Customer Reviews

Addicted to Danger

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I'm climber, and I live in Seattle. Being a climber in the northwest means you spend a lot more time thinking about climbing and waiting for good weather to climb, than actually up in the mountains. So, you read a lot of climbing books. Some, like Galan Rowell's "In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods" or Jon Krakauer's "Eiger Dreams" and everyone's favorite "Into Thin Air" are vivid, transporting writing. Others, like Reinhold Messner's books, remind you that the skills and drive that make you a world-class climber don't necessarily make you a good author. Eric Shipton, a great climber in his own right, wrote a completely dry, bloodless book about the history of Everest expeditions.

So it isn't all that surprising that Wickwire's book doesn't have a lot of insights. There isn't much of what literature professors like to call an interior life. It was to me a strangely emotionless and slightly troubling book. And I have to agree, it's a poor choice for a title

All the basic facts of his climbing life are laid out. You certainly learn a good deal about the first and second K2 expeditions, and his triumphs of Mt. Rainier (first winter ascent of the Willis Wall) and near-death experiences. Years ago I saw a movie made about a climb to an unclimbed peak in the Fairweather range in Alaska; it was interesting to read here more fully what happened. It's chilling to learn how thoroughly a body can disintegrate on a fall down a rock face (after the fall, where two of the climbers died, they recovered bits of scalp, bone fragments, pieces of camera, and so on.)

But it's all facts, straightforwardly laid out, without much apparent interest in interpretation. Perhaps this comes from Wickwire's professional life as a corporate attorney, writing legal documents. It's interesting that the description of Wickwire's famous bivouac below the summit of K2 is related much more vividly in John Roskelley's book, than in Wickwire's own book. Perhaps that's because Wickwire wrote twenty years after the events. At the REI "flagship store" in Seattle, you can see the bivouac sack in which Wickwire spent that night., and REALLY get a feel for how cold and alone he really was.

The troubling bit: from reading the book, one comes to the conclusion that the great love of Wickwire's life isn't Mary Lou, his wife, but Marty Hoey, the woman he climbed with on Acancagua and Everest. There are excerpts of what can only be described as love notes between him and Marty. For Mary Lou he expresses respect and appreciation, and there are numerous passages where he expresses regret at the time spent apart from his children, but the expressions of passion are all directed towards Marty. I suppose the honesty is laudable, but this must be a very hard book for his wife to read.

Instead of a testament to his climbing expeditions, this book might best serve as a testament to what seems to be Jim Wickwire's blatant misogyny and egocentrism.

After detailing how he decided his wife should leave college to support him, Wickwire regales us semi-boastfully with anecdotes relating how he expected his wife to be nothing more than a housekeeper, child-rearer, and "sex object" (his words). After insisting on a large family, and getting offended at a well-meaning priest who gently suggested birth control, Wickwire (by his own admission) proceeds to by-and-large shirk his duties as a father to all five of his children, supporting them only in the economic sense.

We then get to read his thoughts about the innate subordinism of female climbers, and their tendency toward sexual hijinks on the mountains. The brunt of Wickwire's finger-pointing rests solidly on the shoulders of the female climbers he discusses, until he falls "in love" with Marty Hoey, a talented female climber with the sense, it seems, never to have gotten seriously involved with Wickwire, despite his attempts to the contrary. Wickwire seems to read much into incidents like feet (separated by different sleeping bags) accidentally touching in a overcrowded tent. After the reader is forced to endure reading a series of desperate, petulant, and adolescent notes and conversations directed from Wickwire to Hoey, he recounts her death on Everest perfunctorily, for the most part, and in terms of how his wife forgave him for this one-sided indiscretion. All things considered, I'm not sure who should be more outraged: Mary Lou Wickwire, reading her husband's embarassing account of "falling in love" with Hoey (and knowing all her friends and peers will be reading it too), or Marty Hoey herself, to whom Wickwire attributes a number of childish and maudlin love notes, and who is no longer here to defend herself.

To be fair, Wickwire may not be the narrow-minded boor he appears to be as when, in 1985, he sadly acknowledges of the inevitable entry of women into the legal profession (one wonders what rock he was living under, or climbing over, not to know that women entered the legal profession long before then). The book, while also hampered by a ridiculous title, is full of stilted prose and dialogue. In Wickwire's world, climbers never say things like "We've gotta get down the mountain, fast." Instead, they make proclamations like, "We must descend quickly, or we shall perish upon the mountain." If they were climbing in King Arthur's time, maybe; in this day and age, no one speaks like that. As a result, the dialogue sounds stilted and fictitious, even if it had a basis in fact. The prose lingers too long, and clumsily, on Wickwire's relationships with those around him, even though his relationships seem rather shallow. Again, this may be the fault of the co-writer or the source, one never knows.

I would heartily recommend saving your money and time, and reading a more climbing-related and less self-centered and angsty text.

Jim Wickwire is certainly one of the top climbers of recent years, but he doesn't seem to have had much fun doing it! This book dwells at great length on one disaster and failure after another (on and off the mountains), while skipping over many of Wickwire's successful climbs, often with a comment over what a letdown it was after reaching the summit. And the part of the book about his greatest triumph (the K2 ascent) ends up being mostly about bickering among the team members! My suspicion (just a guess) is that the negative slant may be largely the fault of his co-author. Incidentally, peeking ahead while reading, I saw the picture of Wickwire's wife near the end, and was fully expecting the last chapter to be about her filing for divorce! To my surprise, she hasn't (she's willing to put up with more than I would have, I guess), but I wish Jim more enjoyment from his retirement from climbing than he had from his climbing.

I couldn't put it down. And I couldn't think who'd team up with him after all the bad luck that follows him. Or is that what you get when you compress 25 years of climbing into 295 pages? His life and death, and death, and death.....stories are the very reason I keep coming back to the great mountain books. Addicted to Danger helped me seperate my ego from my responsibilities. Read it!

I understand, of course, that it really doesn't matter if I like the Jim Wickwire of this book. It really doesn't matter and he may be a great guy, but I must confess, I didn't like him. I wanted to read more about the details of the climbs and less about his personal life because he seemed to show little understanding of those in his life, his wife and kids included. His explanations were overly defensive and his attempts at depth -- urged on I'll bet by his co-author -- were still so shallow. Maybe he needs therapy, not a book, to answer the question Why. Frankly, I think he should've stuck to discussing his adventures, so I wouldn't have been so distracted by wondering why his wife really didn't mind his risking his life away from home for half of every year.

Jim Wickwire is an outstanding mountaineer and probably a good lawyer. He should have been satisfied by that. Instead, he penned a poorly written, fairly dull and thoroughly unsatisfying account. His arrogant, callous, and selfish personality shines throughout this book. My sympathies to his wife and family. Worse, his expressions of regret and concern about his family seem mechanical and self-serving. I'm always struck, when reading these types of books, that the author tosses in a suggestion that it was hard on the wife or kids (in this case his daughter Anne) but oh, hey, it all worked out., she got over it. etc. I would have thought more of him if he had been at least honest. All in all, I suggest you don't bother with this book unless you've read almost everything else on climbing.

This is an absorbing account of the mountaineering adventures of Jim Wickwire, one of the foremost American high altitude mountaineers. It is at times a moving memoir, and at other times somewhat sophomoric in its attempt to explain what drove him to climb, at great cost to his family.

The book is nicely illustrated with many photographs of his family, fellow mountaineers, and his beloved mountains. The photographs are well placed, as they go with the flow of the story. When you see those of his wife and children, however, it makes you wonder how he could ever be away from such a beautiful family for so long and miss so many family occasions. It is a testament to his wife's devotion that she and the children are still loving towards such an absentee figure.

The most interesting part of the book involves his mountaineering adventures. Whether writing about the death of a companion on the mountain or the victory of a successful summit ascent, it is told with much feeling. The single most moving chapter, however, is the one which describes the unfortunate death of fellow mountaineer, Chris Herrebrock, while he and Jim were on Peter's Glacier on Mt. McKinley. It is poignantly told, and one can sense the impact that this young man's death had on Jim Wickwire.

He also vividly recounts his summit of K2, second only to Everest in height, but infinitely more difficult to climb. He was one of the first two Americans to summit K2 and on his descent was forced to bivouac solo at 27,750 feet. He survived this bivouac sans water, stove, and supplemental oxygen, while lacking a sleeping bag and down parka. He credits the images of his wife and children for his survival that long, frigid, and lonely night. It was only his fierce desire to see them again that kept death at bay.

The chapters which discuss mountaineer Marty Hoey were intriguing because of the romantic feelings he had towards her, and she towards him. Jim was on a climbing expedition on Aconcagua where she was a fellow expeditioner, when the embers of a romantic relationship began, though it was never physically consummated. Of course, this budding romance came to an abrupt end when Marty died tragically on Mount Everest while, again, on expedition with Jim. He later let his wife read his diary which told of his feelings for Marty. She was very understanding of this emotional betrayal. It would have been a kindness to his wife not to have made these feelings public. Its inclusion in the book indicates a continuing insensitivity towards his wife that is unfortunate.

All in all, however, the book makes for a good read, though in the end one wonders if Jim Wickwire is really through with the mountains which so inveigled him throughout his life. One cannot help but wonder if there is yet another promise to his wife and family waiting to be broken.

While the action kept me reading on, the depth of the characters was lacking. Sometimes I wasn't sure if I was reading an adventure book, or a self-help guide. I can appreciate his attempt to develop the inner conflict between what he really wanted, and his sideline attempt to be a family man. However, I found it hard to sympathize much with Jim Wickwire. I finished the book thinking that the author had carried out his egotistical nature into a book to share with the world. I did not finish the book with a feeling of admiration for the sport or the climber, but with more of a disappointment. These caliber of climbers seem to be a rather dysfunctional and egotistical bunch. In that sense, I think the author failed to make his point. In a good sense, I think the author has taken a hard and perhaps humbling look at what is really important in life.

The invisible work of co-author Dorothy Bullitt is one of this book's most noteworthy (and overlooked) attributes. Ms. Bullitt worked for months with friend and colleague Jim Wickwire to fulfill their mutual pact to be unstintingly honest and uncompromising in the telling of this tale. World class climber, successful attorney, family man, and husband, perhaps in that order, Jim Wickwire, here reveals a self-critical portrait of a deeply flawed man who faces extraordinary challenges driven by inner needs he only begins to grapple with in this book. On expedition climbs at high altitude, Wickwire tests the limits of human endurance and reveals how the comfortable virtues of civilized existence dissolve with the thinning air and the immediacy of survival. You need not be a climber to appreciate the life-and-death challenges of climbs of the earth's highest peaks, miles above sea-level, where the biosphere ends and outer space begins. This page turning climber's tale works on several levels: adventure, memoir, tribute, and morality play. The subtext of this exciting book is a question left unanswered: with all of his compromises, regrets, and self-absorption, would Jim Wickwire, given the chance, have done it any differently? Men and women with whom I have shared this book respond to Jim Wickwire as both hero and cad, each gender assigning its own proportions. I found myself reacting with distaste and envy at the choices Wickwire made; my wife largely with distaste at his wife's sacrifices. Seldom will you see a man reveal himself with such unvarnished truth. The fact that Dorothy Bullitt has made herself so transparent to the character portrayed is remarkable craft. In the end, the revelation of Jim Wickwire's character, warts and all, may be either viewed as a critical turning-point for Wickwire's growth as a human being, or as one last binge of self-indulgence a la "enough of me talking about me, what do you think of me?" An engagingly quick read on one level, I found myse! lf haunted by the provocative questions lying just beneath the surface. This book will catalyze discussions between friends, book club members, and those in committed relationships. In the end, we must each ask ourselves the same questions which Jim Wickwire is beginning to ask of himself.

I couldn't have been more disappointed by this book. I have enjoyed many of the current (and past) books of this genre, and had heard about some of Wickwire's adventures through the writings of others. The prospects of reading about some of these mountaineering feats in the first person was very appealing. Unfortunately, Wickwire turns out to be an extremely unappealing person who regularly abandons his family (including young children) without remorse, criticizes others and demonstrates himself to be a world-class ego-centrist. On the mountain, he is a first class know-it-all who tells everyone within earshot that they're doing it all wrong. It was only a couple of chapters before I was feeling sorry for his wife, his kids, and for myself for buying this pathetic account.

I bought this book because of the endorsement of Amazon.com. Next time, I'll wait to read outside reviews. If you like this genre, I strongly suggest you turn to one of the many excellent other offers available.