Read Online Stealing Through Time: On the Writings of Jack Finney by Jack Seabrook - Free Book Online Page B
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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and their friends, June and Charley Howser, banter by telephone about who should leave their San Francisco apartment to visit whom on a rainy Sunday afternoon. They conclude by having a party by telephone. Like the Tim and Eve Ryan stories, this lighthearted tale mainly focuses on the relationship between the young couple at its center. Unlike the Ryans, who live in New York, the Callandars live in San Francisco.
"Expression of Love" again features the Callanders (now spelled with an "e"), who meet the Howsers at Union Square in San Francisco. Charley and Ben play pranks and drive Ruth and June to plan a few pranks of their own.
"Fast Buck" recalls "Stopover at Reno" as it tells the story of a young couple named Sam and Laurie, who regretfully realize that the $2500 they've saved over four years is only half the money they need for a down payment on a house. Sam suggests that they drive to Reno, Nevada, to spend the night, and Laurie agrees. They then drive through the mountains to Reno, where Sam plans to wager on dice to win the rest of the money they need.
Tension mounts in the casino as Sam bets their savings, winning and losing in turns but never getting very far ahead. At one point he loses all of his money, then begins to win it back on a desperation bet using a few dollars from his pocket. A winning streak brings him back to $2560; he and Laurie stop gambling, stay the night in Reno, and add $10 to the house fund.
This suspenseful tale mixes the domestic concerns of a young, married couple with the excitement of gambling at a casino.
Between 1947 and 1957, Jack Finney published thirty-eight short stories, two serialized novels that were later expanded into book form, and a novella. It was clearly time for some of his best stories to be collected in book form and, in 1957, his first collection of short stories, The Third Level, was published. It collected eleven stories that had been published before and added "A Dash of Spring," for which no prior publication source has been found.
The stories chosen for this collection were "The Third Level," "Such Interesting Neighbors," "I'm Scared," "Cousin Len's Wonderful Adjective Cellar," "Of Missing Persons," "Something in a Cloud," "There Is a Tide," "Behind the News," "Quit Zoomin' Those Hands Through the Air," "A Dash of Spring," "Second Chance," and "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket." The back cover copy on the 1959 paperback edition of The Third Level sets forth the collection's theme: "Their subject is time... But time on a new level, a diverting, sometimes frightening level, where the Past, the Present, and the Future are all joined...." While not exactly true of all of the stories in The Third Level, this blurb shows that time travel tales were becoming a hallmark of Jack Finney's fiction.
The new story, "A Dash of Spring," is a bit of fluff where real life is contrasted with life as it is presented in magazines or movies. The resulting romance that blooms between Louise Huppfelt and Ralph Shultz is presented in a humorous fashion and the story reads like one that Finney might have written in the late 1940s.
Reviews at the time The Third Level was published were mostly favorable. The Kirkus Service called the book "amiable" and recommended it as "pleasant timepassing." John F. Moran, writing in the Library Journal, noted that "fantasy ... is the chief element" in the collection, but said that the theme of escape from the present "becomes fairly tiresome when it crops up time and again." P. Schuyler Miller wrote in Astounding Science-Fiction that '"if you want to know the kind of SF the general public wants, this [volume of short stories] is as good a sample as you're likely to get'" (quoted in Jones 75), and J. Sydney Jones commented that "all of these stories provide escapist reading in the most literal of its meanings: Finney's characters are escaping from their present predicaments" (75).
The magazine Infinity Science Fiction selected The Third Level as the
"Expression of Love" again features the Callanders (now spelled with an "e"), who meet the Howsers at Union Square in San Francisco. Charley and Ben play pranks and drive Ruth and June to plan a few pranks of their own.
"Fast Buck" recalls "Stopover at Reno" as it tells the story of a young couple named Sam and Laurie, who regretfully realize that the $2500 they've saved over four years is only half the money they need for a down payment on a house. Sam suggests that they drive to Reno, Nevada, to spend the night, and Laurie agrees. They then drive through the mountains to Reno, where Sam plans to wager on dice to win the rest of the money they need.
Tension mounts in the casino as Sam bets their savings, winning and losing in turns but never getting very far ahead. At one point he loses all of his money, then begins to win it back on a desperation bet using a few dollars from his pocket. A winning streak brings him back to $2560; he and Laurie stop gambling, stay the night in Reno, and add $10 to the house fund.
This suspenseful tale mixes the domestic concerns of a young, married couple with the excitement of gambling at a casino.
Between 1947 and 1957, Jack Finney published thirty-eight short stories, two serialized novels that were later expanded into book form, and a novella. It was clearly time for some of his best stories to be collected in book form and, in 1957, his first collection of short stories, The Third Level, was published. It collected eleven stories that had been published before and added "A Dash of Spring," for which no prior publication source has been found.
The stories chosen for this collection were "The Third Level," "Such Interesting Neighbors," "I'm Scared," "Cousin Len's Wonderful Adjective Cellar," "Of Missing Persons," "Something in a Cloud," "There Is a Tide," "Behind the News," "Quit Zoomin' Those Hands Through the Air," "A Dash of Spring," "Second Chance," and "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket." The back cover copy on the 1959 paperback edition of The Third Level sets forth the collection's theme: "Their subject is time... But time on a new level, a diverting, sometimes frightening level, where the Past, the Present, and the Future are all joined...." While not exactly true of all of the stories in The Third Level, this blurb shows that time travel tales were becoming a hallmark of Jack Finney's fiction.
The new story, "A Dash of Spring," is a bit of fluff where real life is contrasted with life as it is presented in magazines or movies. The resulting romance that blooms between Louise Huppfelt and Ralph Shultz is presented in a humorous fashion and the story reads like one that Finney might have written in the late 1940s.
Reviews at the time The Third Level was published were mostly favorable. The Kirkus Service called the book "amiable" and recommended it as "pleasant timepassing." John F. Moran, writing in the Library Journal, noted that "fantasy ... is the chief element" in the collection, but said that the theme of escape from the present "becomes fairly tiresome when it crops up time and again." P. Schuyler Miller wrote in Astounding Science-Fiction that '"if you want to know the kind of SF the general public wants, this [volume of short stories] is as good a sample as you're likely to get'" (quoted in Jones 75), and J. Sydney Jones commented that "all of these stories provide escapist reading in the most literal of its meanings: Finney's characters are escaping from their present predicaments" (75).
The magazine Infinity Science Fiction selected The Third Level as the
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