Read Online Stealing Through Time: On the Writings of Jack Finney by Jack Seabrook - Free Book Online
Authors: Jack Seabrook
Tags: General, Literary Criticism, Science Fiction & Fantasy, American, Science fiction; American, History and Criticism, Science Fiction; American - History and Criticism, Finney; Jack - Criticism and Interpretation
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first-person narration by an unnamed narrator who is a senior at Poynt College in Hylesburg, Illinois (a name quite similar to Finney's college town of Galesburg). He buys a beat-up Jordan Playboy, a classic car from the 1920s, spends all of his time restoring it, puts 1923 license plates on it, and then takes it out to pick up a girl for a date. Even though he beats a new 1956 sports car at a traffic light, his date is not interested in riding around all night in an old car, and won't go out in it.
The narrator drives off alone into the night, deciding to take the "old Cressville road" (191), which had been the only road to Cressville until a new highway had bypassed it fifteen years before. "I liked just drifting along the old road," he recalls, singing songs from the 1920s and "having a wonderful time" (192). In his mind, he begins to think he's really in the 1920s, and soon other vintage cars begin passing him.
"I've read some of the stuff about Time with a capital T," he tells the reader, and then briefly explains Einstein's comparison of time to a river. "I wonder if we aren't barred from the past by a thousand invisible chains," he continues, and concludes that —because everything was just right that night—"we were free on the surface of Time" and "simply drifted into the time my Jordan belonged in" (194).
Finney's narrator in "Second Chance" finds himself back in the 1920s after having put himself in a position to accept such a change. This marks a step forward from "The Third Level," where the narrator accidentally wanders into the past, toward the method that Si Mor-ley in Time and Again would use fourteen years later, where he is able to create a situation and mentally will himself into the past.
The narrator in "Second Chance" drives back to Hylesburg and along Main Street, comparing what he sees to what he knows from the 1950s. Parking his car, he walks along Main Street, until a crowd comes out of the Orpheum movie theater and a young man hops into the narrator's car and begins to drive off. The narrator runs in front of the car and stops the driver momentarily before he drives off into the night. The narrator spends the night walking around 1923 Hylesburg and in the morning finds himself back in 1956.
Time passes and the narrator goes back to school, where he meets and falls in love with Helen McCauley, whose father just happens to have an old Jordan Playboy in his barn. Mr. McCauley gives the narrator the car, and he soon realizes that it's the same one that was stolen from him back in 1923. Mr. McCauley tells of a night in 1923 when he had almost been killed while racing a train in the Jordan Playboy, and the narrator realizes that he had jumped out in front of the car and stopped McCauley on Main Street for just enough time to prevent the man's death.
The story ends with a beautiful passage where the narrator explains that "it's an especial tragedy when a young couple's lives are cut off for no other reason than the sheer exuberance nature put into them" and that "when that old Jordan was restored" it went back to 1923 and gave them a second chance. The narrator confides to the reader that he will marry Helen McCauley and "we'll leave on our honeymoon in the Jordan Playboy" (199).
"Second Chance" is as good a story as Jack Finney ever wrote. Michael Beard called it "perhaps Finney's most successful realization of the mystique of artifacts from the past" and argues that it "suggests that there is a redemptive power in connections with the past" (184). Kim Newman called it a perfect short story (197), and Mike Resnick pointed out that it (and "The Third Level") "may well have been the precursors of Finney's wildly successful time travel novels."
Finney's next published work was the novella, "The House of Numbers," which will be discussed in the next chapter. His third story to see print in 1956 was the outstanding suspense tale, "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket," which appeared in the October 26,
The narrator drives off alone into the night, deciding to take the "old Cressville road" (191), which had been the only road to Cressville until a new highway had bypassed it fifteen years before. "I liked just drifting along the old road," he recalls, singing songs from the 1920s and "having a wonderful time" (192). In his mind, he begins to think he's really in the 1920s, and soon other vintage cars begin passing him.
"I've read some of the stuff about Time with a capital T," he tells the reader, and then briefly explains Einstein's comparison of time to a river. "I wonder if we aren't barred from the past by a thousand invisible chains," he continues, and concludes that —because everything was just right that night—"we were free on the surface of Time" and "simply drifted into the time my Jordan belonged in" (194).
Finney's narrator in "Second Chance" finds himself back in the 1920s after having put himself in a position to accept such a change. This marks a step forward from "The Third Level," where the narrator accidentally wanders into the past, toward the method that Si Mor-ley in Time and Again would use fourteen years later, where he is able to create a situation and mentally will himself into the past.
The narrator in "Second Chance" drives back to Hylesburg and along Main Street, comparing what he sees to what he knows from the 1950s. Parking his car, he walks along Main Street, until a crowd comes out of the Orpheum movie theater and a young man hops into the narrator's car and begins to drive off. The narrator runs in front of the car and stops the driver momentarily before he drives off into the night. The narrator spends the night walking around 1923 Hylesburg and in the morning finds himself back in 1956.
Time passes and the narrator goes back to school, where he meets and falls in love with Helen McCauley, whose father just happens to have an old Jordan Playboy in his barn. Mr. McCauley gives the narrator the car, and he soon realizes that it's the same one that was stolen from him back in 1923. Mr. McCauley tells of a night in 1923 when he had almost been killed while racing a train in the Jordan Playboy, and the narrator realizes that he had jumped out in front of the car and stopped McCauley on Main Street for just enough time to prevent the man's death.
The story ends with a beautiful passage where the narrator explains that "it's an especial tragedy when a young couple's lives are cut off for no other reason than the sheer exuberance nature put into them" and that "when that old Jordan was restored" it went back to 1923 and gave them a second chance. The narrator confides to the reader that he will marry Helen McCauley and "we'll leave on our honeymoon in the Jordan Playboy" (199).
"Second Chance" is as good a story as Jack Finney ever wrote. Michael Beard called it "perhaps Finney's most successful realization of the mystique of artifacts from the past" and argues that it "suggests that there is a redemptive power in connections with the past" (184). Kim Newman called it a perfect short story (197), and Mike Resnick pointed out that it (and "The Third Level") "may well have been the precursors of Finney's wildly successful time travel novels."
Finney's next published work was the novella, "The House of Numbers," which will be discussed in the next chapter. His third story to see print in 1956 was the outstanding suspense tale, "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket," which appeared in the October 26,
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