52 pages • 1 hour read
Jack FinneyTime and Again
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1970A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Jack Finney
Walter Braden “Jack” Finney was born in 1911 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was given the name John at birth but was renamed Walter Braden in honor of his father who died when he was three years old. He attended college in Galesburg, Illinois, which became the setting of his short story collection I Love Galesburg in the Springtime (1963). He eventually moved to New York City.
Finney married Marguerite Guest, with whom he had two children. Finney worked for a New York City advertising agency during World War II, an experience that he mined for several of his novels, including Good Neighbor Sam and Time and Again. It was also during this time that he began his serious writing career, with his first piece, “Someone Who Knows Told Me…,” published in 1943. In the early 1950s, he and his family moved to Mill Valley, California, where many of his stories are set. He received the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in 1987, and he died in California in November 1995 at age 84.
Many of Finney’s short stories and novels had commercial and critical success. His first novel, 5 Against the House, was published in 1954 and made into a movie in 1955. His second novel, The Body Snatchers (1955), became his most commercially successful venture, spawning the 1956 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its many remakes. Five of Finney’s novels and several of his short stories were adapted for film and television in his lifetime. His greatest critical success came with Time and Again, which remains a highly regarded work by fans and critics alike.
Literary Context: Time Travel Narratives
Time travel can be considered as a philosophical concept, scientific principle, and narrative genre. The possibilities of time travel have been explored for centuries and appear in many different cultures. While time travel as imagined in fiction may not be possible, some scientists argue that one-way time travel might be possible in light of the concept of time dilation in the special theory of relativity.
Time travel, as a narrative genre, exists in both fantasy and science fiction literature, but its earliest appearances are in myth and folklore. Two of the oldest examples are “The Tale of Kakudmi” in Hindu mythology and “The Tale of Urashima Taro” in Japanese folklore. In early stories, time travel happens through magical or mystical means: a god, a spell, or a mysterious realm. The oldest known story of time travel using a machine is Edward Page Mitchell’s “The Clock That Went Backward,” written in 1881. H. G. Wells’s famous novella The Time Machine (1895) popularized the idea of time travel through scientific and mechanical means; his short story “The Chronic Argonauts” includes a time machine as well and predates The Time Machine by seven years.
The method by which Si Morley and the other experimenters in Time and Again travel is loosely inspired by Einstein’s special theory of relativity, combined with the concept of “self-hypnosis.” This method was also popularized in Richard Matheson’s novel Bid Time Return, which inspired the film Somewhere in Time starring Christopher Reeve.
Time travel has remained a popular trope in fantasy and science fiction in both print and visual media. Many science fiction stories take pains to explain how travel works. But in just as many stories, the how is ignored in favor of the social, historical, or personal consequences of that travel.
Popular themes in time travel narratives include fears or hopes of changing the past, alternate pasts and futures, observing or communicating with another time, time loops and time paradoxes, time wars, and human emotions such as love overcoming the obstacles of time.
Historical Context: New York City in 1882
Finney includes historical events in the novel. Some of these events are used as set dressing and “flavor” to make the setting come alive. This is one of the appeals of the many illustrations and photographs included in the novel. In a footnote, Finney explains that these are all real images from the period, though he gives fictional accounts of how Si Morley makes or acquires them.
Other historical events highlighted in the book are integral to the plot. The three most important of these are the Statue of Liberty’s arm on display, the Tweed Ring, and the burning of the World Building. Si is shocked to see the Statue of Liberty’s arm, complete with flame, on display in Madison Square Park. This was a real event. While fundraising was ongoing for the construction of the whole statue, the arm was displayed first at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and then in New York before it was returned to France to await final construction.
Next, when Pickering blackmails Carmody, he mentions Carmody’s connections to the Tweed Ring. This was a small group of powerful political figures in New York City under the direction of William Marcy Tweed. Between them, they held almost unlimited control of the city’s finances and funneled millions of dollars of public money for their private use. Carmody gained a fortune from his involvement in this ring.
The burning of the New York World Building forms the climax of the novel and is described with harrowing detail. Finney includes snippets from real newspaper articles about the incident. On January 31, 1882, the World Building in New York burned, destroying most of the block in only a few hours. The fire killed six people and did roughly $400,000 in damage (equivalent to about $11 million today).
