The Chronos Affair - Paperback

by Alfred a. Keltner (Author)

This is the tale of a man who discovers a terrifying episode in his past as he sails alone across the Pacific. As we observe him laboring at sea he strikes us as a rational and intelligent iindividual. However, as time passes repressed episodes of a previous sea journey awaken within him. Nightmares filled with grotesque scenes of his violent past reveal a man very different from the one we have come to know. As his horrors escalate he attempts to escape into alcohol induced stupors, but injury and delirium overtake him. His vessel is drawn southward, depressions brew and a violent tropical storm whips him for days on end across the screaming seas. This confluence of the psychological and natural turmoil elicits a climax of discovery and his true past is fully revealed at last. The venue of his recollections shifts from Canada to California, Mexico and Hawaii. The characters include an alcoholic skipper, his alluring wife and a vengeful crew. The ensuing conflicts on board climax in violence and lead to the inevitable dramatic conclusion. However, this drama, narrated in the first person by the protagonist Kurt, reaches beyond the customary account of singlehanded sailing with its problems of navigation, storms, physical hardships and terror; nor does it simply cater to the popular appetite for gratuitous violence and interpersonal conflict. Rather it speaks also to the point that most of us are capable of the antisocial and violent behavior depicted here. It suggests that the popular assumption that such conduct is invariably the result of some inner malaise - the notion of mental illness is commonly pressed into service here - is often erroneous and simply allows us to avoid a confrontation with the institutionalized ills of our society as the more likely causes; our violent homes, the equation of material possessions with personal worth, our virulent racist attitudes, among others loom large here. To some extent these themes are represented by the main characters of the novel without, however, reducing them to mere caricatures. For example, Kurt, our protagonist, is a reasonalble man, polished, educated, without crimial history, mental illness or habitual violence. Yet here, at the drop of a hat, he proves capable of the worst and, as Konrad would say, he is, nevertheless, "Just one of us." Notwithstanding these social concerns this story primarily aims to entertain; it allows us to escape into an adventure which is beyond the experience in our real lives for most of us. The pain and terror of survival against a sea of overpowering odds and the physical journey fraught with dangers as an allegory of the quest for self-discovery, they all have proven part of a timeless formula of entertainment and I hope that it succeeds in the following narration as well.