Into Thin Air: 100% Complete

I finished Into Thin Air. Although it certainly is a fascinating and harrowing story, I still felt the writing left something to be desired. When the survivors finally emerged from Everest, when the deaths were counted and the living had survived, I felt as though this were a story of bad luck, of a storm which hit at the worst possible time and claimed the lives of several climbers despite the best efforts of many.

It seems, however, that Jon Krakauer thought his readership would have a different reaction. He ends the book first with a chapter detailing how hard he has taken the events, complete with difficulty sleeping, inability to go more than "two or three hours" without thinking about Everest and heavy survivor's guilt. I kept thinking throughout this section that he should probably seek treatment for
PTSD. Then he finishes with a chapter explaining over and over that Everest is inherently dangerous, that even under the best of circumstances things go wrong, that, while the number of deaths in 1996 was the largest to date, the death rate (both deaths compared to number of people who climbed higher than Base Camp and deaths compared to people who summited the mountain) was actually slightly lower than over the course of Everest history.

Since I didn't get the impression that this tragedy was due (at least primarily) to human error, these long defensive sections struck me as unnecessary.

All in all my impression of the book is that it is a tragic and harrowing adventure story which was written too soon after the event by someone who hadn't yet sorted out how he felt about what had happened. Mr. Krakauer admittedly wrote this hoping for a cathartic experience and, whether he achieved that or not, it clouded up what could have been a more objective and better written story. I didn't feel like this deserved a spot beside many of the other books I've read on this project.

Up next: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.

Into Thin Air: 35% Complete

Into Thin Air has proven to be an interesting book so far for a number of reasons. I was skeptical with the book after the first chapter or so, due to the defensive nature of the opening portion. As I said in my introduction to the book, there is some controversy regarding who was responsible for the deaths on the mountain in 1996, whether bad judgement was involved and, if so, whose. However, as someone previously unfamiliar with the story, I felt like the opening parts of the book were raw and defensive and not in a good way. I felt like Jon Krakauer was responding to attacks which I was completely unfamiliar with. He admits, in the introduction, that the writing of this book so soon after the traumatic events of 1996 (the book was published in 1997) was a cathartic experience for him and, it seems, a chance to respond to what he felt were unfair attacks on persons involved in the expedition. I'm still unclear as to what these attacks were, although I suspect it will become more clear later in the book. This defensiveness and anxiousness to respond to unexplained criticisms comes across as almost paranoid.

However, once past the opening section (the book starts on Everest, just prior to the storm, and then backtracks to lay down some history on the people involved), it is interesting, if light, reading.
One thing I've enjoyed, rather unexpectedly, is reading about people who were household names when I was growing up, climbers such as Willi Unsoeld, Ed Viesturs and Pete Schoening. My father talked about them enough that I know their names like I know those of distant relatives or long-lost friends of my parents; they are familiar to me, although I was always a bit unclear on who they were, exactly, until now.

The writing in this book is as unexceptional as the story is interesting. It's not bad enough to be distracting, but it certainly pales compared to the one I just finished: Cry, the Beloved Country with it's beautiful prose. The story may be a classic, but so far the book is not one I'd add back on the list. So finding quotes I want to share with you has been difficult. This one was simply astounding to me:

"By 1996 Hall was charging $65,000 a head to guide clients to the top of the world. By any measure this is a lot of money-it equals the mortgage on my Seattle home-and the quoted price did not include airfare to Napal or personal equipment."

Not only was this astonishing because of the cost of climbing Everest (20 years ago) but the fact that his mortgage in Seattle was $65,000! Assuming he means the price of his house when he purchased it, not what he has left to pay on his mortgage, this is mind-boggling to me. For reference, the median home price right now in Seattle according to Zillow is $530, 100 (one of the reasons I moved out of the city!)

Finally, today's vocabulary word is "peripatetic" which means "traveling from place to place, esp. working or based in various places for relatively short periods."

Into Thin Air: Beginning

The next book I'm going to read is also the most-recently-written book on my list (I think): Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer.

This is a non-fiction work, one of only a few on my list, and was published in 1997. It has been adapted into a TV movie by the same title and the story it covers is also the basis for the 2015 movie Everest. This book is a true story about a storm which hit Mt. Everest in 1996 and resulted in the deaths of eight climbers and the injuries of several others. Jon Krakauer was present on the mountain at the time of the storm as part of a writing assignment for Outdoor magazine, and wrote the book about his own experiences.

I chose this book because I was familiar with it but had never read it. My father was interested in mountain climbing and climbed Mt. Rainier twice when I was a child and my grandparents were mountaineers as well. So while I have a passing familiarity with the challenges of climbing Everest (I did a report on George Mallory and Andrew Irvine when I was in junior high), I am looking forward to reading this true story of a harrowing climb of the world's tallest mountain.

I am also vaguely aware that there is some controversy surrounding Krakauer's account of what happened on the mountain, however, I have intentionally not researched the topic, preferring instead to approach the book with an open mind. When I have finished it, I do intend to read more about this aspect of the story, and I will let you know what I find.

I purchased this book for my Kindle, the version I am reading can be found here, and it has 405 pages.