Jack Finney is remembered today (if it is) because his 1955 novel The Body Snatchers was made into the popular film of Don Siegel Invasion of the Body Snatchers ( 1956) with its remake, sequel , appurtenances. Too bad. The film is a landmark of sci-fi film, but his reputation and image will not only crush those of a novel interesting despite some inconsistencies of plot and narrative inconsistencies, but above all they have virtually reduced to this single novel Finney. Instead, there is another and better.
Simak was born in Wisconsin, Illinois, educated in Bradbury, at its best Finney can remember the author's intimate humanism City, but it is especially approachable in style and intent in certain "Impressionism "to that of the Martian Chronicles . In the introduction to one Italian publication of this story that I showing ( time Stories, Galaxy n.207, 1975), the Dioscuri Curtoni Vittorio Gianni Montanari & Finney speak for science fiction twilight. Twilight of course, the science fiction I would say with caution. Moreover Finney, writer since 1946, was never a staff writer for SF gender despite having written since 1951: to say, this story was originally published in the Saturday Evening Post, not one of the magazines. Author eclectic, he was one of the many talented writers who populated the American magazines ranging freely among genres and not, building careers on novels and short stories written with skill, and giving the occasional paw of high class. The love letter is without doubt one of these legs, a short story with a subtle intensity, capable of causing commotion in the best sense of the word, and written with a measured and restrained style, with fine attention to detail and literary atmosphere and impressionistic rendering of the narrative (from story, I find the network, was made in 1998 a TV movie, which frankly are not eager to see nose). They make use of the privileged themes of the narrative of Finney, time and nostalgia, common to his best work: antologizzati other stories in the volume (in the original collection is named after the eponymous story, I love springtime in Galesburg - Galesburg is the city where he grew Finney) and the novel in 1970 Time and again, in Italian back in time. Not to mention The Woodrow Wilson Dime 1968, in Italian The coin of Woodrow Wilson .
The love letter has a disarmingly simple plot: a boy loves a girl. From a strictly narrative point of view, of what happens, there's more. And yet on an issue as minimum (and especially popular ...) Finney manages to strike up a story that can strike the reader and emotions.
Jake Belknap is a young man living in New York in 1959 in Brooklyn, his family is far away in Florida. He has a decent job and live the life of a bachelor without scapestrataggine particular. Longs for love, dare I say the youthful ability to dream, combining a bit of bourgeois common sense. A good guy, good in the sense of the word. The young man buys an antique desk, drawers and exploring discovers the secret compartments, the first of these is the old white writing paper, ink, preserved through the decades and an old pen. And a letter. The letter was signed in 1882 by Helen Elizabeth Worley, una ragazza vissuta a Brooklyn a pochi isolati alla casa di Jake. In ossequio al costume del tempo la giovane donna sta per sposare qualcuno scelto per lei e del quale non è innamorata. La lettera è indirizzata invece all’uomo che ama. Solo che quest’uomo non esiste, è il vagheggiamento di un uomo. Non che Helen sia pazza, la lettera non è in alcun modo un delirio: è un voto, un augurio, l’espressione di un desiderio che ella sa essere del tutto eventuale, quasi certamente destinato a restare tale. Anche in Helen si ravvisano giovanile ardore e borghese assennatezza congiunti in una ferrea unione. Non siamo però nella realtà e neppure in un racconto realistico, per cui qualcosa accadrà.
Driven by an impulse ineffable Jake decides to respond to the letter. That sounds like nonsense so obviously excited to be poor. But as Jake says the same (or more correctly as Finney writes Jake by climbing on the mirrors ;-)) he found himself reading a letter from Helen at night, when the silence and the darkness outside appear to change the very fabric of reality, confuse the mind and body to give ideas that nobody else would. None compos on .
From then on it displayed the wisdom and descriptive narrative of Finney; admire the accuracy pictorial and psychological depth with which recreates the night drifters Jake to the old post office of the district, dating to the time when Helen was born and then finally had a child and young girl, where pockets with all the trappings that the letter sent . And the day wandering on pilgrimage to the house that the girl had lived, and which is now crumbling and in ruin, whilst maintaining the power to evoke the nostalgia of its sheer physical presence. The study research in the library on the New York eighty years ago, and its streets in Brooklyn. These nuances, sometimes soft and delicate nuances are the heart of the story and are at the heart of the story.
Anche se qualche curatore di fantascienza potrebbe pensare che si tratti di dettagli non strutturali. Ma tant’è.
Scrivevo più sopra che crepuscolare è un aggettivo quanto mai adatto a Finney (e a questa storia), ma di certo fantascienza va usato con maggior precauzione. Non che sia di qualche importanza, sia chiaro. E siamo comunque nel campo del fantastico (del fantastico puro, a mio parere); non stupirà quindi che Helen risponda alla lettera di Jake.
Come e perché ciò accade non è importante, e anzi il tentativo di Finney di dare una qualche spiegazione è the only weak part of the story and completely phony. The fact is that over the decades that separate them and always separated them, Helen and Jake are living or have lived a short yet durable - and intense - emotional relationship. A handful of letters, but remember that each Serber until his death. A very private love, unreal and surreal, yet deep and consistent.
controllatissima Finney shows a hand in writing and in handling a matter so at the risk of escape and turn into romance ran cheap. The great size undoubtedly helps him keep track of the story in a lot of anguish tinged with melancholy and nostalgia to overcome the risk of devaluation, but his prose is measured largely the result. Then an argument as time travel, so far as travel is sui generis, is resolved on a narrative tone that is best grouped under the pure fantasy, it is an irrelevant detail: science fiction will love this player The love letter for the emotions that has given him. :-)
The story can be read in English at this address:
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