time and again
it's almost 5 am and i just finished reading time and again by jack finney. i wasn't sure if i liked it while i was reading it - i almost wanted to stop a couple of times. if i like a book and i have the time i normally will read the whole book in one sitting but with this one i had to take a 20 minute break or so a couple of times. i skimmed a small part of it, maybe a couple half-pages. i enjoyed finney's descriptions of the 19th century (it almost felt like he had been there himself - though i know that was the purpose. this book is supposed to be a memoir/record of his protagonist's time there.) i've tried to read it in the past and never made it past the first chapter but this time i was determined to. i had to look at the year the book was published because i kept thinking that the writing is.. a bit old fashioned. i want to say, repressed, but maybe that's not the right word. i didn't enjoy the beginning much, the middle was good with the plot twist, and the ending was definitely not what i expected. i found it odd that the protagonist Si, decided that he can just unalive someone because he decided, on his own, that it would solve the imminent problem; the board wanting to change history for the benefit of humanity - in whichever way they think is most suitable. it made me feel that although he protested rube and esterhazy's decision to continue with the project in a way that impacts the future so drastically, he ended up doing something similar.
Si says it best,
...Once again you know that the best thing to do with his discovery is eliminate Castro Cuba. Well, how do you know? Who's given this little breed of men who've polluted the entire environment and who may actually wipe out the human race - who gave them the power of God to control the lives and futures of the rest of us? Most of them we never heard of, and we sure as hell didn't elect them!
who gave Si the right to stop danziger's parents from meeting and consequently erasing danzinger from the timeline? his rationale is that it would make sure danziger is never there to start the project and recruit people and Si would not be there either to go into 1882 and successfully alter history without causing a domino effect of alterations in the future. but logically wouldn't that mean that Si would never have gone into the past if danziger hadn't been born? well, somehow that didn't happen and Si remains in 1882, to live the rest of his life there with julia.
i think that finney did something well: he made all the characters feel very human. sometimes they are boring, calculating, thoughtful, indecisive... contradictory, burdened - guilty, and hopeful.
but time and again, at times, felt almost too much like a journal. "we went out and had a sandwich, it was quite good, had one beer each, and then walked back home and greeted so-and-so who had just come in, who remarked on how fierce the snow was blowing outside..." but it wasn't all just that. even though some of the writing felt emotion-less, i felt a spark of rawness in some of it as well.