Stealing Through Time: On the Writings of Jack Finney (2 page)

Mill Valley is mentioned in "My Cigarette Loves Your Cigarette," which appeared in the September 30, 1950 issue of
Collier's
, and again in "Husband at Home," in the April 1951
Ladies Home Journal.
The main characters in "Stopover at Reno" travel by bus from New York to San Francisco and have an adventure in the title town; this story appeared in the January 5, 1952
Collier's.
Mill Valley is located in Marin County, north of San Francisco.

Finney's daughter Margie was born around 1951 (Ickes 34), and in the early 1950s the writer was a prolific contributor of short stories to popular magazines — nineteen stories were published between 1950 and 1952. In the summer of 1953, his first extended work, "5 Against the House," was serialized in three issues of
Good Housekeeping.
This became his first novel when it was published the following year.

"The Body Snatchers" was his second novel-length work, and it was serialized in three issues of
Collier's
at the end of 1954. Finney's son Kenneth was born around this time (Ickes 34-35), and the novel version of this serial was published in 1955. In this time period Finney appears to have begun using agent Don Congdon, who would represent him for the rest of his life (Ickes 37).

With the 1955 release of the film
5 Against the House
, Jack Finney's work began to reach a new audience, which grew with the 1956 release of the popular science fiction film,
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
According to J. Sydney Jones, this film "changed everything for the forty-three-year-old writer and ... allowed him to support his family solely on his writing" (74).

The rest of the 1950s found Finney dividing his time between short stories and novels. He published seven more stories in 1955-1956 and even had a play entitled
Telephone Roulette
published in 1956 (Fidell 103). The story "Such Interesting Neighbors" was adapted for television as "Time Is Just a Place," first airing on April 16, 1955, as part of the series,
Science Fiction Theatre.
The long story "The House of Numbers" appeared in the July 1956 issue of
Cosmopolitan
, then was published in novel form in 1957 to coincide with the release of
House of Numbers,
the third film to be based on Jack Finney's work.

Nine more short stories appeared in magazines between 1957 and 1959, and
The Third Level
was published in 1957. This short story collection focused on Finney's science fiction and fantasy, and it won an award for best short story collection in 1958 from the magazine,
Infinity Science Fiction
(Jones 73).

In August and September of 1959, the
Saturday Evening Post
serialized "The U-19's Last Kill" in six consecutive issues. This was revised and published as the novel
Assault on a Queen
that same year.

Jack Finney turned 49 in 1960 and was by then established as a popular author of short stories with four novels under his belt and three motion pictures based on his work. The market for short stories was changing, as old standbys like
Collier's
fell by the wayside and were replaced by new magazines like
Playboy.
Finney published ten short stories between 1960 and 1962, and another collection,
I Love Galesburg in the Springtime,
appeared in 1962. Like
The Third Level,
this group of short stories focused on those with themes of science fiction and fantasy. As a result, Finney's other short stories have, with few exceptions, not been reprinted since their initial appearances in magazine form. Also in 1962, the story, "All My Clients Are Innocent," was adapted for television and broadcast as part of the
Alcoa Premiere
series on April 17, 1962.

Finney's fifth novel,
Good Neighbor Sam,
was published in 1963, and marked the first time that one of his novels did not also appear as a serial. The author admitted having written this book with popular actor Jack Lemmon in mind, and the film starring Mr. Lemmon was released in 1964 (Wilson).

Jack Finney's last published short story, "Double Take," appeared in
Playboy
magazine's April 1965 issue. He then wrote a play entitled 
This Winter's Hobby
, which closed in Philadelphia during a pre-Broadway tryout in 1966 (Zolotow). At this point, Finney was 54 years old, and his writing output dwindled. He would not publish any more short stories or have any more plays performed. He continued writing for another thirty years, but only five novels and one non-fiction book appeared during that time.

The first of these novels was
The Woodrow Wilson Dime
, published in 1968. It was a reworking of his short story, "The Other Wife."
Time and Again
followed in 1970 and, along with
The Body Snatchers
, it would become the author's most famous work.

Finney turned 62 in 1973, the year that
Marion's Wall
was published; he followed this with
The Night People
in 1977. In 1983, he published a non-fiction book,
Forgotten News: The Crime of the Century and Other Lost Stories,
and a short story collection entitled
About Time
was released in 1986, but it only included selections from his two earlier short story collections.

The film
Maxie
was released in 1985; this was an adaptation of his novel
Marion's Wall.
The short story "Such Interesting Neighbors" was adapted for television in 1987, the same year that Finney was presented with the World Fantasy life achievement award (Jones 74).

Jack Finney turned 83 in 1994, the year that the French translation of
Time and Again
was awarded the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire ("The Locus Index to SF Awards"), and he made a splash in the publishing world in 1995 when
From Time to Time
was published. This sequel to
Time and Again
was his last novel. He had lived in the same home with his wife Marguerite for about 40 years (Ickes 36), and died of pneumonia on November 14, 1995 ("Finney, Walter Braden."
Contemporary Authors
150: 138).

Jack Finney's writing has continued to intrigue television and movie producers even after his death.
The Love Letter
premiered as a made-for-TV movie in 1998, and a musical adaptation of
Time and Again
opened Off Broadway in New York City in January 2001 (Brantley). Walking tours of New York City locations in that novel were popular in the city for years,
¹
and several of the author's books remain in print as of this writing.

Jack Finney wanted his private life kept private, and he was successful at shielding many details of his background from the press and the public. He wanted his work to speak for itself, and this book will concentrate on his writing, starting with his earliest short stories in the 
1940s.

TWO

Early Short Stories
(1947-1952)

"The Widow's Walk" is credited with being Jack Finney's first short story, sold to
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
and winner of that publication's second annual short story contest. It was published in the July 1947 issue, and thus missed being his first story to see publication by about three months.

In this story, Finney appears to have been writing for his intended market, and the themes are not those to which he would later return. Narrated in the first person by Annie, an unhappy 32-year-old wife, it tells of the calculating mother-in-law whom she dreams of killing. Life was good with husband Al until Mother moved in; now, she won't leave the young couple alone.

Annie reads about widow's walks in a magazine, and convinces her husband to build one at the top of their house. Mother eventually develops a habit of sitting up on the high perch and listening to the radio. Annie's plans to push Mother to her death are foiled when Mother obliges by having a heart attack and falling off on her own, but in the twist ending Al also falls to his death while trying to save her. At the story's end, Annie paces the widow's walk alone.

Finney's first story shares the characteristic of a first-person narrator with much of his later work, yet its subject of murder sets it apart from most of his writing. Still, there's no real murder in the story — only a lot of planning for one, and the twist ending is a trick he would use again.

The first story of Jack Finney's to see publication was actually "Manhattan Idyl," which appeared in the April 5, 1947 issue of
Collier's,
a popular weekly magazine of the time.
Collier's
had been founded in 1888 and, during World War Two, its circulation had reached 2,500,000 ("Collier's Weekly"). By appearing in
Collier's,
Finney's work was assured of a huge audience.

"Manhattan Idyl" is also notable for being the first appearance in print of the Ryans, a young married couple who would appear in eleven short stories, making them Jack Finney's busiest recurring characters. They live in an apartment in Manhattan and Timberlake (Tim) is often portrayed as a prankster. In this first tale, they combat boredom by taking a taxi to the Ambassador Hotel and dancing, then by taking a trolley ride down Third Avenue, and finally by walking along the East River and imagining they're the last people on Earth. This is a charming little story of a couple in love. Finney's prose is elegant and the dialogue is sharp.

It is interesting to note that some of the themes that would recur throughout Finney's fiction actually get their start in this long-forgotten story. Eve Ryan recalls "the small Illinois town where she'd spent her childhood summers" (35), demonstrating that Finney's characters from the first were already nostalgic for earlier times. Eve also recalls a Hoot Gibson movie serial she'd seen as a child, and Tim fills in the details of the serial's final chapter, probably inventing them as he goes along.

Tim also pretends to be a tourist pointing out the sights (and getting them all wrong) —St. Patrick's Cathedral, Wall Street, the Flat-iron Building — these would reappear almost fifty years later in Finney's last novel,
From Time to Time.

Best is the following paragraph, where Tim Ryan waxes poetic about the good and bad in the world:

"So long, world," said Tim. "You were quite a place while you lasted. Noisy, dirty, and ugly most of the time. Mixed up and confused and afraid. Evil and vicious and callous. But pretty wonderful, too. There was a humanity in your people that could never quite be repressed no matter who tried it. There were mornings and evenings; there was snow 
at night, and sun that felt good —and unexpected moments of peace and happiness. People were alive and doing things —and we—"

His wife Eve breaks the spell: '"You dope,'" said Eve, '"you'd just love to get a tear out of me, wouldn't you?'" (36). But the picture has been painted and, in this story published just two years after the end of the Second World War, Manhattan looks like a pretty nice place to be when you're young and in love.

Finney's next story, "I'm Mad at You," also features Tim and Eve Ryan. This time, Eve is angry with Tim until she realizes she just wants him to court her a little bit more than he's been doing recently. The themes of "Manhattan Idyl" are repeated: Eve loves Tim and enjoys thinking about him; Tim likes to tease Eve and exaggerate. There is a good bit of humor and a light and wistful tone. Tim reads a book called
Murderer's All
and pretends to talk like a private eye (Finney would soon return to the subject of private detectives in a satiric way), and at one point he imagines buying '"...an eight-room frame house in Galesburg, Illinois. Built in the eighties; lots of fancy scrollwork on the eaves and front porch'" and moving it to the middle of Manhattan (17). He'll '"mow the grass and then sit out on the curbstone smoking my pipe. I'd be the living representative of what New York subconsciously yearns for'" (54). Tim goes on with his daydream until his friend Mrs. Mellett agrees that '"those were better days, I guess. Things were quieter. More peaceful'" (54).

Tim concludes by remarking that '"For a moment, the steel and concrete would be blotted out and they'd remember the peaceful people everywhere for whom they should be working'" (54). In a way, this exchange involving the Ryans and their Manhattan friends the Mel-letts sets up one of the dominant themes of Jack Finney's fiction —we need to slow down, because progress has taken our focus away from the things in life that truly matter.

A note in the April 5, 1947, issue of
Collier's
reported that Finney was working in a Manhattan advertising agency at the time (Shane), and it is tempting to see the comments in "I'm Mad at You" as evidence of the frustration of a man feeling trapped in New York City and voicing nostalgia for his Midwestern youth.

We must be careful not to assume too much, however, since the Ryans are very happy in their Manhattan apartment and Tim's nostalgic daydream is presented as part of his clearly farcical behavior in front of their friends.