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First novel 'no accident'
Review
BY JAMES JACENICH • STAFF WRITER
MONTEREY - "Accidents of Time and Place" is Head Waters resident Paul Klein's first novel. But it's not his first writing experience.
His resume includes hundreds of scripts for radio, TV and film on many subjects including art, history, industry, medicine, politics, religion, and science.
Klein's novel begins with his protagonist, Hector, returning suddenly to his parents' home in Pennsylvania.
Hector is a quiet man approaching middle age. He hasn't been home in years. His silence adds to his mystery and strangeness and makes the reader want to probe deeper to uncover his secrets.
Hector's life is directed by a series of accidents. He has managed to find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time on a number of occasions. Despite his disengagement from life, he finds himself caught up in the events of his time.
He joins the Army during World War II, but spends the war safely stateside. After the war, he is part of the occupation of Japan. The Korean War finds the shy army clerk fending off an enemy attack and becoming an unintentional hero. Perhaps because of his war experience or the fact that his service brought unwanted notoriety and attention, he ends his career and goes to Washington, D.C. to attend college.
While at college he writes about his generation's experiences in war and peace. His book becomes a best-seller and he is once again thrust into the limelight. He is an easy target for those who wish to exploit him. He becomes the subject of a number of magazine and newspaper articles. As his notoriety increases, detractors try to take him down a notch. He is called before a government inquisition to explain his association with a suspected communist organization. He was not a member of the organization, but is presumed guilty based on a brief meeting and even briefer written communications with its leader.
It's enough to make him run away and hide, again.
A subplot involves Hector's budding romance with Jane, a waitress at his favorite restaurant. Klein makes the relationship between the shy bookworm and the self-confident working girl plausible, though unlikely. That the two are attracted to one another is but another accident. That Hector makes it work is another example of heroism.
The story takes place mostly in 1950s Washington. Klein describes the streetcars, restaurants, hotels and the people that frequent them. He creates a place different from what we know today and yet vaguely familiar. The juxtaposition between two worlds, that of the 1950s and today, is no accident.
Klein says, "Both the man and the story find resonance in today's world."
Communism was the threat then, as terrorism is today. Innocent people were trapped in the crossfire between opposing ideologies then, as they are now. Klein takes pot shots at the press and politicians as both groups, in his book, scramble to prove their love of country by attacking the nearest scapegoat.
Klein, speaking as Hector, predicts the communist hysteria of the '50s will pass. As communism seems less a threat now than it was then, so, perhaps, will terrorism dwindle in importance and urgency in the not-too-distant future.
The parallel between communism and terrorism is but one possible interpretation. The sign of a good story is in its adaptability to multiple interpretations.
Klein creates a tale about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Hector stands out because he lives mostly in the shadows. His challenge is not so much to rise above his ordinariness, but to recognize his own unique contribution to the world, no matter how small and insignificant it seems against the backdrop of history. Hector becomes the proverbial Everyman trying desperately to find meaning where there doesn't seem to be any.
"Writing suited this quiet, solitary man," writes Klein. "He wrote of his generation, the men and women who came of age in the '40s, because it was what he knew, but also because it was his way of trying to understand who they were, and what they were supposed to do, now that they were going to be 'in charge.'"
Hector is called before a subcommittee investigating the spread of communism. Fifty years ago, the fear of the spread of communism lead to a witch-hunt that ended the careers of many writers, actors and filmmakers. Mere association with communists or communist organizations was enough to permanently taint a person.
The irony of Hector's situation is that while he had met with a suspected communist sympathizer, he was not in agreement with his position and did not pursue a relationship with him or his organization. Hector proves himself guilty in the eyes of the sub-committee and the press through his silence and defiance.
A friend who worked for the sub-committee betrays him. He feels the friend should have defended him.
His literary career is over, or so he thinks.
His sense of betrayal turns to paranoia as he turns on his wife.
"Am I a threat to you, Hector?" she says.
"When had people not been a threat to this man?" Klein as narrator writes. "When in his life had he been in control, he wondered. Had he ever owned his own life? Was this woman a threat? Could he imagine such a thing? Or was it not imagination at all? The thoughts grew eerily in his mind. What was happening to him? Jane's grip on his hands tightened as she felt him starting to pull away."
In the end notes, the publisher says, "Redemption, if it comes, lies in his decision to take charge of his life and go on. It is a different kind of heroism, one that must be deliberate, not accidental."
Klein sets the stage for a lifechanging and life-affirming event. Klein's quick and easy prose brings the reader in a couple of sittings to a climax and resolution.
Hector explains what he learned in war. "I don't mean the soldier skills," he tells Jane. "I mean that we learned about living, about fear, about missing something precious."
We know Hector returns to his hometown in the coal country of Pennsylvania. That's in chapter one. But how will Hector resolve his inner conflict? Will he internalize the lessons he says he learned about living, fear and missing something precious or will he give in to despair and retreat into the darkness?
PublishAmerica of Baltimore, Md. publishes "Accidents of Time and Place." It is available at the Gallery of Mountain Secrets in Monterey and will be on the shelf at the Bookstack in Staunton. It is also available at Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com.
Klein will do a reading/signing at the Bookstack at 10 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 1.
Klein, 72, moved to Highland County in 1992 with his wife, Diane. He is an active member of the Highland County Rescue Squad and currently serves as squad president. He is an EMT-B and an American Heart Association CPR and First Aid instructor and assists EMT instructors from the Central Shenandoah EMS Council with EMT Basic classes.
Klein is a member of a writing group that meets every Tuesday at the Highland County Public Library. The group's members focus on fiction and biographical fiction. They are open to fiction writers who think a group might be helpful, Klein says.
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