Doubleday, 1983.
Writers often stumble into immortality. The books that stick around for decades rarely seem headed that way when they first appear. I'm thinking of efforts like A River Runs Through It, or The Killer Angels or Time and Again -- all of which appeared in the early 1970s to modest receptions but have endured to become popular classics, leaving the books with more and better reviews by the wayside.
Time and Again offered readers in a tumultuous time the ability to escape -- the hero essentially wills himself back into a lovingly recreated 19th century. And who does not think his own time is something to flee? A decade later, Finney tried the same thing with Forgotten News. Most of it focuses on the unsolved 1857 murder of a prominent dentist, but there are a few other historical snippets as well. The book is profusely illustrated with period woodcuts. Finney clearly loved the era, and indeed reveled in it. Yet the tale -- which I read a few months ago and can barely remember -- never caught on with readers. It doesn't come alive. Maybe it's because it lacks a romantic interest, or even anyone for the reader to identify with -- the dentist is as unsavory as the apparent murderer, his girlfriend.
I wrote a piece about Finney shortly before his death in the early 1990s. He was a reclusive but amiable guy who lived in Mill Valley, the setting for Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He signed a couple of books for me, including a copy of Time and Again which I gave or traded to Allan. It was a valuable book even then. Allan promptly sold it for a pittance to a high-end first edition dealer who was wandering through the shop, annoying me no end. There are no signed firsts of Time and Again online, and even fine unsigned copies go for $750. If anyone ever succeeds in making a good movie from it, its immortality will be assured.
Forgotten News is another story. It seems largely forgotten itself. In 2007, the New York Times ran a lengthy article on how a guy who wrote a book about the case had put headstones on the graves of the killer and her victim. The reporter didn't seem to know this book existed.
This copy, which has remainder spray on the bottom edges, is priced on the endpaper $7.50. I thought I had picked it up from Allan as a reading copy, and used it as such. I only notice now that it is inscribed to him, and priced on the half title at $150. I must have given it to him after I had seen Finney. When times got tough, he tried to sell it. It needs a new jacket, but my guess is it's pretty unsaleable unless the price were very low.
