20. Into Thin Air

20. Into Thin Air – by John Krakauer

Secretly, I dreamed of ascending Everest myself one day; for more than a decade it remained a burning ambition. By the time I was in my early twenties climbing had become the focus of my existence to the exclusion of almost everything else. Achieving the summit of a mountain was tangible, immutable, concrete. The incumbent hazards lent the activity a seriousness of purpose that was sorely missing from the rest of my life. I thrilled in the fresh perspective that came from tipping the ordinary plane of existence on the end.There was loneliness, too, as the sun set, but only rarely now did doubts return. Then I felt sinkingly as if my whole life lay behind me. Once on the mountain I knew (or trusted) that this would give way to total absorption with the task at hand. But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind. 

-Thomas F. Hornbeim (Everest: The West Ridge)

Krakauer recreates the great mystique of the mountain from the words and quests of past adventurers who tried for a hundred years before summiting Everest. Known as Chomolungma (mother Goddess of the Universe) by the Sherpas –and later renamed Sagarmatha by the Nepalese officials –, Everest became a natural next aim once the poles had been reached and the globe circumnavigated. George Leigh Mallory’s attempt in 1924 ended in his disappearance. Unlike many who were never found, Mallory’s body was found 75 years later by an expedition sent out to find his remains. Whether or not he reached the top is unknown. Until 2010 there have been 219 fatalities on the mountain, a rate of less than 5 percent of attempts.

Krakauer storytelling is big on witness testimony from Sherpas, clients and guides, and shields the reader from none of the raw macho or emotion endured. He is the quintessential journalist despite the scathing criticism he received from family members and readers of his September 1996 Outside article. His pain over his mistaken observation of Andy Harris walking towards camp during the descent from the summit and later assumption that Andy must have walked off the edge of the Col show his vulnerable mind in the hold of high altitude stupor and caught him undeserved flak. He is, in fact, his harshest critic saying “My actions – or failure to act – played a direct role in the death of Andy Harris” outdoes even the letter from an enraged lawyer from Florida who said of Jon: “I don’t know how he can live with himself.”

As Jon fully explains in the book time and time again, and should be obvious to anyone who has spent any time outdoors, climbing is a dangerous proposition and the stakes don’t get much higher than on Everest. The combined effects of bravado on the expedition leaders to take as many clients to the top as possible with the sharp decline in mental and physical abilities led to the events of May 10, 1996. Even Rob Hall, who is described as methodical and exacting, falls behind his own schedule and allows climbers to summit at 4:00pm. He had turned Andy Harris around 300 ft from the summit just the year before when 2:00pm had arrived. We can never fully know why such bad decisions were made but Krakauer gives perfectly logical motivations, especially subconscious ones, for how they were made. In addition, he is in a unique position to make these extrapolations based on his familiarity with the characters, his mountaineering experience and thorough investigation following criticism of his first article.

Even for a non-climber like me the anguish of climbing Everest was vivid at each step. From the long layovers to acclimatize to the thinning air (there is just half the oxygen content at base camp and one third at the peak compared with air at sea level), the arduous terrain of the glacial ice and the leaning office blocks that must be traversed, danger looms at every step. The book was particularly insightful into the Sherpa superstitions and bravery, the industry that has sprung up around Everest and the unknowns of high altitude sickness. 

Introduction

Welcome to my blog! At the beginning of 2012 I set out to read and review 52 books that would improve my literacy and understanding. It's now the end of October and I'm 27 books deep. Yes, I'm way behind so this year is looking more like a warm-up. 

I've numbered the reviews I have posted so far (and continue to post) in the order I read them in case you're wandering. 

I also encourage you to comment on my reviews and start a discussion on books you may have read so that I (and anyone else who reads it) might learn something new. 

My book list for 2012:

1.    Black Dogs – Ian McEwan (Dec 19)

2.    The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan (Dec 21)

3.    A Saturday – Ian McEwan (Dec 29)

4.    Amsterdam – Ian McEwan (Dec 31)

5.    Why Evolution is True – Jerry Coyne (Jan 11)

6.    Fear of physics – by Lawrence M. Krauss (Jan 18)

7.    The Reluctant Mr. Darwin – David Quammen (Jan 23)

8.    Gen*e*sis – by Robert Hazen (Feb 6)

9.    Lucky Jim – by Kingsley Amis (Feb 1)

10.  Death by Black Hole – by Neil Degrasse Tyson (Feb 20)

11.  Buddha's Brain – by Rick Hanson (Mar 2)

12.  Losing Faith in Faith – by Dan Barker (Mar 8)

13.  The looming tower – by Lawrence Wright (Mar 24)

14.  A Voyage to Arcturus – by David Lindsay (Apr 15)

15.  Good Natured – by Frans de Waal (May 11)

16.  Fahrenheit 451 – by Ray Bradbury (May 17)

17.  The Great Gatsby – by F. Scott Fitzgerald (May 22)

18.  The Call of the Wild – by Jack London (May 24)

19.  The Second Plane – by Martin Amis (May 26)

20.  Into Thin Air – by Jon Krakuaer (May 29)

21.  The End of Illness – by David Agus (June 15)

22.  Where Men Win Glory – by Jon Krakuaer (June 28)

23.  Thus spoke Zarathustra – by Frederich Nietzche (July 6)
24.  Magnificent Obsession – by Lloyd C. Douglas (July 29)
25.  Netherland – by Joseph O’Neill (September 15)
26.  Talent is Overrated – by Geoff Colvin (September 27)
27.  Terror and Liberalism – by Paul Berman (October 19)

18. Call of the Wild

18. The Call of the Wild – by Jack London

It was inevitable that the clash for leadership should come. Buck wanted it. He wanted it because it was in his nature, because he had been gripped tight by that nameless, incomprehensible pride of the trail and trace – that pride which holds dogs in the toil to the last gasp, which lures them to die joyfully in the harness, and breaks their heart if they are cut out of the harness.

Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest.

Buck is master of a Judge Miller’s Santa Clara household before Manuel, a gardener’s assistant, leads him away to pay for his gambling habit. Up until this point, Buck hadn’t known men with cruel intentions or their ferocity. His long journey north toward the new gold mining enclaves nears an end when he faces the man in the red sweater. This is his “breaking in” from a domestic dog to a toiling dog at man’s command. The beating imprints a valuable lesson on him, the law of club and fang.

 His trail and toil begins at Dyea, near the town of Skagway in Alaska as part of a courier team of dogs. Most are huskies, inured to the arctic climes and diet, with few Southland dogs managing to keep up. At the behest of the dog runner, Francois, and courier, Perrault, he is trained through snaps at his heals from Dave, a senior sleigh dog. He quickly realizes the brutish nature of his new demesne through watching Curly die after making a friendly approach at one of the huskies. As soon as Curly’s back touches the ground, the wolves descend and tear her to pieces.

Although strange and primeval, Buck soon learns to take pride in the work like Dave and Sol-Leks, the older, more distant dogs. This feeling comes to be known as the pride of the trace and toil and is the sole passion of the dogs, who would rather (and often do) die in the trace than it be loosened. Buck is transformed into a merciless, cunning and domineering dog who challenge Spitz, the lead dog, for head of the team. This plays out for some weeks before they face off and Buck uses his superior weight and intelligence to first cripple and then knock Spitz over into the circle of waiting wolves.

After travelling to Dawson, high up in the Yukon, to drop mail and collect outgoing letters they make the swifter return trip with Buck as lead dog. Later he is sold to a Scotch half-breed and then a family trio oblivious to the dangers of the frozen river in Spring time. Charles, Hal and Mercedes (Charles’s wife and Hal’s sister) nevertheless make it to John Thornton’s camp after adding dogs and shedding weight from their baggage. They are slovenly, useless creatures and unfamiliar to the hardships of the North. Mercedes steals food and overfeeds the dogs at first but when she is strained by the difficult and slow trip, she resorts to sitting on the sled and will not budge. Even when the men remove her she sulks in the snow until they are forced to make a 3 mile return trip to fetch her.

Hal is especially cruel to the dogs - which are depleted in number, underfed and powerless -, even using the heavy club to get them on their feet. John Thornton comes to Buck’s rescue as Hal flogs away, by pitching Hal over and then cutting Buck loose of the trail. It came just in time because, as Thornton had warned, the ice gives way a quarter of a mile upriver and the group disappear into the freezing water.

Buck’s affection for Thornton is immense and the first love he has felt. His abounding fellowship leads him to break out (free the runners from the ice) and then pull 1,000 pounds alone, as part of a bet between Thornton and a compatriot. The winnings allow Thornthon, Pete and Hans to head East in search of a fabled gold mine.

The call of the wild grows stronger, just as the love for Thornton holds him. He feels ancient instincts and sees, in the flames of the campfire, an early human struggling in fear to survive. The voices are of the wolves first domesticated by early man and live on through Buck’s vitality and strength. He likes to hunt and eat what he kills and stays away from camp for longer and longer periods during which he stalks prey and breathes the ancient urges which arise in him. After an unusually long stay away he returns to find the men dead with feathered arrows in their midriff. Upon reaching the spruce-bough lodge, he found Yeehat Indians masquerading in loud voices after their slaughter of men and dogs. In a rare moment of wild rage, Buck bursts upon them viciously tearing out the chief’s throat before bounding to the next. The efforts to throw spears and shoot arrows at the blur of fury are in vain and only succeed in piercing their fellow Indians.

From then on the Yeehats avoid this valley of death and the legend of a Ghost Dog is born. Buck goes on to join a pack of wolves and follow moose as they migrate about. The wild is now well and truly ensconced in Buck and the voices are in full flow. 

17. The Great Gatsby

17. The Great Gatsby – by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees – he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder. (p. 101)

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning –

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. (last page)

The story is told from the point of view of Nick Carraway during a short period of time when he lives next door to Jay Gatsby in West Egg, Long Island. Nick is closely acquainted with Daisy and Tom Buchanan, from his college days at Yale. Daisy grew up closely with Jordan Baker in Louisville as the most popular girl in the town and the fancy of officers from a nearby fort. One of whom was the mysterious Mr. Gatsby.

The present is placed five years after Daisy’s flirtations with officers and short romance with Gatsby as he is shipped into World War I. Her husband, Tom, is a gruff former polo player with a domineering, imperious nature. They moved East to enjoy New York city from their sleepy domain in the classy East Egg neighborhood.

Gatsby is shrouded in rumor and diabolical origins by the partygoers at his mansion. They say he has a look like he has “killed a man”, that he was a German spy during the war and that his rise to fame and fortune was underhanded. His parties are a magnet for movie stars, directors, writers and a flock of uninvited attachments. They are raucous, drunken affairs which end in crazed dances, spousal fights and accidents such as the man who drives his car into the ditch, losing a tire in the process, and reassures onlookers that it just needs some gasoline. Little does the reader know but Gatsby has planned all this in such a way as to maximize his chance of seeing Daisy and taking up their affair where it left off.

Gatsby started life out as James Gatz (Jimmy to his father), the son of “shiftless and unsuccessful farmers”. His fate was irrevocably changed when he befriended Dan Cody, a wealthy mineral dealer, and became his secretary and captained his yacht for an entire two years around the continental US. His ambitious nature was forged much earlier though as we are told:

But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until the drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace.

We are later shown his daily schedule from when he was a boy. He had set aside time for work, exercise, improving his mind and trade skills in time slots with some “General resolves” underneath not to be delayed and to save money. Gatsby is above all an ambitious go-getter.

Another important character is Meyer Wolfshiem, who we first meet having lunch with Jay and Nick in a basement restaurant. He is described as a shrewd gambler who had fixed the 1919 World Series and not been caught. He is much more than this, however. He is the one who set Gatsby up in business and taught him the tricks of making piles of money. Some of their ventures come to light through Tom’s investigation of Gatsby. One is a buy-up of corner pharmacies to sell bootlegged alcohol (possibly during prohibition which started in 1919). Meyer later refuses to come to Gatsby’s funeral, saying that we should try to be the best friends we can during life rather than death. It is most likely a way to avoid being linked to his one-time friend and business partner by police.

Gatsby manages to reignite an affair with Daisy although we are not told how far beyond “visiting” they move. Tom has his own philandering problem, which is the reason Daisy and he had to move from Chicago. He regularly sees a girl named Myrtle Wilson, who is married to a mechanic named George. The two have a double life in an apartment in the city. Tom evidently thinks it his right to carry on this way.

Unsuspecting George finally figures out Myrtle has something going before Tom pulls in for gas in Gatsby’s yellow car on the way to movies in the city. He decides to lock her up and move west in two days but Myrtle later escapes and approaches the same car, now being driven back by Daisy, only to be smashed to her death. Jay takes control and they speed away home. George, driven to hysteria, realizes the car’s description matches the one Tom had been driving earlier. We are not told that Tom speaks with the crazed man or what he says but it is obvious he incriminates Gatsby as the hit-and-run driver. George kills Gatsby while he lies in the pool and is later discovered, having killed himself, nearby by Nick and some servants.

Nick’s final encounter with Tom over the conversation he must have had with George ends with the following:

I couldn’t forgive him or like him but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…

In the end Nick is the only ally Gatsby has. In organizing the man’s funeral, he realizes just how little party-goers knew or cared for their host. Klipspringer is more concerned with having a pair of shoes returned to him than attending the funeral, even though he boarded at Gatsby’s for months.

Before retelling Gatsby’s story, Nick tells us he makes a habit of reserving judgment, and how this tolerance has allowed him to see deeper into the minds of compatriots. Though Gatsby “represented everything for which [Nick has] an unaffected scorn”, there “was something gorgeous about him” and he is exempt from Nick’s limits of tolerance. He goes on:

No – Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

Role of T.J. Eckleberg’s eyes: on the route from West Egg into downtown New York, on a wall near the ash pit where an oculist may have had an office in the past, are the great spectacled eyes in bluish hues. The eyes are ever watching and unblinking in their stare at passing traffic. They are used by George Wilson to illustrate to Myrtle how God knows what she is doing even if he does not. In this way they are omnipresent. They ‘see’ the fatal accident which claims Myrtle later that evening. Many of the characters in the book, Tom and Gatsby come to mind, are insular and perhaps unaware of their own actions and their consequences. Tom finds no fault in his parallel life with Myrtle, even allowing Nick in on the thinly veiled secret, but the thought of Daisy’s indiscretion disgusts him. Gatsby can’t see his own time with Daisy is over, he wants to recreate the past in the present and is unwilling to accept that Tom received a minute of her love.

"The eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg are blue and gigantic fading, bespectacled eyes with retinas one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose.”