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It is very hard to explain why I find climbing so wondeful. This book may help non-mountaineers understand us better. I have been climbing mountains for 29 years. first climbs, awesome views, friendship, more close calls than I can remember. we are not arrogant, au contraire, we fully understand the fragility of human life. Very often people ask me why I climb. How boring that seems to me.
We don't believe we are supermen or immortal. It is that which wraps a mountaineers heart.
But climbing mountains is the most beautiful of them all. I like Joe Simpson's book not necessarily because of the great climbs he describes but rather because he makes a great job in writing about the fragility, the humility, the awe, the passion, and the intensity with which we love being up there.
Been there done that. and so humbling.
It allows us, mountaineers, to see in written words things we know all too well in our hearts. Yes, I have explored caves and rafted mightly rivers and gone on a winter expedition to the Arctic.
I have a very stressful and time-consuming job enclosed most of my days in a building working with computers, and friends tell me that vacation time is to go to a warm place to relax and recharge rather than going somewhere dangerous to get even more tired and stressed.
I couldn't put it down. The Beckoning SilenceJoe Simpson dragged me white-knuckled, wide-eyed and breathless on his deeply personal, agonisingly descriptive journey to the Eiger. This is not only a cracking tale of brittle ice-fields, murderous rock-falls, avalanches, raging storms, spontaneous waterfalls and perilous bivouacs, but is also the story of the humanity of mountaineers and those amazing men who dared and died in such public and dramatic circumstances.
Like Simpson I too had read "The White Spider" as a teen and it seems we were both mesmerized by the story of Hinterstoisser's desperate attempt to lead the climb down the Eiger.I suppose I hoped that Simpson's book would be a chance to relive the film a fourth time and I've been disappointed. Didn't happen.So: the book is a collection of climbing stories - many of them involving tragic ends - written in the familiar Simpson style.
Now there's another story. But the film.
I saw the documentary entitled "The Beckoning Silence" on a transatlantic flight and was so overawed by its beauty, its understated sense of drama and Simpson's captivating interviews that, when the film was done, I simply went back to the beginning and watched it again. I'd previously read "Touching The Void" and found his writing-style uninspired so, having seen him talk with such passion on film, I was hopeful that this volume would reflect my new respect for the man.
Catch it if you can. On my return flight I watched the film a third time.
On film the man is a charismatic, thoughtful and fascinating interviewee and you truly get a sense of his inner turmoil about climbing.
Once he gets down to doing what he is good at, writing about climbing, his description of his attempt on the Eiger is gripping stuff. For a guy with the true grit to drag himself out of a crevasse and down a South American mountain in "Touching the Void", he sure does a lot of whining at the begining of this book. His attempts at existentialism really bogs the book down.
This book on mountaineering is written by the author of another classic, *Touching the Void*. The book dances around this but never confronts this. In one chapter, a friend bails on a climb because he can't stand the growing death toll. The climax story is an attempt on the North Face of the Eiger - - what else.
I would have liked to see Simpson confront the issues suggested here - - whether he's pursuing adrenaline rush, death wish, a need to be extreme, or whatever it is. Instead, Simpson keeps climbing even as a louder and louder voice inside him tells him to stop. He and his mountaineering friends view this *dangerous* sport as a *safer* alternative to mountaineering. Alas, the book does not provide much illumination in such matters, so I don't think it works as a whole. Why not try something more mainstream like mountain biking instead. It's a good read but unsatisfying overall, at least to me.Each chapter stands well enough on its own, and covers topics that are familiar in the mountaineering genre.
The sport comes across as an addiction that can't be explained to someone who doesn't share it.It's telling that when Simpson seriously thinks of quitting, he tries paragliding as an alternative. It succeeds as a series of magazine articles stapled together. In another, Simpson narrowly misses getting hit by an avalanche. Simpson writes well and the stories work.The underlying theme, though, is the hardy perennial of mountaineering: why do I do this dangerous thing even as friends continue to die.
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