The 1953 expedition, for instance, is dismissed as “a large British team organized with the righteous zeal and overpowering resources of a military campaign.” It was, in fact, a very modest, understated affair in comparison to the type of expeditions surrounding Krakauer in 1996. Krakauer’s slickly sketched pen portraits do not always quite convince and the shorthand historical summaries sometimes trample on subtlety. It requires a skilled writer to do justice to that material, and Into Thin Air has been praised as great “literature,” but to my mind this is not so much literature as a highly competent piece of journalism.Įven the best journalism runs the risk of oversimplification. What, I wondered, is so special about this book? The answer, of course, is the uniquely compelling human drama of its subject matter. I think it was all the hype, all the people insisting, “you must read it,” all the talk of million-dollar advances. Black-and-white photos, woodcut illustrations.
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