Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I'm climber, and I live in Seattle. Being a climber in the northwest means you spend a lot more time thinking about climbing and waiting for good weather to climb, than actually up in the mountains. So, you read a lot of climbing books. Some, like Galan Rowell's "In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods" or Jon Krakauer's "Eiger Dreams" and everyone's favorite "Into Thin Air" are vivid, transporting writing. Others, like Reinhold Messner's books, remind you that the skills and drive that make you a world-class climber don't necessarily make you a good author. Eric Shipton, a great climber in his own right, wrote a completely dry, bloodless book about the history of Everest expeditions.
So it isn't all that surprising that Wickwire's book doesn't have a lot of insights. There isn't much of what literature professors like to call an interior life. It was to me a strangely emotionless and slightly troubling book. And I have to agree, it's a poor choice for a title
All the basic facts of his climbing life are laid out. You certainly learn a good deal about the first and second K2 expeditions, and his triumphs of Mt. Rainier (first winter ascent of the Willis Wall) and near-death experiences. Years ago I saw a movie made about a climb to an unclimbed peak in the Fairweather range in Alaska; it was interesting to read here more fully what happened. It's chilling to learn how thoroughly a body can disintegrate on a fall down a rock face (after the fall, where two of the climbers died, they recovered bits of scalp, bone fragments, pieces of camera, and so on.)
But it's all facts, straightforwardly laid out, without much apparent interest in interpretation. Perhaps this comes from Wickwire's professional life as a corporate attorney, writing legal documents. It's interesting that the description of Wickwire's famous bivouac below the summit of K2 is related much more vividly in John Roskelley's book, than in Wickwire's own book. Perhaps that's because Wickwire wrote twenty years after the events. At the REI "flagship store" in Seattle, you can see the bivouac sack in which Wickwire spent that night., and REALLY get a feel for how cold and alone he really was.
The troubling bit: from reading the book, one comes to the conclusion that the great love of Wickwire's life isn't Mary Lou, his wife, but Marty Hoey, the woman he climbed with on Acancagua and Everest. There are excerpts of what can only be described as love notes between him and Marty. For Mary Lou he expresses respect and appreciation, and there are numerous passages where he expresses regret at the time spent apart from his children, but the expressions of passion are all directed towards Marty. I suppose the honesty is laudable, but this must be a very hard book for his wife to read.
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