The Ascent of Rum Doodle [Paperback]

W.E. Bowman (Author), Bill Bryson (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 11, 2001

First published in 1956, The Ascent of Rum Doodle quickly became a mountaineering classic. As an outrageously funny spoof about the ascent of a peak in the Himalayas, many thought it was inspired by the 1953 conquest of Everest. But Bowman had drawn on the flavor and tone of earlier adventures, of Bill Tilman and his 1937 account of the Nandi Devi expedition. The book’s central and unforgettable character, Binder, is one of the finest creations in comic literature.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A bumbling group of British mountaineers mounts an assault on Rum Doodle, a slightly higher neighbor of Everest, in Bowman's parody novel, which was published in 1956 and became a classic within the climbing community. Bowman cobbles together a wide-ranging crew of lovably clueless climbers, including the puffed-up narrator, Binder, and a misguided guide named Humphrey Jungle, who constantly gets lost and turns up in unlikely places. Other prominent members include measurement-obsessed scientist Christopher Wish as well as linguistic expert Lancelot Constant, whose chief talent seems to be ticking off the porters from the indigenous tribe called the Yogistani, who speak through their stomachs via a series of indecipherable grunts. Early on, a memorable mishap occurs, in which Jungle ends up falling into a crevasse and the rescue effort consists of the rest of the crew joining him while they get soused on "medicinal" champagne. Bowman also offers a couple of predictable chapters as the group goes in circles and then proceeds to climb the wrong mountain, and he spends an inordinate amount of prose on their suffering at the hands of the sadistic cook, a Yogistani named Pong. Bowman manages to sustain a very thin conceit for a large number of chapters, although the silliness can at times be sophomoric. He redeems himself somewhat with an amusing "surprise" ending that features the 3,000 Yogistani porters involved in the expedition, and overall he proves himself to be an entertaining humorist who has much to offer for readers who like their outdoor humor dripping with understated British irony. B&w illus. (Feb. 1)Forecast: A new introduction by Bill Bryson (advertised in type bigger than the author's name on the book's cover) will draw readers who would otherwise almost certainly have missed this comic treat of a reissue.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Wonderful. Rum Doodle does for mountaineering what Three Men in a Boat did for Thames-going or Catch-22 did for the Second World War. It is simply an account of the leader of an expedition up Rum Doodle, a 40,000 and a half foot peak in the Himalayas, in the same way that Scoop is simply a tale about newsgathering in Africa. The tone is nearer to Pooter than anyone else I can think of, but the flavour is all W.E. Bowman's own."
--Sunday Times

"This wonderfully funny parody of adventure stories was first written in the 1950s but is just as fresh today with a truly brilliant comic narrator whose commentary on the expedition members is unintentionally hilarious."
--Sunday Mirror

"This gentle, deadly parody of the tight-arsed old school of British exploration narratives is seemingly a cult book among mountaineers, but it has been virtually unknown to the reading public since its first publication in 1956. "
--Guardian

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Random House UK; New edition edition (December 11, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 071266808X
• ISBN-13: 978-0712668088
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #674,371 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sir Edmund Hillary Meets Monty Python, January 18, 2007

By 

bensmomma "bensmomma" (Ann Arbor, Michigan) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Ascent of Rum Doodle (Paperback)

There was a period of time a few years back during which I ate up the literature of British exploration like candy - the tragic story of Robert Scott in the Antarctic, the thrilling survival adventures of Sir Ernest Shackleton, and the like. These yarns had in common their Britishness - a bizarre combination of courage and, frankly, foolishness (Scott thought he could get to the South Pole on PONIES and died in pursuit of that belief, accompanied by some people who had never even been south before, while the Norwegian Amundsen sensibly took dogs and experienced skiers and beat him to the destination).

Fortunately the British have a world-class capacity to poke fun at their own foibles, and that is what "Ascent of Rum Doodle" is all about. It parodies a (fictional) expedition to ascend Rum Doodle, a 40,000-foot (!) mountain somewhere near Everest

Expedition Leader Binder narrates his own story. In the spirit of the literature he parodies, our hero Binder never once falters in his belief of the superiority of his crew and the indomitability of the British Spirit. This, despite his crew consisting of a geographer (who is unable to negotiate the London bus system), a doctor (who is always sick), a climber (too overcome by "lassitude" to get out of his sleeping bag), a native cook (so disastrous that the team attempts to leave him behind on the mountain), and a photographer (who does not capture a single shot during the entire expedition.

This hapless crew are babysat by thousands of native porters, who at one point must condescend to actually carry the British crew (fortified by the many crates of medicinal champagne they have burdened the porters with) on their backs.

Did I mention they accidentally climb the wrong mountain??

It's apparently a kind of cult classic among people who actually do this kind of adventuring (not just armchair folk like me), but it's a quick and funny funny read, so even if "frostbite" has not been a factor in your reading choices up to now, you should have a go at this one. A humor classic that should be better known in the U.S.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Climbing Book Ever Written, June 24, 2006

By 

David Thoenen (Raleigh, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Ascent of Rum Doodle (Paperback)

If you're a serious student of mountaineering history and/or literature this is a must read. Rum Doodle will help you to put your passion into proper perspective.

If you don't give a damn about climbing but enjoy understated humor this is a fun read.

However, if you don't "get" nice and dry British humor don't bother. It's just not the book for you.

This is without a doubt the greatest spoof of the British mountaineering expedition accounts ever conceived. Every word of the book will ring true to readers that are familiar with the genre. I've read it three times and still find myself laughing out loud. But then again, I'm a climber so what do I know?

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hysterically funny in a very, very gentle way, February 12, 2005

By 

T. D. Welsh (Basingstoke, Hampshire UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ascent of Rum Doodle (Isis General Fiction) (Paperback)

You never know with humour, and for the first half of this book I wasn't at all sure I was going to like it. Was it funny at all? I couldn't make up my mind. Then, more or less as the great climb got well and truly under way, something in my mind meshed with the sublime, ethereal imbecility of the author's theme and suddenly I kept roaring with laughter.

In a way, this is a quintessentially English book. Its humour is so gentle, so oblique, so dry. Even the running gags - of which there are many - take a while to bed down. The first reference to carrying cases of champagne up the mountain tends to have little or no impact on your brain. It's such a ridiculously impossible idea that your mind simply rejects it. But it keeps coming back, progressively associated with the expedition leader's stolid persistence in believing that it is all for "medicinal purposes", until suddenly you are swept away by helpless laughter.

If you appreciate dry wit, and you happen to have a day to spare (two half-days will answer almost as well), you really owe it to yourself to join our intrepid heros and share their triumphs, disasters and general roaring incompetence. You won't regret it.