The Novel

Thesis Statement

“The Typist is a rich and powerful work of historical fiction that expertly chronicles both the politics of the Pacific theater of World War II, and the personal relationships borne from the tragedies of warfare”.

Introduction

There is a particular pleasure to reading a short novel or novella that is distinct from that of reading a longer book. Having spent most of the summer immersed in long novels that stretch, I turned with some anticipation to Michael Knight's The Typist. The book itself is small—smaller than most hardcovers, an early signal that promises a story that can be taken in quickly, absorbed with some of the same immediacy of a film or a short tale.

Among the good things The Typist offers is an unfamiliar setting—Tokyo immediately after World War II, during the U.S. occupation led by General Douglas MacArthur—and a fresh perspective and narrative voice, that of a soldier who has spent the war not in combat but in office work. (They also serve who only sit and type.) The typist of the title is this young man from Mobile, Alabama, who confides his story in a simple, earnest tone that establishes him at the outset as naïve, rather earnest, but equipped with sensitivity, attention, and intelligence.

Van is part of a large corps of administrative functionaries in MacArthur's occupying government. MacArthur himself, whom Van refers to throughout by the soldiers' nickname of “Bunny,” is a character here, seen close up both at the office and at home. MacArthur has a young son, Arthur, who is isolated socially; the general hires Van as a weekly playmate (Bingham, pp. 22).

Van spends his days typing, his weekends babysitting the general's boy, his off hours dodging letters from the girl he impulsively married and left back in the States. That life back in America is something he seems eager to postpone indefinitely, posing as it does the challenge of a decision he can't yet wrap his mind around. Meanwhile, his roommate, Clifford, draws him into the sophisticated and seedy world of Tokyo nightlife, among the prostitutes and black marketeers of a ruined city. Unlike Van, who steers clear of physical temptations, Clifford falls for Namiki, a pan-pan girl he meets in a dancehall, and, wanting the money to live with her, gets involved with dangerous local politics and illicit trade (Knight, Pp. 40).

The main character of Michael Knight's new novel is not your typical soldier, and that is fitting, as The Typist is not your typical war story. The story is set in post-war Japan, and Francis “Van” Vancleave has never seen the “real action,” but he has read (and typed) all about it from his desk in General Macarthur's Tokyo headquarters. Though Van occasionally wishes he could join in the camaraderie that comes with the telling of war stories, he still feels that his contribution is important. Macarthur (whom he refers to with the nickname Bunny throughout) has succeeded in making him feel important.

Discussion and Analysis

We see MacArthur's administration of postwar Japan through Van's perspective as one ...