The Waters Of Kronos
Conrad Richter (1890 -- 1968) won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award during his literary career, but his works are too little read today. His novel "The Waters of Kronos" received the National Book Award in 1961. I found this short novel beautiful and moving. Richter writes lyrically and poetically, and with reflection and melancholy.
The book consists of eight brief chapters and is told by an omniscient third person narrator. The story is about a successful novelist, aging and unwell, named John Donner. Donner has driven for seven days from the West Coast to the small coal mining town called Unionville where he grew up in central Pennsylvania. He has a feeling of unease as he doesn't fully understand the purposes of his journey. He is aware from the beginning that the town of Unionville is no more. Donner reflects as he nears what remains of his destination.
"Of course, he knew that he had not been well. But why, he wondered, did he suppose he would be better at his destination? It was true that the sailor came home from the sea, the hunter from the hill and the prodigal son to his father's house. But for him there was no longer any father's house to come to. And still he went on, even now when, less that twenty miles from his native valley, fresh misgivings seized him."
Donner learns that the entire town of Unionville has been submerged by a lake to form a dam and power project. He is able to visit the cemetery, which had been relocated, where his family is buried.
Up to this point, the story has been realistic enough in tone. But then Donner meets a strange man driving a coal wagon who takes him on a brief ride down a hill to Unionville as it was when Donner was a boy, just after the death of his grandfather who had been a beloved minister.
In the remainder of the book, Donner, as an old man, visits and interacts for three days with the people and places of his boyhood. (The book leaves ambiguous whether this travel back in time is a hallucination on Donner's part or whether it is a supernatural event.) As a boy, Donner had been introspective and a loner and harbored doubts about the value of the religiosity of his family -- most of the men in the family had been ministers. The book describes in fond detail the people and places of old Unionville. Donner meets many of the people of his boyhood, including his father, uncles, brothers, and aunts. In a climactic scene, he meets himself as a young boy. With one possible exception, none of these people recognize Donner. They see him only as a strange old man. They are generally courteous to him but troubled by his presence. They would all be happier if he were gone.
The book seems influenced by Freudian psychology. Donner loves his mother but during his visit only sees her from a distance and doesn't have a conversation with her. The reader thus doesn't learn whether she would recognize her aged son. Donner also has mixed feelings towards his father, with whom he does speak briefly during the book. In the climactic scene of the story, the old Donner has a conversation with himself as a boy about the father. This conversation proves understandably uncomfortable for both of the apparent participants. The reader is left with the impression that the elderly Donner has learned something important about familial relationships and comes in old age to understand and appreciate his father more than he had been able to do during most of his life.
Although this book is beautifully written, it is slow moving and almost static. It tells its story with indirection and needs to be read carefully. (The novel is short and came clearer on a second reading.) The book resists an easy summation such as "you can't go home again". Donner learns a great deal from his real or imagined visit in terms of effecting a reconciliation in his mind with his hometown, his family, and himself. The book encourages reflection and thinking about oneself with the passage of time. I think older readers may appreciate this book more than younger people.
"The Waters of Kronos" merited the high literary award it received even though the book remains obscure. It is a beautifully written story about coming to terms with oneself.
Robin Friedman
