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Title: The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Tales and Conjurations by Charles Johnson ISBN: 0-452-27237-8 Publisher: Penguin USA Pub. Date: 01 December, 1994 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $11.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (1 review)

Rating: 3
Summary: The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Comment: The Sorcerer's Apprentice is a good example for writing, and the inability to write. Exchange Value was chosen by Gardner as one of the best American short stories of 1982 and has become Johnson's most anthologized short story. Two kids steal from a dead old woman who hoarded her money in fear, and they become as eccentric as she. How ironic. Popper's Disease has some interesting insights into racial matters, but then it degrades into a science-fiction story and anti-solipsistic philosophy. Similarly, Alethia starts out promising, with a sexy black woman blackmailing her philosophy professor, but then is swallowed up in dreamlike imagery and the tired notion that thinking is too much dangerous.

Occasionally Johnson displays that Ron Hansen tic of turning respectable nouns into clumsy verbs, while his classroom admonishment to get as specific as possible, is here shown to date stories. Several times he mentions Sanka rather than coffee. Who drinks Sanka anymore? Wendy Barnes in Alethia also uses trim in the sexual sense at one point, which seems terribly dated to me. But the stories aren't bad, entertaining enough, and there are early references to the Allmuseri, Johnson's fictional African tribe in Middle Passage. But I wouldn't seek out other Charles Johnson efforts as a result of this book.