SOURCE: A review of The Fetish, in The Spectator, December 4, 1964, pp. 788-89.

In the excerpt below, Dick finds the stories in The Fetish fascinating in themselves but disappointing as a collection .

Forty-one stories packed into 285 pages from Alberto Moravia sounds like a bargain; unfortunately, like most bargains, it is a trifle disappointing. Most of [the] stories [in The Fetish] have the kind of glitter, the polish, the touch of authority we expect from such a master-craftsman; read separately, in magazines, over a considerable period of time, the memory of them might be a brighter, more joyous experience than reading all of them through at a sitting, which produces a sense of staleness and reader's frustration. Inevitably one compares; to take a good contemporary example, Maugham's collected stories, which stand up to marathon reading in a way that Signor Moravia's do not. Why is this? What is missing? Probably...