SOURCE: "Monkey-tricks and Minor Devils," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3850, December 26, 1975, p. 1533.

In the following review, Korn offers a negative assessment of The John Collier Reader.

It is for his short stories that John Collier is—at the moment—best known. There are several overlapping collections: The Devil and All, Demons and Darkness, Pictures in the Fire, Presenting Moonshine, Fancies and Goodnights, The Touch of Nutmeg. The recurrence of brimstone about the titles will doubtless strike you, and indeed a depressing number of these stories feature fiends, devils, or the Devil. There are also a few angels. Unlike ghosts, devils have no sort of residual force for the average contemporary reader, therefore a story which features them can never be more than an extended trope, therefore not frightening. "Thus I Refute Beelzy" is a frightening story because it concerns not the devil, but a child's belief in...