"Time and Again"
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| Plot Summary | Book Reviews | Book Passages | Newsgroups and Web Sites |
Several months ago, I reported that "Time and Again" may soon be coming to a theatre near you. According to the May 14, 2001 issue of Variety, Robert Redford is set to produce and direct the picture for Universal Studios. Redford, who has long been interested in bringing the novel to the big screen, has engaged writer-director Kenneth Lonergan ("You Can Count on Me") to pen a screenplay. I have heard nothing new about the film, although word has it that Mr. Redford may be pursuing other films before "Time and Again." Check back for more details as they become available!
Plot Summary
New York illustrator Simon Morley is drawn into a secret government experiment involving time travel and becomes the project's first real success. He travels back to 1882 New York determined not only to gather information for the project, but to resolve a mystery of his own. While in the past, he unexpectedly falls in love and finds himself in a position to control the fate of the entire project.
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Book Reviews
"Why writers fall out of fashion is something of a mystery, but it is especially so in the case of Jack Finney. His one big novel-'Time and Again'-is something of a cult classic."
-"Book World," August 23, 1987
"My favorite historical novel is Jack Finney's 'Time and Again,' which takes the reader from a twentieth-century apartment in Manhattan to the winter of 1882 in the same city. No other book conveys so effortlessly what life was like in another era."
-Kenneth T. Jackson, author, "American Heritage," October 1992, p 93
"New York City is a strange hybrid of the modern and the antique, a metropolis of the late 20th century with one foot still firmly in the 19th...It's also one of the secrets behind the appeal of Jack Finney's beloved time-travel story, 'Time and Again.'"
-Robert Killheffer, "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction," September 1995, p 19
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Book Passages
"I'm certain that it wasn't a matter of clothes, of makeup or its absence, or of hair styles. *Today's faces are different;* they are much more alike and much less alive. On the streets of the eighties I saw human misery, as you see it today; and depravity, homelessness, and greed; and in the faces of small boys on the streets I saw the premature hardness you see now in the faces of boys from Harlem. But there was also an *excitement* in the streets of New York in 1882 that is gone...Their faces were animated, they were glad to be just where they are, alive in that moment and place."
p 219, 1995 edition, Scribner
"The phone on the little table at my elbow rang, and I swung around in my chair, picked it up, and an acutal physical sensation of coldness moved up my spine because the phone was green. It had been white, I was certain of that, but now it was green. I said, 'Hello?'"
p 27, 1995 edition, Scribner
"I said, 'Excuse me, sir,' smiling, blocking his way, and I slowly raised the cigar in my hand to my mouth. 'But do you have a light?' 'Certainly.' He brought out a match, lifted one foot to strike it on the dry part of the sole, then raised the sputtering match, shielding it with one hand, to my cigar. Sick at heart, I ducked my head, unable to meet his eyes, and puffed my cigar into light. 'Thank you,' I said then; from a corner of my eye I could see the far stairway to the balcony, and the girl in the pale green dress was climbing it. 'You're welcome'-the man just outside the door shook out the match, then stepped past me into the lobby, glancing around it. But there was nothing now to catch his interest. On the staircase there was the last flick of pale green velvet but I don't think he even noticed it."
p 397, 1995 edition, Scribner
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Newsgroups and Web Sites
New York City
General information and hundreds of links on the Big Apple
New York Talks and Walks
Information about a unique walking tour of Jack Finney's New York, which visits many of the sites from Finney's novels
The Statue of Liberty
The history, photographs, and statistics of the Statue plus a biography of sculptor Bartholdi
The New York World Building
Photographs and a history of the building
Time Travel and Paradox
Various time travel theories and their application in fiction
Time Travel
This companion to the popular PBS Nova series on time travel provides a wealth of information about the subject
You might also enjoy the newsgroups rec.arts.books.hist-fiction and soc.history.what-if
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From here you may also go to:
"About Time"
"From Time to Time"
"Three by Finney"
Jack Finney
List of All Books
The Little-Known Literaries Main Page
If you have comments or suggestions about this page, e-mail Leah Sparks at LeahJ@aol.com
This page was last updated on January 16, 2006