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Title: Into Thin Air
Author: Jon Krakauer
Genre: Memoir
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: A firsthand account of the disastrously fatal 1996 Everest climbing season.
Thoughts: Right off the bat, Krakauer admits that he shouldn't be writing this book as soon as he did. Friends and other writers advised him to wait for a few years, allow some of the trauma to heal. It's obvious that he's deeply traumatized by his experience. The guilt and horror bleed off the page. But it's equally obvious that he can't not write this.
Krakauer was a reporter making the climb as part of a guided expedition for an article he was writing. Unfortunately, due to a combination of bad luck and compounding catastrophic errors, eight people died, including both his expedition leader and the leader of a rival expedition. It was the worst catastrophe on Everest until last year's avalanche.
As a friend pointed out, one of the reasons this book is so effective is that other accounts of similar disasters are either written by writers who weren't there or by people who weren't writers. Krakauer is both a climber and a writer, which puts him in a position to write a uniquely compelling narrative.
And it's devastating. Despite knowing basically what happened, I couldn't put it down. I had trouble sleeping the night after I finished it. I couldn't stop thinking about it for almost a week. There are problems, a number of which Krakauer freely confesses and some of which he doesn't. He makes mistakes, terrible mistakes that may have doomed people to horrible deaths, which clearly haunt him. He's not the only one making the mistakes, and he's doing so while exhausted, hypothermic, and suffering badly from hypoxia which prevents him from thinking at all clearly. But nonetheless, he misunderstands events to the point of writing an article that is blatantly untrue, as well as contributing to the death of some teammates and the brutal crippling of others.
One thing is for certain--if I'd ever had any interest in Everest, it's cured. I do not get the appeal of this. It's not just the danger and the pain. It's living in a camp that is literally a puddle of human shit. (Krakauer gets a bad enough cough from sleeping in a smoke filled hut that he severely injures his ribs coughing and then has to climb the mountain that way.) It's being wracked with pain for weeks leading up to the summit attempt. It's managing to get to the top, and only having a few minutes and the mental capacity of a stupid child to enjoy it with. And it's worse now--there's far more garbage, far more people, and far more dead bodies you have to pass. I just. Don't. Get. It.
But it's a fascinating story. The fact anyone came down at all is a marvel. The courage, and stupidity, and nobility, and arrogance, and stubbornness is all breathtaking. It's been a couple weeks since I read the book, and it's still lingering.
Author: Jon Krakauer
Genre: Memoir
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: A firsthand account of the disastrously fatal 1996 Everest climbing season.
Thoughts: Right off the bat, Krakauer admits that he shouldn't be writing this book as soon as he did. Friends and other writers advised him to wait for a few years, allow some of the trauma to heal. It's obvious that he's deeply traumatized by his experience. The guilt and horror bleed off the page. But it's equally obvious that he can't not write this.
Krakauer was a reporter making the climb as part of a guided expedition for an article he was writing. Unfortunately, due to a combination of bad luck and compounding catastrophic errors, eight people died, including both his expedition leader and the leader of a rival expedition. It was the worst catastrophe on Everest until last year's avalanche.
As a friend pointed out, one of the reasons this book is so effective is that other accounts of similar disasters are either written by writers who weren't there or by people who weren't writers. Krakauer is both a climber and a writer, which puts him in a position to write a uniquely compelling narrative.
And it's devastating. Despite knowing basically what happened, I couldn't put it down. I had trouble sleeping the night after I finished it. I couldn't stop thinking about it for almost a week. There are problems, a number of which Krakauer freely confesses and some of which he doesn't. He makes mistakes, terrible mistakes that may have doomed people to horrible deaths, which clearly haunt him. He's not the only one making the mistakes, and he's doing so while exhausted, hypothermic, and suffering badly from hypoxia which prevents him from thinking at all clearly. But nonetheless, he misunderstands events to the point of writing an article that is blatantly untrue, as well as contributing to the death of some teammates and the brutal crippling of others.
One thing is for certain--if I'd ever had any interest in Everest, it's cured. I do not get the appeal of this. It's not just the danger and the pain. It's living in a camp that is literally a puddle of human shit. (Krakauer gets a bad enough cough from sleeping in a smoke filled hut that he severely injures his ribs coughing and then has to climb the mountain that way.) It's being wracked with pain for weeks leading up to the summit attempt. It's managing to get to the top, and only having a few minutes and the mental capacity of a stupid child to enjoy it with. And it's worse now--there's far more garbage, far more people, and far more dead bodies you have to pass. I just. Don't. Get. It.
But it's a fascinating story. The fact anyone came down at all is a marvel. The courage, and stupidity, and nobility, and arrogance, and stubbornness is all breathtaking. It's been a couple weeks since I read the book, and it's still lingering.
