SOURCE: "Chimps, Manikins, People Too," in The New York Times, November 25, 1972, p. 29.

In the following review of The John Collier Reader, Lask praises Collier's craft as a fantasist but finds that the collection's juxtaposition and quantity of stories emphasizes the writer's weaknesses.

It is doubtful whether his publishers have done John Collier the good they intended in assembling in one volume such a generous selection of his work: a lengthy novel, bits from another, 47 short stories. He is a writer better served in small takes. One tale in The New Yorker provokes an appreciative chuckle. But 47 of them or even a decent fraction of that number induce a numb colorless satiety. The cleverness, the literary byplay, the cultivated writing dissolve in the thinness of structure, the bloodlessness of the characters, the archness of tone. The cleverness shows its joinery, the bookishness becomes assertive, the writing is the skill...