{"product_id":"fancies-and-goodnights-isbn-9781590170519","title":"Fancies and Goodnights","description":"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), Collier's dazzling stories explore the implacable logic of lunacy, revealing a surreal landscape whose unstable surface is depth-charged with surprise.\"Deals with the Devil and other fiendish delights.\" — Michael Dirda, \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e, List of 66 Favorite Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIntense like poems, compressed like epigrams, short stories have always inclined to the lyrical and biting. No story writer ever bit more sharply or wrote more gracefully than John Collier. When I first encountered his work, twenty-five years ago, I was shocked by his plots and delighted by his cruelty; now I take my delight in the dark silky stuff of his prose style, and the shock lies in his faultless execution and in his mastery of craft. If you don’t know his work, you owe yourself the pleasure—the indispensable pleasure—of Collier.\u003cbr\u003e— Michael Chabon\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere is a world of moonshine and madness, of suburbia invaded by fiends and angels, of magic spells, grotesque melodrama and lunatic farce, surprising, ludicrous, terrifying.\u003cbr\u003e— \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this collection, Collier uses clever, evocative prose to tell dozens of brief tales that vault off at peculiar, fantastical angles with often startlingly—and amusingly—cruel conclusions….At his best it is a mystery how he fell from attention. Erased from history for half a century like a character in one of his stories, Collier deserves rediscovery.\u003cbr\u003e— Rob Haynes, \u003ci\u003eTime Out\u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePreponderantly from the \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, these haunted lullabies and sanguine whimsies which range from the civilized horror of Saki to extravagant parody, display an affectionate familiarity with evil, sharpen drama with irony.\u003cbr\u003e— \u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003eJohn Collier (1901-1980) was born in London. He began his writing career as a poet, first publishing in 1920. He turned to fiction in the early 1930s, producing the popular and controversial novel, \u003ci\u003eHis Monkey Wife\u003c\/i\u003e, about a man who is married to a chimpanzee. In 1935 Collier left England for Hollywood, where he became an active and prolific writer for film and later television; he was particularly influential in developing the brilliantly creepy and subversive style of such television classics as “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “The Twilight Zone.” An adaptation from Milton, \u003ci\u003eParadise Lost: Screenplay for Cinema of the Mind\u003c\/i\u003e was published in 1973, but never produced as a film. Collier’s other works range from the poetry collection \u003ci\u003eGemini\u003c\/i\u003e (1931) to the novels \u003ci\u003eTom’s A-Cold\u003c\/i\u003e(1933) and \u003ci\u003eDefy the Foul Fiend\u003c\/i\u003e (1934), and the short story collections \u003ci\u003ePresenting Moonshine\u003c\/i\u003e (1941), \u003ci\u003eFancies and Goodnights\u003c\/i\u003e (1951), \u003ci\u003ePictures in the Fire\u003c\/i\u003e (1958), \u003ci\u003eThe John Collier Reader\u003c\/i\u003e (1972), and \u003ci\u003eThe Best of John Collier\u003c\/i\u003e (1975).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRay Bradbury started writing fiction at the age of twelve and published his first story when he was twenty. He has since written more than thirty books—novels, stories, essays, plays, and poems—including \u003ci\u003eThe Martian Chronicles \u003c\/i\u003e(1950), the futuristic novel \u003ci\u003eFahrenheit 451 \u003c\/i\u003e(1952), and a collection of short stories T\u003ci\u003ehe Illustrated Man\u003c\/i\u003e (1951). He lives with his wife in Los Angeles.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300249555173,"sku":"NP9781590170519","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590170519.jpg?v=1767726708","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/fancies-and-goodnights-isbn-9781590170519","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}