“Jeffty Is Five” (1977)

Wikipedia calls this story by Harlan Ellison a fantasy, which seems about right. It makes no sense what’s going on, has no rational basis. Jeffty—Jeff Kinzer—seems to be permanently 5 years old, that’s all. The first-person narrator was his age when they met in the neighborhood and became friends. Now he is a 22-year-old college graduate starting his own business, an electronics repair shop. He grows on, but Jeffty does not. For some reason this is not entirely clear to people around him until Jeffty is 14, which seems a little slow on the draw, but that’s how the story goes. Could be psychological denial on the part of his parents, who are notably depressed. Ellison throws in another nice wrinkle when it turns out Jeffty is apparently living in an alternate timeline. The radio in his bedroom plays old-time radio shows, not the rock ‘n’ roll and pop music of the story’s present day. But the shows Jeffty listens to are also contemporary, aware of and making references to current events. Jeffty can even enter contests on the radio and send away for prizes, which are old-fashioned but also brand-new. The narrator stays friends with Jeffty, but inevitably the dynamic starts to have aspects of babysitting, or maybe the old Big Brothers program. There are good, inexplicable things going on here, but I’m not sure Ellison understands the situation any better than we do and he’s the author for crying out loud. He has a responsibility. But it feels more like he’s just playing with it, riffing on it. It has less of Ellison’s typical rage to propel it, but there is a detectable bitterness about time and aging. Over at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB), I have only rarely seen so many rankings for any other story I can recall, 12 votes with a composite 9.08 (of 10), which certainly speaks to Ellison’s lasting popularity and regard. As usual, I am feeling a little contrarian. I like the wistful tone of this story but there’s something rancid in it too—it’s on the fence about what it means to be 5 years old maybe even forever. Ellison also didn’t seem to know how to finish it except by kind of blowing it up, which doesn’t really work. In fairness, I wouldn’t know how to end it myself. Despite any misgivings, the story does have many nice passages.

The Essential Ellison, ed. Terry Dowling
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