The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Tales and Conjurations was published by Atheneum in 1986 and was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. The collection contains eight stories that demonstrate the range of Johnson’s fiction — from the domestic realism of “Exchange Value” (two brothers discover a fortune in their dead neighbor’s apartment and are destroyed by it) to the philosophical fantasy of “The Education of Mingo” (a slave, educated by his master, begins to mirror the master’s own suppressed violence) to the martial arts narrative of “China” (a middle-aged postman takes up kung fu and discovers a form of discipline that transforms his relationship with his body and his wife).
The title story is the collection’s most ambitious: a young man apprentices himself to a sorcerer and discovers that magic — real magic, the transformation of consciousness — requires not tricks but the total reconstruction of the self. Johnson draws on both the European sorcerer’s apprentice tradition and African American conjure lore to create a narrative that is simultaneously a folk tale, a bildungsroman, and a philosophical parable.
Johnson’s prose in these stories is more varied than in his novels — he shifts registers, styles, and even genres between stories, demonstrating a versatility that the novel form’s extended commitments do not allow. The collection is the best introduction to Johnson’s work for readers who are unsure where to begin.
Collecting The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
First edition (Atheneum, New York, 1986): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $30–$80
- Very good/very good: $10–$30