Stealing Through Time: On the Writings of Jack Finney (6 page)

Jack drops off Miles and Becky back in town, and they walk the streets, noticing that everything around them seems dead. There is nothing happening, homes are in disrepair, and lawns have not been maintained. They are shocked to realize that they had not noticed the gradual change in Santa Mira. Returning to Becky's house, they stand outside a window and hear Becky's relatives make fun of Becky's concerns. Miles and Becky realize that the voices they hear do not belong to human beings. They run, calling Jack Belicec along the way to tell him what's happening.

Miles and Becky visit the home of Professor Budlong (an appropriate name for someone who has been replaced by a seed pod), who discusses how long it might have taken spores to drift through space toward Earth and then admits that he's one of them. Having been replaced by a space seed, he no longer feels emotion and explains that the pods' only goal is the survival of their species.

Budlong remarks that life "'takes any form necessary'" (124), including copying a pattern from human bodies. The pods plan to take over the world but can only survive on Earth for five years, after which they will move on into space, having used up this planet. As part two ends, Miles and Becky leave Professor Budlong's house and see Jack, chased by police and driving frantically through Santa Mira. Miles and Becky climb into the hills on the edge of town, tiring, realizing that nowhere is safe.

In part two of the serial, Finney methodically disposes of any reasonable explanation for what is happening and ratchets up the terror that Miles, Becky, and the reader feel as the characters come to realize that they are up against a seemingly unbeatable foe.

The conclusion of the three-part serial begins on Saturday, just over a week after the story began. Miles and Becky return to Miles's office, where they are soon trapped by Mannie Kaufman, Professor Budlong, and two other pod people. Miles and Becky use their wits to defeat the first attempt to replace them with pods and escape by attacking their captors as they try to transfer them to a jail cell.

Miles and Becky head for the hills and hide in a field until darkness falls. They walk toward Highway 101 and see pods growing in a field. They fill the field's irrigation ditches with gasoline and set the pods on fire, burning them as they grow. A crowd catches Miles and Becky but lacks emotion, almost as if uncertain about what to do with the humans.

At the last minute, Jack Belicec arrives with FBI agents to rescue Miles and Becky. Everyone watches as the remaining pods drift off into space, leaving a clearly inhospitable planet behind. As the serial ends, Miles recalls the incident from a vantage point years later, recalling how the pod people eventually died off and Santa Mira came to life again. He and Becky are together and he can hardly believe it ever happened.

But this much I know: once in a while, the orderly, immutable sequences of life
are
inexplicably shifted and altered. You may read occasional queer little stories about them, or you may hear vague distorted rumors of them, and you probably dismiss them. But — some of them —
some
of them —are quite true [73].

The editors of
Collier's
must have known that they had something special on their hands, because Jerome Beatty, Jr., wrote, in an editor's note in the December 24, 1954 issue, that

Mr. Finney's realistic tale scared the devil out of
us.
For reassurance, we showed it to Dr. Harry A. Charipper, chairman of the department of biology of New York University, and asked him about the "transmutation" of "substance" from one form of life to another, which is how the body snatchers are taking us over. He says: "Readers need not be reminded that twenty-five years ago that which is real now was but fantasy. The scientific analysis on which this story is based is most intriguing and certainly within the realm of possibility." Gulp.

Movie producer Walter Wanger also seems to have purchased the rights to the story by the time it appeared in
Collier's-,
William Relling, Jr., notes that Wanger traveled to Jack Finney's home town of Mill Valley, California, "just after New Year's Day in 1955" with screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring and director Don Siegel to talk about the story and to scout filming locations (63). Kevin McCarthy, who would star in the film, recalled that he was living in New York in 1955 when Siegel telephoned him from California '"about a story that had been recently serialized in
Collier's,
the popular weekly magazine.'" McCarthy told an interviewer that '"I guess Siegel
sent
me the pertinent issues of the mag or I dug 'em up myself!'" (McCarty 233).

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
, the film that was made from the original story, has become a cult classic among cinema enthusiasts. What was it about the three-part serial in November and December 1954 that excited a movie producer and led to countless articles in scholarly journals and books?

When asked about the many theories that have been advanced by critics, Jack Finney replied that he intended "The Body Snatchers" to be a good story and nothing more. '"I have read explanations of the 'meaning' of this story, which amuse me, because there is no meaning at all; it was just a story meant to entertain, and with no more meaning than that'" (King 290).

At the same time that Daniel Mainwaring and Don Siegel were getting ready to film the story, Finney was working on an expanded version, which would be published as Dell paperback first edition number 42 in 1955. This is the version of the story that has received a great deal of critical attention, and it is interesting to note the changes made in the transformation from magazine serial to paperback novel.

Unlike the novel
5 Against the House,
which has few significant changes from the prior serialized version, the novel
The Body Snatchers
has major revisions that change the focus of the story and alter its conclusion.

Chapter one of the novel is expanded, with entire paragraphs and many details added. Among the details are male and female skeletons (the male named Fred) that Miles keeps in his closet (11-12). These skeletons play an important role later in the novel, but Finney's light-hearted introduction of them in the early part of the book gives no hint of their later purpose. Finney also may be suggesting that Miles has psychological skeletons in his closet that will later be revealed.

Wilma's character is filled out in chapter two with an anecdote from her childhood that she shares with Miles —she recalls going to a hardware store with her Uncle Ira and wanting a tiny door in a frame-that she saw there (16). This hint that Wilma is about to enter an
Alice in Wonderland-
like situation is strengthened by her other recollection, when she tells Miles of another time that she saw a cloud "'shaped like a rabbit'" (16).

Miles's intelligence and trustworthiness are highlighted by a passage added to chapter three, where he recalls diagnosing Theodora Belicec with Rocky Mountain spotted fever the year before. It was an unusual diagnosis, but Miles was certain and Jack believed him (27). This story helps to create a bond of trust between Miles and the Belicecs that will serve to bolster their confidence in each other when strange things start to happen.

Among the passages in chapters four and five that are added, expanded, or reworked is one which has been cited by critics as a key moment in the novel. In the middle of the night, Miles is awakened by his telephone ringing. He answers, but there is no one on the other end of the line. In the novel, the following section is added:

A year ago the night operator, whose name I'd have known, could have told me who'd called. It would probably have been the only light on her board at that time of night, and she'd have remembered which one it was, because they were calling the doctor. But now we have dial phones, marvelously efficient, saving you a full second or more every time you call, inhumanly perfect, and utterly brainless; and none of them will ever remember where the doctor is at night, when a child is sick and needs him. Sometimes I think we're refining all humanity out of our lives [43].

Miles thinks of the new telephone system as "inhumanly perfect," foreshadowing the alien pod people he will encounter later in the novel.

Chapter six expands the search of Becky's basement and adds two full pages of description of Becky's pod and its resemblance to the real person (52-54). Two more paragraphs added at the chapter's end remove the cliffhanger that had concluded part one of the serial, as Mannie prepares a rational explanation for Miles.

The next eight chapters expand the portion of the story that had appeared as part two of the serial. In chapter seven, Finney adds a story told by Mannie Kaufman of a bizarre character known as the Mattoon Maniac; in chapter eight, additional Fortean stories are added to flesh out Jack's collection of clippings reporting unusual occurrences (71). Two more paragraphs are added later in chapter eight that feature Miles talking to his reflection in the mirror as he shaves. Miles's comments have also been cited by Glen M. Johnson in his insightful comparison of the novel and film (8). Miles says to himself:

"You can marry them, all right; you just can't stay married, that's your trouble. You are weak. Emotionally unstable. Basically insecure. A latent thumb-sucker. A cesspool of immaturity, unfit for adult responsibility" 
[76].

Once again, a passage that has been cited as central to understanding the themes of the novel is one that was absent from the original serial. Another important passage is added to chapter nine, where Miles walks along Main Street and observes that "it seemed littered and shabby" (77). He thinks that it's just due to his mood, however, and attaches no significance to the run-down appearance of downtown Santa Mira.

Chapter ten begins with another passage that is not present in the serial and that has a similar effect. Here, Miles goes up to his attic and looks out of the window at the town below. He recalls all of the places and friends he has known since he was a boy, thinking "I knew them all, at least by sight, or to nod or speak to on the street. I'd grown up here...." He contrasts what he has always known with the present Santa Mira and thinks "And now I didn't know it any more" (89). The formerly friendly faces and places have become menacing and now menace Miles.

Another big change in chapter ten occurs when Miles, rather than Jack, attempts to call the outside world for help. In the serial, Jack tries to call the FBI in San Francisco (119). In the novel, Miles calls old school friend Ben Eichler at the Pentagon (92-97) and only when this conversation fails does Jack try the FBI.

Chapter twelve of the novel is almost entirely new, focusing on the changes in Santa Mira brought on by the pod people. According to Miles,

"In seven blocks we haven't passed a single house with as much as the trim being repainted; not a roof, porch, or even a cracked window being repaired; not a tree, shrub, or a blade of grass being planted, or even trimmed. Nothing's
happening,
Becky, nobody's
doing
anything. And they haven't for days, maybe weeks" [108].

A scene in a drugstore is added, where a salesman from out of town complains that nobody in Santa Mira is buying anything anymore (110-12), and a scene in the library is added, where Miles discovers that all news of the pods has been snipped out of the newspapers (112-15). Finney makes an in-joke here when he has Becky reading
Woman's Home Companion
and Miles "glancing through
Collier's
" (113); one would not be surprised if they found stories by Jack Finney in the magazines' pages.

Scenes like those in chapter twelve led Glen M. Johnson to write that "when the town turns shabby ... such neglect becomes a product of something sinister" (9). Stephen King was more lighthearted about it, writing that "From where Finney stands, the scariest thing about the pod people is that chaos doesn't bother them a bit and they have absolutely no sense of aesthetics..." (303).

One of the most often discussed scenes in the novel doesn't appear at all in the original serial. The comparison of the overheard conversation among the pod people with Miles's memory of an overheard conversation involving Billy, the shoeshine man, is memorable, and Finney's observations about race relations in 1950s America are worth noting. Briefly, Miles recalls a moment when he saw beyond the facade created by a black man for his white customers; Miles notably recalls that, after the incident, "I never again had my shoes shined at Billy's stand" (119). To quote Glen M. Johnson again,

This astounding passage has only the most tenuous relationship to the plot of the novel; indeed, Finney has to go to awkward lengths to set it up. But the segment is all the more significant for its awkwardness and intensity. Here, in a work of popular literature from 1954 [sic], is a compulsive association of American blacks with fictional characters who are both victims and subversives [7-8].

Like virtually all of the passages in
The Body Snatchers
that have attracted critical attention, this section of the novel did not appear in the original serial. Chapter fourteen of the novel also includes one other major change from the serial. In the novel, Miles and Becky meet Professor Budlong and discuss his theories of seed pods' arrival from outer space. Budlong tells Miles that it's impossible for pods to change into duplicates of human beings, and Miles and Becky leave, with Miles feeling rather foolish. Almost immediately thereafter, he sees Jack being chased in his car by pod people and he knows the threat is real.