Stealing Through Time: On the Writings of Jack Finney

Stealing Through Time

On the Writings of Jack Finney

Jack Seabrook

All material quoted in Chapter Sixteen has been provided courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Knox College Library, Galesburg, Illinois, and is reproduced with permission.

©2006 Jack Seabrook. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form 

or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying 

or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, 

without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover image ©2006 PhotoDisc

Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers 

Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 

www.mcfarlandpub.com

To Lorrie, as always

Acknowledgments

Writing this book was a labor of love. I first discovered Jack Finney's work when I bought a paperback copy of
The Night People
in the late 1970s and thoroughly enjoyed it. I read
Forgotten News: The Crime of the Century and Other Lost Stories
when it was published in 1983, devoured
Three By Finney
and
About Time
a few years later, and fell in love with
Time and Again
somewhere in between.
From Time to Time
was my Valentine's Day present to my wife in 1995.

I wanted to learn more about Jack Finney, but my search for a biography or a critical work came up empty, so I decided that I would write one myself.

Tracking down the novels was not difficult now that the Internet has made book collecting much easier. Tracking down the short stories was a bit tougher, but fortunately I had help from the reference staffs of several libraries. The Trenton Public Library in Trenton, New Jersey, still has bound copies of the slick magazines of the 1950s, and it is there that I found most of what I needed. The New York Public Library Express was able to provide the elusive "The House of Numbers." The Lawrence, New Jersey, branch of the Mercer County Library System was very helpful, as was Rutgers University's Alexander Library and the Moore Library at Rider University. Matt Norman at the Knox College Archives provided the letters and other documents that are found in Chapter Sixteen.

Jack Finney fan extraordinaire Leah Sparks provided support, as did my children. My wife, Lorrie, proofread the manuscript and put up with all of the research and writing with grace and enthusiasm. Without her encouragement, this book would not exist.

Contents

Acknowledgments
vii
 

Preface 1

ONE.
A Life Kept Hidden  3
 

TWO.
Early Short Stories (1947-1952)  9
 

THREE.
5 Against the House
  
22
 

FOUR.
The Body Snatchers
  
29
 

FIVE.
More Short Stories and
The Third Level
  
41 

SIX.
The House of Numbers
  
50
 

SEVEN.
"The U-19's Last Kill" and
Assault on a Queen
  
58
 

EIGHT.
Later Short Fiction and a Play (1958-1966)  66
 

NINE.
Good Neighbor Sam
  
78
 

TEN.
"The Other Wife" and
The Woodrow Wilson Dime
  
84
 

ELEVEN.
Time and Again
  
91
 

TWELVE.
Marion's Wall
  
103

THIRTEEN.
The Night People 
110

FOURTEEN.
Forgotten News: The Crime of the Century and Other Lost Stories
  
118

FIFTEEN.
From Time to Time
  
123

SIXTEEN.
The Galesburg Letters
  
132

SEVENTEEN.
Jack Finney on Stage  146

EIGHTEEN.
Jack Finney on Television  159

NINETEEN.
Jack Finney on Film  169

Appendix I. Writings by Jack Finney
  
185

Appendix II. Credits for Adaptations of Jack Finney's Work
  
191

Works Cited
  
203

Preface

Stealing Through Time: On the Writings of Jack Finney
covers the career of the author who lived from 1911 to 1995 and wrote ten novels, more than fifty short stories, two plays, and a nonfiction book. Jack Finney kept details of his personal affairs closely guarded, but careful research has revealed aspects of his life that are reflected in his writing. Each of the novels is examined in detail, and all of his short stories have been located and studied to present a complete picture of the author's work.

Research has also led to the discovery of details of his long-forgotten play,
This Winter's Hobby,
as well as to some reasons why it did not succeed. From his alma mater, Knox College, comes a series of letters exchanged between Finney and various persons associated with the college. These letters show a side of the author that has rarely been seen, and they also demonstrate his personal interest in some of the themes that recur in his fiction.

Stealing Through Time
begins with an overview of Finney's life and career. A discussion of his early short stories is then followed by in-depth analyses of his first two novels. More short stories are analyzed, culminating in his first short story collection.

His third and fourth novels are discussed, and the rest of his short stories are covered in a chapter that also begins to discuss his last play. Finney's next five novels are featured in subsequent chapters, after which his lone nonfiction book is examined. Following a discussion of his last novel, the letters from Knox College are reproduced in full and analyzed. Finally, separate chapters discuss the ways that Finney's work has been adapted for the stage, television, and film.

The book concludes with the first comprehensive list of Jack Finney's writing ever published, credits for adaptations of his work, a list of works cited, and an index.

ONE

A Life Kept Hidden

Throughout much of his career as a writer, Jack Finney guarded his privacy carefully. Biographers were able to find little beyond the most rudimentary details of his life, and he made few public appearances (Ickes 36).

Yet a close analysis of his published work over the course of fifty years reveals some details of his private life, details that may shed some light on themes that recur in his writing.

Finney was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 2, 1911 ("Finney, Walter Braden."
Contemporary Authors
150: 138), as John Finney, and he was given the nickname Jack as a baby. His father died when Jack was just two years old (Ickes 37), and Jack was renamed Walter Braden Finney, in honor of his late parent. However, the nickname Jack remained with him for the rest of his life (Sparks).

His mother then took him to the Chicago suburb of Forest Park, Illinois, to live with her parents. She married again, to a man named Frank D. Berry, who worked for the railroads and the Illinois telephone company. Finney's mother (now Mrs. Berry) was described as an accomplished seamstress and woodworker who never worked outside the home (Sparks). As an adult, Jack Finney fondly recalled visiting Gales-burg, Illinois, every summer when he was a child in the 1920s (Finney, Jack. Letter to Douglas L. Wilson).

Finney appears to have had a half-sister, Elaine Mitchell, who was said to be living in Alaska as of 2002. He grew up in Forest Park (Sparks), and attended Proviso Township High School in Maywood, Illinois ("Finney, Jack"); this high school served several Chicago suburbs including Forest Park ("Proviso").

He presumably was graduated from high school around 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression. He then attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he took writing courses, enrolled in a fraternity, and participated in the ROTC. He was also on the swim team and the staff of the
Student,
presumably a journal or newspaper (
The 1935 Gale).
He completed his studies in 1934 (Breen 27). He spent the next twelve years working as a copywriter for one or more advertising agencies in Chicago and New York ("Walter B. Finney, '34"), and by 1946 he was living in New York City and working for the Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample agency. At some point he is said to have tried writing for the radio, but no details of this have survived (Breen 24-25).

Details also have not survived about his first marriage, which most likely ended sometime in the late 1940s.

Jack Finney's career as a fiction writer is much easier to document than his private life, simply because publications exist as a record. In 
1946, when he was 35 years old and had been working as an ad copywriter for twelve years, he sold his first story to the relatively new digest,
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
Entitled "The Widow's Walk," the story won a special prize in the magazine's second annual contest and was published in July 1947 (Breen 25).

Finney's first story to reach publication was "Manhattan Idyl," which appeared in the popular weekly magazine
Collier's
on April 5, 
1947. His lack of interest in self-promotion was evident from the first. The editor's page in
Collier's
included a photograph of Finney on a fake postage stamp, and noted that:

... he's from Forest Park, Illinois, 35, Knox College-bred, and wedded to a gal he'd like us to meet: She likes everything he writes, including the singing commercials he once ground out for the radio.

Right now this exhibitionistic philatelist writes advertising copy directly across the street from the Collier's office. "I can look into your windows," he confides. "Frequently I do — and sometimes I wave" [Shane].

Finney immediately set his sights on selling stories to the popular magazines of the day, and by the end of the 1940s he had published eight more stories in
Collier's, Ladies' Home Journal
, and
Good Housekeeping.
His wife was mentioned again in the August 28, 1948 issue of
Collier's
, when he won "the first of our new Star Story $1,000 Awards with his hilarious whodunit rib, 'It Wouldn't Be Fair'..." (Shane).

He won a second Star Story $1,000 Award for "Long-Distance Call," a story published in the November 6, 1948 issue of
Collier's
(Shane). He is said to have divorced his wife in Reno, Nevada, and met his second wife there (Ickes 34). She was also divorcing, and her name was G. Marguerite Guest. She was Canadian ("Walter B. Finney, '34"), possibly from Toronto (Finney, Jack. Letter to M.M. Goodsill. 27 Apr. 1960). At some point, probably in the late 1940s, Finney moved with Marguerite to Mill Valley, California, where he would settle and remain for the rest of his life. In 1966, he wrote that he had lived in New York, Reno, San Francisco, and Mill Valley (
Playbill
. This Winter's Hobby 34).