Word: collier
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However, with the exception of such proven masters of the sharply written, razor-edged tale as John Collier, Roald Dahl, and Saki, few of Hitchcock's authors can both write well and create an intriguing situation or plot. The book's first few selections are rather dull cases in point, and make an unfortunate beginning for an anthology. The editor's idea of arranging authors in reverse alphabetical order is perhaps commendably simple, but hardly functional for anyone who reads more than one story at a time. In this case the arrangement leads to a most uninviting first fifty pages...
...less praise for its idea (a night in a waxwork chamber of horrors), but a great deal for its ending, which is led up to gently and tidily. "The Lady On The Grey," an echo of Circe, is a minor but still notable example by a skillful author, John Collier, who is one of the most reliably bizarre writers alive...
...Monkey Wife, first published in 1930, Collier wrote an improper parable to indicate his preferences and, incidentally, to pull man's leg. It has since become a minor classic in his own special fiction-fantasy style, and belongs on the same shelf as Swift's Houyhnhnms, Karel Capek's newts, and with all those who like to move to the other side of the zoo bars the better to observe mankind. Its reissue now is a lively event in a dull publishing season...
Just Another Intellectual. Collier's japes with apes begin with Alfred Fatigay, a tired African mission schoolmaster who leaves Boboma on the Upper Congo to return to England and marry his fiancée Amy, an intellectual sort of girl. For company he takes with him "a well-grown, sagacious, fine specimen" of a chimpanzee named Emily. All goes very well for a while ("In England the Primate takes precedence of all but Royal Dukes"). But Emily, no ordinary chimp, knows how to read. She takes a course in the British Museum, and she thinks she had better start...
...Collier's verbal monkeyshines are so adroit as to make the reader forget the paradox that while man may be like a monkey, a monkey is not like a man. It is all prime fun among the primates, and calls to mind the verse of a British poet in which an ape reflects on the Darwinian version of the Fall...