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Touching the Void (Vintage Classics)
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Description
Tackling the unclimbed west face of the remote Siula Grande in the Andes, Joe Simpson and his partner Simon Yates achieved the summit before disaster struck. A few days later, an exhausted Simon staggered into base camp to tell their non-climbing companion that Joe was dead. For three days he wrestled with guilt as they prepared to return home. Then a cry in the night took them out, where they found Joe, badly injured, crawling through the snowstorm. Far from causing Joe’s death, Simon had saved his friend’s life when he was forced into the appalling decision to cut the rope.
Description
Concise and yet packed with detail, Touching the Void, Joe Simpson's harrowing account of near-death in the Peruvian Andes, is a compact tour de force that wrestles with issues of bravery, friendship, physical endurance, the code of the mountains, and the will to live. Simpson dedicates the book to his climbing partner, Simon Yates, and to "those friends who have gone to the mountains and have not returned." What is it that compels certain individuals to willingly seek out the most inhospitable climate on earth? To risk their lives in an attempt to leave footprints where few or none have gone before? Simpson's vivid narrative of a dangerous climbing expedition will convince even the most die-hard couch potato that such pursuits fall within the realm of the sane. As the author struggles ever higher, readers learn of the mountain's awesome power, the beautiful--and sometimes deadly--sheets of blue glacial ice, and the accomplishment of a successful ascent. And then catastrophe: the second half of Touching the Void sees Simpson at his darkest moment. With a smashed, useless leg, he and his partner must struggle down a near-vertical face--and that's only the beginning of their troubles.
Good
Date: 2008-10-16 Rating: 6 out of 10
Joe has a taut, spare style of writing. Perhaps the only negative one can point to is that he goes a little too much into techno-speak on mountaineering. However, this is forgivable since that was the audience he was writing for. That the book became a general public bestseller was a surprise. In a sense he writes sort of like Mickey Spillane- with spare descriptions, clipped, but not as taut as MS. But, there are some soaring moments of poetry- especially one scene where Joe describes looking out of the crevasse at stars at night in a dreamy poetic way that makes a very familiar scene seem new. He also has taken Simon's story, told to him since they were separated, and crafted a compelling counter-narrative that acts antiphonally with Joe's own tale. We get to parallax the whole tale, which lends far more realism than a singular viewpoint would.
The only negative part of the book is the ending, in which little aftermath is given. While this is a good technique to start the book off with- we get little background information on Joe and Simon (later in the memoir we get a few digressions to past expeditions by them and others), and a few tantalizing hints as to the rich life Richard Hawking has led- we are so drawn to these characters that to not be given information feels a cheat. But, that would be acceptable had the actual ending been good, narratively or in its mere construction, or left us in a particular moment as we had been in other parts of the book. Instead we end the book with this dreamy recollection of Joe's being readied for surgery on his broken leg in a hospital a few days after his rescue, and his desire to not be operated on in Peru:
A strong hand pressed me back. Another gripped my arm and I felt the slight pain of the needle. I tried to lift my head but somehow it doubled in weight. Turning to the side I saw a tray of instruments. Above me bright lights came on, and the room began to swim before my eyes. I had to say something....had to stop them. Darkness slipped over the lights and slowly all sounds muffled down to silence.
That's it. After this rousing tale the reader is left with this wet noodle of an ending. This frustrates a reader far more than the slight drag a reader feels by reading of the duo's every single little mountaineering movement and the accompanying emotions they felt. That, at least, lent a compelling authenticity to the narrators' voices. So did the descriptions of the physicality of the men, mountain, and meteorological conditions. The end, alack....
That said, this book is far better written than most of the `creative writing' peddled at MFA programs. Had he gone there before writing this I'm sure the book would have been over twice its 184 pages, and larded with banal digressions that eked into every little detail of Joe's and Simon's childhoods, endeavoring to find the `real meaning' behind why Simon cut the rope. Fortunately, Joe's a better writer than that, and better than Simon, a part of whose book Joe quotes from in an afterword called Ten Years On.... It's obvious from the selection that Joe wrote Simon's soliloquy in his own book, and does a really good job of empathizing with the man a lesser man might scorn as someone who abandoned him.
It's rare that such an archetypal story is so concisely well-written, especially considering this was Joe's first effort- usually these sorts of Gilgameshian man vs. nature epics are long on the epic tale, and short on the ability to convey it. Almost as rare as the adventure it describes.
BewertungenOne of those exceptions where the movie is better than the bookDatum 2008-08-21 Rang: 6 von 10Joe Simpson's disastrous experiences climbing Siula Grande in 1985 make for one of the greatest true adventure stories of the twentieth century. After Joe's accident on the mountain, he and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, nearly achieved an unlikely descent. When Simon is unable to continue Joe's rescue, he does the unthinkable (which Joe does not blame him for), and Joe's hellish troubles begin.
Sounds like the outline for an exciting and heart-wrenching adventure, doesn't it? Unfortunately, Joe was not an experienced writer when he penned Touching the Void, his first book, and it clearly shows. The reader is often disoriented by Simpson's use of mountaineering jargon (e.g., cols, ridges, and gullies). And although the book provides a brief glossary, it's not easy to picture what he's writing about if you've never seen a couloir before. In short, although the story has universal elements, climbers are likely to feel most at home in the account's setting.
There are some wonderful observations and images in the book, but these gems rarely glitter against the more plentiful heaps of clichés. The book needs to be edited and whittled down, and the IFC film based on the book is an absolutely spectacular rendering of Joe's experiences--the film captures what Joe is unable to accomplish in this book.
It's difficult for me to write a review recommending a movie over a book, but I'm positive that you'll enjoy the film much more. I found the book difficult to finish even though it's only around 200 pages long, yet the movie had me riveted from the beginning; I felt physically colder watching the movie, for example. Joe is certainly not the worst untrained writer to publish a bestseller, but in Touching the Void his weaknesses as a writer does not properly relate his greatness as a climber.Exciting readDatum 2008-08-13 Rang: 10 von 10After watching the movie version of this book I wanted to read Touching the Void. I usually like to read the book first but in this case I am glad that I did it in reverse. I am not a mountain climber and do not know the terms used in the sport. So watching the movie helped set up the book to where it made a lot of sense. The book provided a more realistic vision of what the climbers thought and felt. It put me there with them. I am in awe.SnoreDatum 2008-08-13 Rang: 2 von 10This is a very boring book. I thought it would be an action packed survival book, but it put me to sleep.Outstanding book - you won't be able to put it downDatum 2008-08-06 Rang: 10 von 10Touching the Void is one of the best books I've ever read. Wow. I am still kind of stunned. I started it way too late at night and couldn't put it down. I went to work the next morning with only four hours of sleep.
It's not even that the writing's good, per se. It is - it's VERY good. But the story itself and the way he wrote it is just amazing.
I've read a lot about the high altitude hallucinations people have (conversations with your feet at 27000 ft or people sitting on your ice ledge telling you they have tea set up just around the corner) but his experience was not at all like that. He had what he calls a voice inside that was insistent about keeping to a timetable and doing certain things, especially as he dragged himself off the glacier. It was deeply fascinating and the only thing that made the suspense at all bearable was that I knew he must have lived, since, hello, holding his book in my hands. I could not put it down.
I was also really impressed with the sections written by his climbing partner, Simon Yates. OUCH. Painful and honest but not self-exculpatory or irrational.
Augh. This is the worst review ever. But, jeez. Read it! See for yourself!
Produkt InformationAutor:
Joe Simpson
Recording label: Vintage Classics Hersteller: Vintage ClassicsEAN: 9780099511748Format: PaperbackISBN: 0099511746Artikelzahl: 1Seitenzahl: 224Erscheinungsdatum: 2008-11-04Erscheinungdatum: 2008-11-04Sprache: English (Original Language)
Sprache: English (Unknown)
Sprache: English (Published)
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