Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival by Joe Simpson
218 pages
Published 1988
Read July 21
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
When
I was a 'tween, I had a predilection for books on mountaineering, polar
adventure, and anything that involved more or less voluntary misery and
the possibility of lost toes. My living situation back then prevented
me from ever obtaining and reading more than two or three such books,
but they left a mark on me, contributing to highly optimistic fantasies
in my teen years of voyages and feats of adventure I would undertake as
soon as I was free of my father. Ice and frostbite and oxygen
deprivation lost their hold on my imagination, but I still have a soft
spot for "pure" mountaineering, for climbs up untested routes and
unsummited peaks, for uncomfortable bivouacs in snow caves and the
rhythmic chipping of ice axes.
I would have liked this book a lot
as a 'tween. Nowadays I read too critically. I look askance at
Simpson's decision to imagine climbing partner Simon Yates' perspective
in the first person (seriously, that's what third person narration is
designed for), and find Simpson's prose mechanical and a bit amateurish.
I can't find it all as compelling as I would have twenty years ago.
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