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Apr 03

Every Book Complete NonsenseClick for larger image

Good Show Sir Comments: Aren’t you a little overdressed, cover guy?
Published 1953

Actually, that cover IS a classical work of art!I would touch it without protective gloves.I've seen worse. Far, far, worse.Interesting, but I would still read it in public.Middlng: Neither awful nor awfully goodWould not like to be seen reading that!Awful... just awful...That belongs in a gold-lame picture frame!Gah... my eyes are burning! Feels so good!Good Show Sir! (Average: 6.40 out of 10)
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17 Responses to “Fancies and Goodnights”

  1. fred Says:

    So John Collier lived on a diet of voles and other small mammals?

  2. THX 1138 Says:

    “It’s quarter to three… there’s no one in the place… except you and me… and I shouldn’t have eaten that cheese I found behind the fridge…”

  3. Bibliomancer Says:

    It’s hard to hail a taxi to get out of this side of town.

  4. JuanPaul Says:

    There is a lot happening on this cover, yet nothing is happening on this cover. Medidate on this, I must.

  5. Tat Wood Says:

    @GSS: as I recall, ‘John Collier’ was a low-cost rival to Burton’s or Hepworth’s (thus a precursor to Top Man), so being over-dressed is probably not the problem.

    (EDIT: here’s a shagadelic advert from before they hit on the really annoying jingle I had in my head when I saw the cover https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SeETmUOBTsr For US reades, fifty shillings is just under four dollars today.)

  6. Raoul Says:

    A Bantam Giant? That’s a mighty big cock you have there.

  7. B. Chiclitz Says:

    This blurb is so funny. It’s all prim and proper, with an asterisk so we don’t miss it, even though it occupies the center of the page. It takes pains to use the proper case, “Of whom,” so we’re all grammatically in place, and then it just goes off the rails torturing that hoot owl metaphor—by the way, owls have three sets of eyelids. Which one is John Collier using to blink this crazy world into existence?

    (I’ll bet DSWBT would know the answer.)

  8. Bibliomancer Says:

    @B. Chiclitz – Yeah, that blurb is a real hoot!

  9. Anna T. Says:

    As a fan of owls, I too found that cover blurb to be entertainingly surreal. As it implies the author, himself, to be an owl, it is both odd, funny and slightly disappointing, as it means the author cannot be the man in a trenchcoat and fedora noteworthy for being the only human on the cover not either naked or wearing faux-Ancient-Greek-style clothing. I wonder who he is.

  10. Tor Mented Says:

    It’s an anthology of works published elsewhere, so I suppose it’s fitting that the artist cobbled together a bunch of images that probably appeared elsewhere as well. The woman in the lower right is not posed or dressed like a genie coming out of that bottle. I suspect it was stolen from the cover of a hard-boiled detective yarn and she was sitting on a bed.

  11. MakkaPakka Says:

    I like how the cock is shooting lightning from its chest.

  12. Anti-Sceptic Says:

    This is a question to all the avian experts here…Are hoot owls really as crazy as the blurb paints them to be?

  13. Tor Mented Says:

    Anti-Sceptic, Wikipedia says hoot owls eat voles, woodpeckers and even domestic cats. I would consider crazy anyone who does that.
    Further research is needed on whether John Collier has a similar diet.

  14. THX 1138 Says:

    As an aside, Collier was an excellent writer, but I wouldn’t call him crazy. If anything, he was extremely sane. Defamation of character on his own book!

  15. GSS ex-noob Says:

    That “F”. The random assemblage of images, all tinted green save fedora guy and naked old dude. The asterisk leading to the wordy, prim blurb with “hoot owl”. Would a hoot owl eat a bantam?

    Like @JuanPaul said, it’s very busy yet nothing’s going on. This might have confused/turned off readers in 1953 too.

  16. Ashley Lambert-Maberly Says:

    Seconding that Collier is a brilliant author–if this bad cover at least entices a few people to approach the contents, I’m delighted it was featured here (after all, we’ve learned not to judge a book by its cover!)

  17. B. Chiclitz Says:

    @Ashley L-M—I think it’s more the other way around at GSS.

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