Anatomy of a ‘failed utopia’
Waiting for the Revolution
by Ross Klatte
Altona: Friesen Press, 2024
$22.99 / 9781039188877
Reviewed by Ron Verzuh
*
In the early 1970s, BC’s West Kootenay district, where much of this debut novel is set, was the adopted home of draft dodgers and various drifters who settled around the Slocan Valley near Nelson and Castlegar. Some stayed to pursue a back-to-the-land lifestyle. Ross Klatte’s story is about one who stayed as the 1960s subsided.
The main character, Tom Weber, is an ex-U.S. Marine who runs into marital difficulties when his much younger wife Angela leaves their temporary location in Mexico to head north with Ricardo. The first part of the book is set there and plays out the disintegration of the marriage and Angela’s decision to hitch a ride to Canada. After much soul-searching Tom decides to track her to a commune called New Eden, a camp nestled into the secluded natural beauty of the area where I was raised. His hopes are up.
My memories were thoroughly jogged by Klatte (How Long Have I Been Here), whose background as an ex-pat parallels the imaginary exploits of his main character. So much so, in fact, that it might seem fair to call this an autobiographical novel. Klatte, like Tom, was in the U.S. military, grew up on a farm in Minnesota, worked as a journalist, wanted to write a novel one day—don’t we all?—and immigrated with his wife to Canada in 1971.
When Tom drives his Ford Fairlane across the continent to the abandoned camp that was once a logging operation, he finds his wife Angela squatting on Crown land with fifteen members of a commune. Tom says he is just there to make sure she is okay, but clearly he is still in love with her. Meanwhile, she is keen to be with other men. He broods about it, then jumps into communal life.
For those who have never enjoyed the fabulous scenery on display in the Kootenays, Klatte provides numerous descriptions of its lakes, mountains, and near-wilderness parts. He also gives us an intimate portrait of life one of the region’s commune, replete with several amorous sex scenes, as we vicariously experience the free living and loving lifestyle.
Is the novel a hippie hitchhiker’s odyssey or a draft resister’s memoir? It is partly both, but stretches further into the lives of people who were seeking a better world as they “waited for the revolution.” It explores some of the issues of the day, including Pierre Trudeau’s invoking of the War Measures Act, unsettling relations with the Doukhobors, and the sad tale of First Nations displacement. With that said, it’s “basically a love story,” as the cover suggests.
There is enough of an arc to keep readers occupied, although at times I got bogged down in long descriptions of everyday activities—from tree planting and long road trips to gardening and canoe runs to do laundry. Stricter editing would have trimmed selectively without losing the thread of Tom’s story.
I liked Tom. I also shared his love of British novelist D.H. Lawrence and his taste in music, ranging from the Rolling Stones to jazz great Stan Getz and protest singers like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Ditto his choice of reading: Jack Kerouac, Richard Brautigan, Kurt Vonnegut, and Ken Kesey to name a few. It reads like the diary of many us countercultural wanderers of the 1960s.
I also enjoyed tagging along to watch how the commune members interacted, shaped a momentary life together, and discovered new ways to exist on the land. The revolution never happens, as we know. “We were just playing… at revolution,” says one character.
Klatte does weave in some moments that hint at danger or disaster: a snowy canoe trip across the lake, two car crashes, clashes with local authorities, a fist fight over Angela. But mostly the story recounts lost love.
Dramatic tension revolves mostly around daily survival round. There are pensive moments as Tom faces some internal conflict with himself about his future path. Other communalists grapple with the fleeting nature of their relationships. Life is in flux and Klatte, using his own past as a base, does a good job of creating that atmosphere.
All writers tap their own experiences to write fiction and some work is bound to be autobiographical. The trick is to create stories that go past memory and into the realm of the imagination. Waiting for the Revolution does some of that, but seems as much memoir as fiction.
We know that things will eventually fall apart, and Nelson resident Klatte keeps us moderately interested until then. In the end, Ricardo shows up at New Eden and old scores are settled. After a final disaster hits the commune, the novel ends on a pleasing note with Tom and Angela reuniting to live in the Kootenays as back-to-the-landers.
Tom concludes that New Eden was a “failed utopia” and that he will be waiting still for a “true revolution… some genuine change for the better,… some grand righting of all wrongs in the world.” In real life, we are still waiting but the communes of the 1970s have left their mark on the Kootenays partly through an ample supply of creative writers.
*
Ron Verzuh is a writer and historian. He has recently reviewed books by Dietrich Kalteis, Grant Lawrence, Howard White, Eileen Delehanty Pearkes, Vince R. Ditrich, Aaron Williams, Michel Drouin, Hetxw’ms Gyetxw (Brett D. Huson), Haley Healey, and Keith G. Powell for BCR.
*
The British Columbia Review
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Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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