onto Collier's stories--maybe through Bradbury's recommendation--but they're wonderful. The stories are more sophisticated than Bradbury's in that they tend to be more stylish and less plain eerie, and that adds to the dislocation they cause the reader. Terribly innocent to begin with, the stories all take a twist, even when you think they won't.
Collier's style is of his time, more formal than, say, Jonathan Lethem, whose The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye is a little like these stories, but the things that happen are so cagily wrought, and so earned by the characters, that it is easy to fully enter Collier's world.
Collier's style is of his time, more formal than, say, Jonathan Lethem, whose The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye is a little like these stories, but the things that happen are so cagily wrought, and so earned by the characters, that it is easy to fully enter Collier's world.
Did not finish, because they are stories and i am doling them out as they are so much fun. Always dark takes on common folks- usually with a murder or two thrown in in a light hearted way. Example: 1st story (i think). Man is visited by 2 friends in a quiet town. They wonder where the wife is... strange that she is gone in the circs - he is digging the basement in an odd way (why?) and is evasive. Friends chat with him more or less forgiving him for murdering the wife because she is a notorious philanderer all about town casting great shame on the husband man. Finally they leave and the wife returns. The man casually invites the wife downstairs - to the basement - to show her something..... the end. Pretty delicious and so it goes - show more packed with witty murders and misanthropy. show less
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* pieces about department store mannequins? Really?
Eh, not that it matters. I really cannot recommend this in any case. Not only is it appallingly sexist, it's trivial. And *two* pieces about department store mannequins? Really?
In 1952 Fancies and Goodnights became the second book to win the international Fantasy Award for best fiction book. That this book won is an indication that genre fiction awards were in their infancy, because in later years the awards would be subdivided more finely than in International Fantasy Award's two broad categories of "best fiction book" and "best non-fiction book". As it is not a novel, but rather a collection of short stories, Fancies and Goodnights would likely not have even been eligible for an award as a whole, which would have been a shame, as it is a very readable collection of dark and macabre stories.
Fancies and Goodnightsis also somewhat unusual in that only a handful of the stories in the collection can properly be show more classified as "fantasy" in the broad sense (which, given the works of fiction that won the award includes science fiction within its ambit). The bulk of the stories are entirely mundane (although twisted) stories of spouses murdering spouses, or nephews plotting to kill rich uncles and claim their fortunes, or greedy villagers killing passers by for their presumed fortunes, and so on. The stories that might be classified as fantasy in the book are reminiscent of tales like Robert Louis Stevenson's The Bottle Imp, or Rudyard Kipling's The Monkey's Paw, insofar as they take place in a world that is almost exactly like our world, just with a fantastical twist that shows up to bedevil the protagonist.
Perhaps it is a consequence of reading them all together, and not as part of Sunday paper one at a time, many of the twists of the stories tend to become pretty predictable. In De Mortuis, when a pair of friends suspect a murder that hasn't happened, they spark an actual one. Or in Three Bears Cottage when a husband tries to poison his wife, it is fairly obvious that she will be the one to poison him. In Over Insurance, when a happy couple invests too heavily in life insurance for both of them, it is predictable that their happiness will be destroyed by their resulting poverty. Some stories have less obvious endings, such as The Touch of Nutmeg Makes It, but for the most part venal characters pursue their venal ends and the twists are not really twists so much as obvious plot developments. One might call them cliches, but when Collier was writing his stories most of the turns his stories took probably seemed fairly fresh to his readers. On the other hand, most of the titles of his stories give the "twist" away for the astute reader, so it seems clear that hiding how the story was going to end was not a priority for Collier.
There are just enough stories with a fantasy edge to make this a viable choice for the International Fantasy Award, although most of them follow a similar formula to the mundane stories, just with a supernatural element thrown in. So, in Bottle Party, when a man buys a bottle containing a genie that can grant him any wish he desires, the reader just knows that this will not work out well for him. Or when, in The Lady on the Grey, a caddish Englishman gallivanting about Wales responds to a summons from his caddish buddy and comes across a beautiful woman with a skittish dog, the reader figures out what sort of trouble the protagonist is in for almost immediately. When a father dismisses his son's imaginary friend in Thus I Refute Beelzy, the reader can feel the tension mounting as the story proceed to a fairly inevitable and messy end. On the other hand, in one of the creepiest stories in the volume - Evening Primrose - Collier imagines a shadow world that lurks under our noses, and crafts a story that is creepy and unpredictable. In a completely different way, the dreamily macabre story Green Thoughts drifts to its strange story and somewhat unexpected denouement, proving that Collier could, if he wanted, craft a story that was not entirely predictable.
And even though it is the fantastical stories that drove this book to being awarded, some of the best and most disturbing are the entirely mundane, such as Witchs Money, in which foolishness and ignorance cause an entire village to conspire in a shocking act of violence. Or The Steel Cat, where greed drives a man to betray what might be his only friend. Or one of the best stories in the book, Youth From Vienna, in which a jilted lover gets revenge upon his former intended and her new spouse in a most inventive and subtle manner. This is not to say that the supernatural tales like In the Cards (which I believe was later made into an episode of Tales from the Crypt) don't share this twisted and dark sensibility. Some, however, are darkly humorous, such as Halfway to Hell, in which a man kills himself, and then connives to trick the Devil out of his soul.
Although the stories are very British, and in many ways quaintly old-fashioned, they remain engaging and interesting to the modern reader. Because Collier's stories tend to deal with universal themes: quarreling spouses, greedy charlatans, jealous lovers, and so on, his writing has aged well, even though the specifics of his stories are now well out of date. For anyone who likes their stories to be tinged with a touch of creepy malevolence, Fancies and Goodnights and excellent collection of quality stories.
This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds. show less
Fancies and Goodnightsis also somewhat unusual in that only a handful of the stories in the collection can properly be show more classified as "fantasy" in the broad sense (which, given the works of fiction that won the award includes science fiction within its ambit). The bulk of the stories are entirely mundane (although twisted) stories of spouses murdering spouses, or nephews plotting to kill rich uncles and claim their fortunes, or greedy villagers killing passers by for their presumed fortunes, and so on. The stories that might be classified as fantasy in the book are reminiscent of tales like Robert Louis Stevenson's The Bottle Imp, or Rudyard Kipling's The Monkey's Paw, insofar as they take place in a world that is almost exactly like our world, just with a fantastical twist that shows up to bedevil the protagonist.
Perhaps it is a consequence of reading them all together, and not as part of Sunday paper one at a time, many of the twists of the stories tend to become pretty predictable. In De Mortuis, when a pair of friends suspect a murder that hasn't happened, they spark an actual one. Or in Three Bears Cottage when a husband tries to poison his wife, it is fairly obvious that she will be the one to poison him. In Over Insurance, when a happy couple invests too heavily in life insurance for both of them, it is predictable that their happiness will be destroyed by their resulting poverty. Some stories have less obvious endings, such as The Touch of Nutmeg Makes It, but for the most part venal characters pursue their venal ends and the twists are not really twists so much as obvious plot developments. One might call them cliches, but when Collier was writing his stories most of the turns his stories took probably seemed fairly fresh to his readers. On the other hand, most of the titles of his stories give the "twist" away for the astute reader, so it seems clear that hiding how the story was going to end was not a priority for Collier.
There are just enough stories with a fantasy edge to make this a viable choice for the International Fantasy Award, although most of them follow a similar formula to the mundane stories, just with a supernatural element thrown in. So, in Bottle Party, when a man buys a bottle containing a genie that can grant him any wish he desires, the reader just knows that this will not work out well for him. Or when, in The Lady on the Grey, a caddish Englishman gallivanting about Wales responds to a summons from his caddish buddy and comes across a beautiful woman with a skittish dog, the reader figures out what sort of trouble the protagonist is in for almost immediately. When a father dismisses his son's imaginary friend in Thus I Refute Beelzy, the reader can feel the tension mounting as the story proceed to a fairly inevitable and messy end. On the other hand, in one of the creepiest stories in the volume - Evening Primrose - Collier imagines a shadow world that lurks under our noses, and crafts a story that is creepy and unpredictable. In a completely different way, the dreamily macabre story Green Thoughts drifts to its strange story and somewhat unexpected denouement, proving that Collier could, if he wanted, craft a story that was not entirely predictable.
And even though it is the fantastical stories that drove this book to being awarded, some of the best and most disturbing are the entirely mundane, such as Witchs Money, in which foolishness and ignorance cause an entire village to conspire in a shocking act of violence. Or The Steel Cat, where greed drives a man to betray what might be his only friend. Or one of the best stories in the book, Youth From Vienna, in which a jilted lover gets revenge upon his former intended and her new spouse in a most inventive and subtle manner. This is not to say that the supernatural tales like In the Cards (which I believe was later made into an episode of Tales from the Crypt) don't share this twisted and dark sensibility. Some, however, are darkly humorous, such as Halfway to Hell, in which a man kills himself, and then connives to trick the Devil out of his soul.
Although the stories are very British, and in many ways quaintly old-fashioned, they remain engaging and interesting to the modern reader. Because Collier's stories tend to deal with universal themes: quarreling spouses, greedy charlatans, jealous lovers, and so on, his writing has aged well, even though the specifics of his stories are now well out of date. For anyone who likes their stories to be tinged with a touch of creepy malevolence, Fancies and Goodnights and excellent collection of quality stories.
This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds. show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Fancies and Goodnights
- Original title
- Fancies and goodnights
- Alternate titles*
- Verhalen tegen het slapen
- Original publication date
- 1951 (Doubleday) (Doubleday)
- Related movies
- "Lights Out": DeMortius (1946 | s1e3 | IMDb); "Suspense": De Mortuis (1951 | s3e42 | IMDb); "Alfred Hitchcock Presents": De Mortuis (1956 | s2e3 | IMDb); Evening Primrose (1966 | IMDb); "Alfred Hitchcock Presents": Wet Saturday (1956 | s2e1 | IMDb); "Tales of the Unexpected": Wet Saturday (1984 | s7e8 | IMDb) (show all 14); "Alfred Hitchcock Presents": Back for Christmas (1956 | s1e23 | IMDb); "Tales of the Unexpected": Back for Christmas (1980 | s2e14 | IMDb); "Gruen Guild Playhouse": Birds of Prey (1952 | s2e7 | IMDb); "Tales of the Unexpected": Bird of Prey (1984 | s7e710 | IMDb); Some Call It Loving (1973 | IMDb); The Fountain of Youth (1958 | IMDb); "Tales of the Unexpected": Youth from Vienna (1983 | s6e13 | IMDb); "The Twilight Zone": The Chaser (1960 | s1e31 | IMDb)
- Dedication
- For Gus Lobrano
- First words
- Franklin Fletcher dreamed of luxury in the form of tiger-skins and beautiful women. [Bottle Party]
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"Au revoir," said the old man. [The Chaser]
- Blurbers
- Chabon, Michael; Holmes, H.H.
- Original language
- English
- Disambiguation notice*
- Oorspronkelijk uitgegeven in 1969 als Grote ABC 127 onder de titel 'De dame op de schimmel'.
Heruitgave in 1981 als Grote ABC 389 onder de titel 'Verhalen tegen het slapen'.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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