Criticism > Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism > Collier, John - Otis Ferguson (review date 3 February 1941)

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Otis Ferguson (review date 3 February 1941)

SOURCE: Ferguson, Otis. “Collected Waxworks.” New Republic 104, no. 1366 (3 February 1941): 155.

[In the following review, Ferguson finds the stories in Presenting Moonshine enjoyable but superficial.]

John Collier in his short stories has opened up a vein of fiction that comes strangely in this time. All his pieces [in Presenting Moonshine] are in this same manner—which is not, incidentally, the more humane and engaging manner of the two novels: His Monkey Wife and Defy the Foul Fiend. They are matter-of-fact in tone, smoothly joined in the writing, and deal in one way or another with the supernatural. I don't like them. They are clever and at times brilliant; they start where Poe leaves off, without ever quite achieving the memorable effect of the occasional Poe success. It is perhaps wrong to speak of them as being in any vein, for there is no blood in them;...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Josiah Titzell (review date 5 April 1931)
   2. Dudley Carew (review date 5 May 1931)
   3. Herschel Brickell (review date 1931)
   4. Basil Bunting (review date August 1932)
   5. Rolfe Scott-Thomas (review date 20 October 1932)
   6. New Statesman and Nation (review date 12 November 1932)
   7. The Spectator (review date 18 November 1932)
   8. David Garnett (review date 8 April 1933)
   9. Iris Barry (review date 7 May 1933)
   10. John Cournos (review date 28 June 1933)
   11. Wyndham Lewis (review date 8 June 1934)
   12. William Rose Benét (review date 4 August 1934)
   13. The Nation (review date 8 August 1934)
   14. Fanny Butcher (review date 22 September 1934)
   15. C. J. Eustace (review date September 1934)
   16. Geoffrey West (review date 12 December 1934)
   17. Ben Ray Redman (review date 1 February 1941)
   18. Otis Ferguson (review date 3 February 1941)
   19. Paul Theroux (essay date 26 November 1972)
   20. New Republic (review date 9 December 1972)
   21. Jay Martin (review date 23 June 1973)
   22. John Updike (essay date 20 August 1973)
   23. Anthony Burgess (essay date 1973)
   24. Tom Milne (essay date spring 1976)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. John Updike