FFB: ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: STORIES TO BE READ WITH THE DOOR LOCKED edited by Harold Q. Masur (Random House 1975), a further consideration

This was the first "Hitchcock" anthology I owned a copy of, and I've mentioned it on the blog on occasion. It was the fourth edited by Harold Q. Masur, who began editing the Alfred Hitchcock Presents: volumes for Random House after Robert Arthur's rather early death in 1969. Masur would continue to edit such volumes for the Random House series till Hitchcock's death in 1980, and then went on to edit one more for instant remainder publication, associated I think with a package deal the Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine folks had. This volume contains, I think, more stories from AHMM than any other "Presents:" volume, as opposed to the series of best--ofs from the magazine...some of which would eventually be published as "Presents:" volumes, but not until after Random House ceased publishing the original line of multi-source anthologies. Previous to that, all the AHMM best-ofs had been Dell paperbacks with titles such as Alfred Hitchcock's Noose Report or Alfred Hitchcock's Dates with Death...note the possessive form the titles took.

Volume 1 of Dell's reprint

That Dell also published reprints of the AH Presents: volumes, in two volume breakdowns of the hardcovers' contents (and sometimes with substitute contents--since the hardcovers would include full novels on occasion which already had paperback editions in print, or other issues of that sort), only added confusion for bibliographers and at least some casual or even avid readers...Frank Babics, George Kelley and I have all been caught out trying to untangle some of the variants.

It's remarkable to me how many of the stories will come back to me with just a glance at their titles, as well as how many introductions to writers immediately or eventually important to me were made by this one volume...and then there were all the others I would gather or borrow and read in the years since. 

V. 2 from Dell, with retitle.

The hardcover edition was the first book attributed to Hitchcock that my mother bought for me, through a membership in the Doubleday Book Club, and a key event in my literary life. Thanks, Mom.

As I wrote earlier about this volume:
The eclecticism which Robert Arthur particularly had brought to his volumes of the "Hitchcock" anthologies he edited, both in the young readers' line [with such titles as Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum and Alfred Hitchcock's Sinister Spies] and the adult-oriented series for Random House (which were paperbacked by Dell, who split the RH compliations into two volumes for their purposes, while Dell also published the "best-of" volumes from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in the same years, inspiring much confusion which others and I have addressed repeatedly on this blog and many other places) was ably continued by Masur, after Arthur's death...and Masur even added a few recurring contributors, such as gallows humorist John Keefauver and "Adobe James" with his slightly perfervid men's-magazine tales, to the band of Arthur's recurring favorites (Gerald Kersh, Rex Stout, and other worthies). This volume, I see in retrospect, is slimmer on women's contributions than at least some of Arthur's, but it does include at least three stories which genuinely stuck with me and really shook me up at the time, in the Sturgeon (not the first time I'd read his brilliant early work, but the first time I'd encountered "Shottle Bop," which goes from cocksure whimsy to jarring, touching sobriety masterfully), Joe Gores's "Watch for It" and Richard Matheson's "The Distributor" (I'm not sure I've read a better Matheson), and a number of the others came close to making such a strong impression...the closest to a bad story was Alan Dean Foster's pleasantly slick contribution, or the similar "James"--and the Jacobson, published in the last issue of the first Weird Talesrevival, is a little too recursively about the predicament that magazine itself faced ...and this volume introduced me to a number of its contributors, since it was at latest the second of the AHP:  adult volumes I read, at time of purchase; I'd picked up the likes of Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful (one of Arthur's double-handful of YA anthologies) and at least one other Presents: volume previously at the Enfield Central Library, that trove of my youth.

Along with Henry Mazzeo's Hauntings, and the extent to which Les Daniels's Living in Fearwas an anthology (the fiction there being almost illustrative examples to the critical/historical survey of horror in art), these were probably the most influential anthologies aimed at adults that I encountered in my early reading.

If anything, Masur's volumes were at least as likely to feature humorous stories as Arthur's, usually very black humor indeed (as with the Robert Fish story, or all of Keefauver's, or the Matheson and the Roald Dahl).  I'm amused to the degree to which the John D. MacDonald and William McGivern stories didn't stick with me, given how much I've enjoyed their work in the years since. While Masur didn't publish much in the fantasy and horror press, as Arthur had before him, he wasn't any more afraid to reach for contributors much better-known in those fields, along with sf, including Foster, Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, and Harlan Ellison...even given that Asimov and Ellison had certainly established themselves as also crime-fiction writers by this time. This would've been the first time I'd read Bill Pronzini's work, in this 1975 volume purchased in that year, as well as my introduction to Nero Wolfe and his staff, and the useful acknowledgements pages helped me understand, along with the evidence of the few sf magazines around the house, that such things a fiction magazines might exist and be obtainable. 

Again, one of my mother's most important smaller gifts to me. One you could give to yourself, as well, as there are fine stories here by writers that aren't too often discussed these years...some, like "Adobe James," never discussed too often anywhere, ever, except when snatched up by Masur for his volumes of this series. 

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked edited as by Alfred Hitchcock (actually, Harold Q. Masur) (Random House, 1975, 368pp, hc)

Derivative anthologies: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked (Volume I) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked (Volume II)/Alfred Hitchcock Presents: I Want My Mummy.

• xi · Introduction · Alfred Hitchcock (ghosted by Masur) · in
• 1 · Hijack · Robert L. Fish · ss Playboy Aug 1972
• 11 · Tomorrow and Tomorrow · Adobe James · ss Adam Bedside Reader 1967
• 15 · Funeral in Another Town · Jerry Jacobson · ss Weird Tales Fll 1973
• 33 · A Case for Quiet · William Jeffrey (Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey Wallmann) · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Aug 1971
• 41 · A Good Head for Murder · Charles W. Runyon · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Nov 1974
• 55 · The Invisible Cat · Betty Ren Wright · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jan 1958
• 61 · Royal Jelly · Roald Dahl · nv Kiss Kiss, Knopf 1959
• 87 · Light Verse · Isaac Asimov · ss The Saturday Evening Post Sep 1973
• 93 · The Distributor · Richard Matheson · ss Playboy Mar 1958
• 109 · How Henry J. Littlefinger Licked the Hippies’ Scheme to Take Over the Country by Tossing Pot in Postage Stamp Glue · John Keefauver · ss National Review Oct 22 1971
• 115 · The Leak [Prof. Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen (The Thinking Machine)] · Jacques Futrelle · ss The Sunday Magazine Jun 9 1907, as “The Silver Box”; Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 1949
• 129 · All the Sounds of Fear · Harlan Ellison · ss The Saint Mystery Magazine (UK) Jul 1962
• 139 · Little Foxes Sleep Warm · Waldo Carlton Wright · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jan 1971
• 147 · The Graft Is Green · Harold Q. Masur · nv Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine May 1973
• 171 · View by Moonlight · Patricia McGerr · ss This Week Apr 19 1964
• 177 · There Hangs Death! · John D. MacDonald · ss This Week Feb 20 1955
• 185 · Lincoln’s Doctor’s Son’s Dog · Warner Law · ss Playboy Mar 1970
• 193 · Coyote Street · Gary Brandner · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Sep 1973
• 203 · Zombique · Joseph Payne Brennan · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Oct 1972
• 213 · The Pattern · Bill Pronzini · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Sep 1971
• 221 · Pipe Dream · Alan Dean Foster · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Sep 1973
• 233 · Shottle Bop · Theodore Sturgeon · nv Unknown Feb 1941
• 259 · The Magnum · Jack Ritchie · ss Debonair May 1973
• 267 · Voices in the Dust · Gerald Kersh · ss The Saturday Evening Post Sep 13 1947
• 281 · The Odor of Melting · Edward D. Hoch · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 1966
• 287 · The Sound of Murder · William P. McGivern · ss Bluebook Oct 1952; ; as “The Last Word”, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 1963
• 299 · The Income Tax Mystery · Michael Gilbert · ss Lilliput Oct 1957, as “Mr. Portway’s Practice”; Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine May 1958
• 311 · Watch for It · Joseph N. Gores · ss Mirror, Mirror, Fatal Mirror, ed. Hans Stefan Santesson 1973
• 321 · The Affair of the Twisted Scarf [Nero Wolfe; Archie Goodwin] · Rex Stout · nv The American Magazine Sep 1950, as “The Twisted Scarf”; Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Apr 1951

the UK edition (I've yet to see one)

Please see Patti Abbott's fine blog for the balance of this week's selections.

FFB: Robert Arthur, editor: ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: STORIES MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME (Random House, 1963)

The celebration among my film-oriented friends and acquaintances and blogging colleagues of Alfred Hitchcock's 117th birthday anniversary (eleven come seven!) on and around 13 August reminded me, as any mention of Hitchcock is likely to, of just how profound the influence of the anthology series he licensed his name to (with Random House, under the ghost editorship of Robert Arthur, who sometimes would use his pseudonym "Pauline C. Smith" for the purpose), the Alfred Hitchcock Presents: books, a multimedium tie-in to the television series launched the same year, 1956 (which also saw his partnership with a magazine publisher, to form HSD Publications produce the first issues of the still-publishing Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Random House would shortly thereafter begin publishing Arthur's similar, though rather handsomely  illustrated, young readers' anthologies, and eventually to begin a series of teen detective series novels, the Three Investigators, who initially would interact with Hitchcock as a character in the books. Add to that that Dell Books would publish the fat AHP: hardcovers in two-volume paperback sets, and also the more or less annual best-ofs from the magazine, and a level of intentional and unintentional confusion about who was responsible for what under the Hitchcock brand remains a tangle for bibliographers, as has been addressed occasionally on this blog and related ones and centrally on a few such as Frank Babics's and The Hitchcock Zone. 

So, here's the Contento index of this volume; imagine the effect on a young reader such as myself at age 10 or 11, upon opening such a magisterial selection, not the first AHP: I read, nor certainly the last, but one of the best of a brilliant set...drawn from sources as eclectic as the nature of the stories, save that they featured characters drawn into or trapped by extraordinary circumstances of one outre sort or another, usually told in excellent or at least engaging prose, and usually both intense and shot through with often grim wit:

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories My Mother Never Told Me ed. Alfred Hitchcock (ghost edited by Robert Arthur) (Random House LCC# 63-16155, 1963, $5.95, 401pp, hc)
Derivative anthologies: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories My Mother Never Told Me (Dell 1966), Alfred Hitchcock Presents: More Stories My Mother Never Told Me, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories My Mother Never Told Me, Part I, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories My Mother Never Told Me, Part II.
• Introduction · Alfred Hitchcock (ghosted by Robert Arthur) · in
• The Child Who Believed · Grace Amundson · ss The Saturday Evening Post Dec 16 1950
• Just a Dreamer [Murchison Morks] · Robert Arthur · ss Argosy Jul 5 1941
• The Wall-to-Wall Grave · Andrew Benedict · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Sep 1962, as “Walkup to Death”
• The Wind · Ray Bradbury · ss Weird Tales Mar 1943
• Congo · Stuart Cloete · ss Story Mar/Apr 1943
• Witch’s Money · John Collier · ss The New Yorker May 6 1939
• Dip in the Pool · Roald Dahl · ss The New Yorker Jan 19 1952
• The Secret of the Bottle · Gerald Kersh · nv The Saturday Evening Post Dec 7 1957
• I Do Not Hear You, Sir · Avram Davidson · ss The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Feb 1958
• The Arbutus Collar · Jeremiah Digges · ss Story Aug 1936
• A Short Trip Home · F. Scott Fitzgerald · nv The Saturday Evening Post Dec 17 1927
• An Invitation to the Hunt · George Hitchcock · ss San Francisco Review Mar 1960
• The Man Who Was Everywhere · Edward D. Hoch · ss Manhunt Mar 1957
• The Summer People · Shirley Jackson · ss Charm Sep 1950
• Adjustments · George Mandel · ss Great Tales of the Far West, ed. Alex Austin, Lion Books 1956
• The Children of Noah · Richard Matheson · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Mar 1957
• The Idol of the Flies · Jane Rice · nv Unknown Worlds Jun 1942
• Courtesy of the Road · Mack Morriss · ss Collier’s Nov 5 1949
• Remains to Be Seen · Jack Ritchie · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jun 1961, as by Steve O’Connell
• The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles · Idris Seabright (pseudonym of Margaret St. Clair) · ss The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Oct 1951
• Lost Dog · Henry Slesar · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Feb 1958
• Slime · Joseph Payne Brennan · nv Weird Tales Mar 1953 [Dell paperback reprint edition only]
• How Love Came to Professor Guildea · Robert S. Hichens · na Pearson’s Magazine Oct 1897, as “The Man Who Was Beloved” [Dell paperback reprint edition only]
• Hostage · Don Stanford · ss Cosmopolitan Aug 1953
• Natural Selection · Gilbert Thomas · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Aug 1950
• Simone · Joan Vatsek · ss Today’s Woman 1949
• Smart Sucker · Richard Wormser · ss Manhunt Jan 1957
• Some of Your Blood · Theodore Sturgeon · n. Ballantine Books 1961 [missing from the Dell editions]

--the impressive mix of a few Not Yet Quite chestnuts of anthologies of suspense and horror fiction, and related fields, with stories new and older from writers famous or then as now somewhat little known (and keeping it in the family, Arthur includes not only his own fine story--and would in other volumes have both an Arthur and a Pauline C. Smith story on occasion--but also a good one by his wife, Joan Vatsek). Robert Arthur knew his fields of fiction well and had excellent taste...as did his successor Harold Q. Masur, after Arthur's rather early death in 1969; Masur would continue to produce only slightly less diverse anthologies for Random House till Hitchcock's death in 1980, and then one more volume for the same instant remainder publisher, Galahad, that was then publishing at least one of the AHMM-derived anthologies. And, as several of the Arthur Random House volumes could boast, the inclusion as the last entry a complete novel, its first time in a hardcover edition (as apparently no book club was interested in reprinting a paperback original novel about a rather pragmatic fellow who believes quite sincerely he's a vampire...and among other things finds a very convenient manner of sating his craving for blood)(hey, as a kid, I was already aware of the rudiments of menstruation...largely from reading Louise Fitzhugh's second novel about Harriet the Spy, The Long Secret, and from the light pass-over of the matter in some sex-ed materials I'd read, but this was still a bit icky...and that much more so apparently to many theoretically adult readers and editors). Perhaps it wasn't just space limits nor copyright matters/conflict with the Ballantine paperback edition that led to the novel being dropped from the Dell paperback reprint editions...which add the Joseph Payne Brennan story "Slime" and the already rather familiar Robert Hichens "How Love Came to Professor Guildea" (which Arthur would also include in his 1965 YA anthology Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum) to help fill the hole.

1970s edition...

I certainly remember the horror stories in this anthology the most clearly among the contents, though the Fitzgerald, as crime fiction, is also very much of a piece with his most famous work in dealing with both the resentment and the envy of the wealthiest Americans, and the enchantment of the protagonist with a young woman not too interested in commitment...another companion piece to Gatsby. The Matheson (borderline suspense/horror about a nice New England town with some odd nutritional tics of its own), the Brennan (one of the most famous of the inspirations for The Blob, and the author's most famous story), the Rice, the Jackson, the Hichens, the Collier, the proto-steampunkish sfnal horror of the Davidson (this might've been the first Avram Davidson story I read) and particularly the "Seabright"--the most famous story by Margaret St. Clair, though her "The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes" was dramatized rather well by Night Gallery...I had read the "Gnoles" story in a Betty M. Owen Scholastic Book Services anthology before encountering it here, but it remains great fun. The Masur volumes were even more studded with major crime fiction writers I would encounter again in my adult reading, though often their bylines hadn't stuck with me, and I discovered I'd read them years or decades before in looking again at the anthologies recently, where as one can see above, Arthur was no slouch in this manner, either...Henry Slesar's "Lost Dog" has stuck with me. And I do remember not being able to find "arbutus" in the first dictionary I consulted. And this was definitely the first encounter I had with the fiction of Stuart Cloete...though I wouldn't learn that his surname was "clew-tee" for a decade or so. 

I'd say this anthology series, more than any other single set of books, exposed me to what I might enjoy in future reading and sent me down interesting new pathways...often, any anthology or certainly any anthology series I enjoy is at some level compared with range and grace of these books, which apparently did very well indeed for their publishers for more than a quarter century, and are so sorely missed by some that McSweeney's even reprinted one, in a typically half-assed though cute package, in tandem with a similar anthology edited by contributor Ray Bradbury back in the day. 

For mor of today's books, pleas see Patti Abbott's blog.

Sergio Angelini's fine review-essay

Alfred Hitchcock’s Monster Museum ed. Anon. (by Robert Arthur) (Random House, 1965, $3.95, 207pp, hc)
• Introduction: A Variety of Monsters · Alfred Hitchcock · in
• 1 · The Day of the Dragon · Guy Endore · nv The Blue Book Magazine Jun 1934
• 29 · The King of the Cats · Stephen Vincent Benét · ss Harper’s Bazaar Feb 1929
• 46 · Slime · Joseph Payne Brennan · nv Weird Tales Mar 1953
• 73 · The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles · Idris Seabright · ss F&SF Oct 1951
• 79 · Henry Martindale, Great Dane · Miriam Allen deFord · ss Beyond Fantasy Fiction Mar 1954
• 95 · The Microscopic Giants · Paul Ernst · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Oct 1936
• 114 · The Young One · Jerome Bixby · nv Fantastic Apr 1954
• 144 · Doomsday Deferred · Will F. Jenkins · ss The Saturday Evening Post Sep 24 1949
• 162 · Shadow, Shadow, on the Wall · Theodore Sturgeon · ss Imagination Feb 1951
• 174 · The Desrick on Yandro [Silver John] · Manly Wade Wellman · ss F&SF Jun 1952
• 188 · The Wheelbarrow Boy · Richard Parker · ss Lilliput Oct 1950
• 193 · Homecoming · Ray Bradbury · ss Mademoiselle Oct 1946

Friday's "Forgotten" Book: Robert Arthur, editor: ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: STORIES MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME (Random House, 1963)

From the handsomely-done Alfred Hitchcock Wiki (which in turn all but credits ISFDB and Zybahn's Casual Debris for information):
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories My Mother Never Told Me

• Published in 1963 in the USA by Random House (hardback)
• Edited by Robert Arthur
• 401 pages

Contents

1. Introduction by Alfred Hitchcock (ghost written)
2. The Child Who Believed by Grace Amundson
3. Just a Dreamer by Robert Arthur
4. The Wall-to-Wall Grave by Andrew Benedict
5. The Wind by Ray Bradbury
6. Congo by Stuart Cloete
7. Witch's Money by John Collier
8. Dip in the Pool by Roald Dahl
9. The Secret of the Bottle novelette by Gerald Kersh
10. I Do Not Hear You, Sir by Avram Davidson
11. The Arbutus Collar by Jeremiah Digges
12. A Short Trip Home novelette by F. Scott Fitzgerald
13. An Invitation to the Hunt by George Hitchcock
14. The Man Who Was Everywhere by Edward D. Hoch
15. The Summer People by Shirley Jackson
16. Adjustments by George Mandel
17. The Children of Noah by Richard Matheson
18. The Idol of the Flies by Jane Rice
19. Courtesy of the Road by Mack Morriss
20. Remains to Be Seen by Jack Ritchie (as Steve O'Connell)
21. The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles by Margaret St. Clair (as Idris Seabright)

    

    One of Dell's half-the-hc-content reprints

22. Lost Dog by Henry Slesar
23. Hostage by Don Stanford
24. Natural Selection by Gilbert Thomas
25. Simone by Joan Vatsek
26. Smart Sucker by Richard Wormser
27. Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon

UK edition

It's a very close call (due to their consistent excellence), but this might be my favorite of the AHP: volumes that Robert Arthur edited (Harold Q. Masur took up the task after Arthur's death in 1969, till Hitchcock's death in 1980).  Quite a large number of these stories have stuck with me over the years since I first read them, at age nine, in one of the first of the adult "Hitchcock" anthologies I took up, and it is a pretty striking slice through a range of many of the best writers of the time (we'd lost Fitzgerald, but not too many of the others yet) who'd done some sort of work in suspense fiction and related fields...the Jackson, the St. Clair, the Bradbury and the Davidson are (unsurprisingly) memorable horror stories (St. Clair's is her most famous story by some distance, and almost deservedly so);  the Matheson is Just this side of Reality, and not less unsettling (at least to the young reader) for it, even as one key aspect of Theodore Sturgeon's novel about a non-supernatural vampire did inspire some investigation on my part as to what the novel's resolution involved (hint: it isn't altogether unrelated to the previous post on this blog). Even if I mostly remember "The Arbutus Collar" for how puzzled I was as to how pronounce "arbutus"(I recall that the dictionary was not helpful), the balance of the volume, from writers as splashy as Kersh and Collier and Rice and Dahl (to say nothing of the South African Cloete--I wouldn't learn how to pronounce "Clew-tee" for years)  or as simply as assiduous as Hoch and Ritchie (though I didn't know it was Ritchie story till today) or as interesting  though overlooked as Thomas, collectively sticks with me as simply so much enjoyment and revelation, about the nature and range of storytelling one could find in these eclectic volumes.  It's too easy for me to cite a given volume of the various Arthur/AH series for FFB purposes, perhaps, but these books really should be remembered clearly, as an achievement on their own ticket, and as an example of how the task can be done...

Please see Patti Abbott's blog for today's prompter citations.

FFM: McSWEENEY'S 45: HITCHCOCK AND BRADBURY FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN (2013); THE PARIS REVIEW 145, Winter 1997; LADIES HOME JOURNAL, August 1964

Three magazine issues, this time...one from last year, one 17 years old and almost of legal majority, one essentially as old as I am, approaching a half-century. 

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern is the protean magazine edited and published by Dave Eggers, whom I've recently described here thus: Dave Eggers, the author of a precious and highly popular memoir of taking care of his younger brother, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, itself by title alone indicative of Eggers's tendency toward the desire to do (genuinely) good work (often in the sense of charitable, though he clearly strives artistically) in various directions and to simultaneously congratulate himself for doing so in the most smugly adorable manner. 

Everything that's good and bad about McSweeney's is embodied in this issue, which, happily, still results in a pretty good reading experience for those who might be only somewhat misled by the laziness of thought of Eggers and staff, following on a whimsical notion of the boss. Eggers had finally gotten around to reading Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories Not for the Nervous edited by Robert Arthur (Random House, 1965) and Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow edited by Ray Bradbury (Bantam, 1952), and decided that it would be kewl to, not so much reprint either book (the Hitchcock-branded book hasn't seen a new reprint of the two Dell paperbacks taken from it since about 1973, I'm not sure when the last Bantam Pathfinder YA reprint of the Bradbury was offered), but to take selected stories from each volume and cast them in a sort of competition between the two "editors" (Eggers and his staff couldn't be bothered to learn that Hitchcock essentially never edited a book, and certainly not any in the "AH Presents:" series; in his editorial introduction he also manages to completely conflate the best-of collections from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which AH also never edited, with the "AH Presents" and other anthologies branded with Hitchcock's name, most of those edited by Robert Arthur before the latter's death in 1969)...mixed with four new stories Eggers thinks are compatible with his gleanings (and a cover image and title inspired by Sherman Alexie's first collection of short stories, for which Eggers was careful to ask permission...social obligations trumping scholarly ones, doncha know).

courtesy Kinokuniya.com...As Bradbury didn't, either, no mention is made of C.L. Moore's contribution to the Kuttner story, and of course Eggers is blissfully ignorant of the ghosted status of introduction reprinted as by Alfred Hitchcock (the numbers in parentheses are the length of the item in pages):

Table of Contents

 
Letters From Cory Doctorow, Jamie Quatro,          6  (13)
Benjamin Percy, and Anthony Marra
Introduction                                       19 (6)
          Ray Bradbury
    A Brief Message from our Sponsor               25 (2)
          Alfred Hitchcock
    The Sound Machine                              27 (16)
          Roald Dahl
    Night Flight                                   43 (8)
          Josephine W. Johnson
    Dune Roller                                    51 (48)
          Julian May
    The Design                                     99 (30)
          China Mieville
    The Laocoon Complex                            129(14)
          J.C. Furnas
    The Pedestrian                                 143(6)
          Ray Bradbury
    Wrong Number                                   149(94)
          Lucille Fletcher
          Allan Ullman Sorry
    The Dust                                       243(46)
          Brian Evenson
    The Enormous Radio                             289(14)
          John Cheever
    Saint Katy the Virgin                          303(10)
          John Steinbeck
    For All the Rude People                        313(16)
          Jack Ritchie
    Suicide Woods                                  329(10)
          Benjamin Percy
    In the Penal Colony                            339(30)
          Franz Kafka
    The Pilgrim and the Angel                      369(12)
          E. Lily Yu
    Housing Problem                                381(18)
          Henry Kuttner
    None Before Me                                 399(36)
          Sidney Carroll
    Don't Look Behind You                          435
          Fredric Brown

The four new stories are the Yu, Evenson, Mieville and Percy contributions, and I've yet to read them, but their presence is indicative of some sense of whom to go to for the kind of elegant fantasticated and crime fiction otherwise represented here, even if Eggers can't get out of his own way in his brief editorial ("Who knew Cheever could write speculative fiction?" Anyone who's read Cheever, probably, and certainly "The Enormous Radio" is not one of his more obscure stories). Except for the new stories, and the cover if you must, you might do better emulating Eggers's own example and picking up used copies of the two anthologies for considerably less than the $24 the magazine issue goes for, as nicely produced a "quality" paperback as it is, given that Eggers is not the editor that Arthur or Bradbury were. Though I will give Eggers this...I've yet to get around to the Bradbury book myself, since I'd read about half the contents elsewhere by the time I'd become aware of it, and am glad he was able to find and share some of the joy of Robert Arthur's editorial work as an adult, even if resolutely doesn't credit it. 

the Contento indices:
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories Not for the Nervous [ghost edited by Robert Arthur] ed. Alfred Hitchcock (Random House LCC# 65-21262, 1965, $5.95, 363pp, hc); Derivative Anthologies: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories Not for the Nervous (Dell 1966) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents: More Stories Not for the Nervous.

Dell pb, Vol. 1 of 2

• ix · A Brief Message from Our Sponsor · Alfred Hitchcock · in
• 3 · To the Future · Ray Bradbury · ss Colliers May 13 ’50
• 18 · River of Riches · Gerald Kersh · ss The Saturday Evening Post Mar 8 ’58
• 31 · Levitation · Joseph Payne Brennan · ss Nine Horrors and a Dream, Arkham, 1958
• 36 · Miss Winters and the Wind · Christine N. Govan · ss Tomorrow May ’46
• 42 · View from the Terrace · Mike Marmer · ss Cosmopolitan Dec ’60
• 53 · The Man with Copper Fingers [“The Abominable History of the Man with Copper Fingers”; Lord Peter Wimsey] · Dorothy L. Sayers · ss Lord Peter Views the Body, London: Gollancz, 1928
• 72 · The Twenty Friends of William Shaw · Raymond E. Banks · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Mar ’60
• 81 · The Other Hangman · Carter Dickson · ss A Century of Detective Stories, ed. Anon., London: Hutchinson, 1935
• 95 · Don’t Look Behind You · Fredric Brown · ss EQMM May ’47
• 107 · No Bath for the Browns · Margot Bennett · ss Lilliput Nov ’45
• 111 · The Uninvited [“A Prince of Abyssinia”; Daniel John Calder; Samuel Behrens] · Michael Gilbert · ss Argosy (UK) Mar ’62
• 122 · Dune Roller · Julian May · nv Astounding Dec ’51
• 163 · Something Short of Murder [as by O. H. Leslie] · Henry Slesar · ss AHMM Nov ’57
• 177 · The Golden Girl · Ellis Peters · ss This Week Aug 16 ’64
• 182 · The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes · Margaret St. Clair · ss Maclean’s, 1950
• 192 · Walking Alone · Miriam Allen deFord · ss EQMM Oct ’57
• 206 · For All the Rude People · Jack Ritchie · ss AHMM Jun ’61
• 220 · The Dog Died First · Bruno Fischer · nv Mystery Book Magazine Fll ’49
• 242 · Room with a View · Hal Dresner · ss AHMM Jul ’62
• 252 · Lemmings · Richard Matheson · vi F&SF Jan ’58
• 255 · White Goddess · Idris Seabright (Margaret St. Clair) · ss F&SF Jul ’56
• 261 · The Substance of Martyrs · William Sambrot · ss Rogue Dec ’63
• 269 · Call for Help · Robert Arthur · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Apr ’64
• 285 · Sorry, Wrong Number · Lucille Fletcher & Allan Ullman · n. New York: Random House, 1948

Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow ed. Ray Bradbury (Bantam A944, Sep ’52, 35¢, 306pp, pb)

• vii · Introduction · Ray Bradbury · in
• 1 · The Hour After Westerly · Robert M. Coates · ss New Yorker Nov 1 ’47
• 15 · Housing Problem · Henry Kuttner · ss Charm Oct ’44
• 33 · The Portable Phonograph · Walter Van Tilburg Clark · ss The Yale Review Spr ’41
• 40 · None Before Me · Sidney Carroll · ss Cosmopolitan Jul ’49
• 54 · Putzi · Ludwig Bemelmans · ss, 1935
• 60 · The Daemon Lover [“The Phantom Lover”] · Shirley Jackson · ss Woman’s Home Companion Feb ’49
• 77 · Miss Winters and the Wind · Christine N. Govan · ss Tomorrow May ’46
• 84 · Mr. Death and the Redheaded Woman [“The Rider on the Pale Horse”] · Helen Eustis · ss The Saturday Evening Post Feb 11 ’50
• 94 · Jeremy in the Wind · Nigel Kneale · ss Tomato Cain, London: Collins, 1949
• 98 · The Glass Eye · John Keir Cross · ss The Other Passenger, London: Westhouse, 1944
• 116 · Saint Katy the Virgin · John Steinbeck · ss The Long Valley, New York: Viking, 1938
  
• 125 · Night Flight · Josephine Johnson · ss Harper’s Feb ’44
• 133 · The Cocoon · John B. L. Goodwin · ss Story Sep/Oct ’46
• 152 · The Hand · Wessel H. Smitter · ss Story Feb ’47
• 164 · The Sound Machine · Roald Dahl · ss New Yorker Sep 17 ’49
• 180 · The Laocoön Complex · J. C. Furnas · ss Esquire Apr ’37
• 194 · I Am Waiting · Christopher Isherwood · ss New Yorker Oct 21 ’39
• 204 · The Witnesses · William Sansom · ss Fireman Flower, London: Hogarth Press, 1944
• 210 · The Enormous Radio · John Cheever · ss New Yorker May 17 ’47
• 223 · Heartburn · Hortense Calisher · ss The American Mercury Jan ’51
• 235 · The Supremacy of Uruguay · E. B. White · ss New Yorker Nov ’33
• 239 · The Pedestrian · Ray Bradbury · ss The Reporter Aug 7 ’51; F&SF Feb ’52
• 245 · A Note for the Milkman · Sidney Carroll · ss Today’s Woman Apr ’50
• 257 · The Eight Mistresses · Jean Hrolda · ss Esquire Aug ’37
• 267 · In the Penal Colony · Franz Kafka · nv; Kurt Wolff Verlag, May ’19.
• 296 · Inflexible Logic · Russell Maloney · ss New Yorker Feb ’40

The Paris Review issue is an unusually good one even for the dependably interesting late issues of George Plimpton's career with the magazine (ending with his death), with a long interview with Grove Press and Evergreen Review publisher Barney Rosset which covers a lot of (fascinating, to me) ground, and an even longer one with Jeanette Winterson, and fiction by Sheila Kohler (an excerpt from her novel Cracks), fantasist Steve Milhauser, Kristina McGrath, Mark Richard and Melvin Jules Bukiet, portfolios by Shirin Neshat and Fred Tomaselli, and poetry by Billy Collins and a host of others. Even though the Review has found some of its footing again, and the heir to Plimpton, quickly fired by the bosses and succeeded by their golden boy who produced a brief slew of dumbed-down issues, has a good magazine of her own in A Public Space, it's still easy to miss the magazine as it was while Plimpton was still willing to try new things, four decades after founding the magazine...

As I noted recently on the blog, here: 

The Ladies Home Journal was offering Saroyan fiction, and young Candice Bergen on the cover, along with a memoir of literary Paris from Katherine Anne Porter.

[FictionMags Index entry, which I'll hope to expand:]

Ladies’ Home Journal [v81 # 7, August 1964] (35¢)

• Pretty Polly · Noel Coward · ss; illus. N. M. Bodecker
• Forgiving · Shirley Hazzard · ss; illus. Austin Briggs
• Alive · William Saroyan · ss

As with the Paris Review issue, I've recently picked up an inexpensive copy of this issue, and while I haven't read the Coward novelet yet, I have read Shirley Hazzard's graceful short (about a couple striving to make up after the wife admitted to a fling with another man)(and I've definitely seen the fine illustration work of Austin Briggs elsewhere over the years), William Saroyan's "Alive" is slightly less compressed and even better (and almost the template of a ?quasi-autobiographical? Saroyan short story, about a young writer's brief career in the funeral industry), Katherine Anne Porter's memoir is brief but charming and mostly of Sylvia Beach and her Shakespeare and Co. in the years between the World Wars...Beach typically attempts to introduce Hemingway and Porter to each other after hours on a rainy night, citing the young writers as two of the best  modern fictioneers, then leaves them in the front of her store as she goes to the back to take care of some bit of business; left alone, the two stare at each other for a moment, say nothing, and Hemingway turns and stalks back out into the downpour. Phyllis McGinley offers a chapter from her soon to be published cautiously feminist account of women's estate in the mid-'60s, Sixpence in Her Shoe. It remains startling how much this magazine, still the legatee of the dominant years of the Curtis Publishing Company and with all the top editorial staff men (women at the next level, and perhaps the real workers), doesn't much resemble the current LHJ except in the other aspects of the magazine...the bad recipes, the fashion tips (though a 19yo Bergen looking alternately professionally cheerful and rather distressed in Mary Quant outfits probably doesn't quite happen the same way in the current magazine), the ads (Tab was just being introduced by Coke, which noted how successful Diet Rite had been for RC Cola)....

For more of today's books, mostly, please see Patti Abbott's blog.