A bold deed that’s rattling and—given the character displayed by Washburn and Bates—exemplary. (Photographs)
As adamantine as its protagonists, this chilling and exhilarating story of the travails on the ascent of the Yukon’s Mount Lucania is ably retold by Roberts (Points Unknown, 2000, etc.).
It was 1937 when Brad Washburn and Bob Bates made their bid to climb Mount Lucania, in back-of-beyond Canada, a peak then unscaled. The two young men were veterans of the Harvard Mountain Club (as is Roberts), which specialized in remote Canadian and Alaskan climbs, so they were no strangers to the area. But when it became clear that the plane they took into base camp would not be able to return with supplies and their two climbing mates—not to mention providing planned extrication—Washburn and Bates trusted their talents and resourcefulness, “not yet willing to abandon the expedition’s original goal just to ensure an outcome so mundane as survival.” It falls to Roberts, with his own experience on North American peaks, to tether Washburn and Bates’s aw-shucks panache—the now nonagenarian men were interviewed at length for the book, and Washburn’s diary liberally dipped into—to the reality of the adventure, and to give it dramatic curve. He captures both the personality of the climbers—one salty, the other serene, a combination that likely helped avoid the apoplexy of cabin fever—and the arduousness of their achievement. They managed to scale Lucania and another nearby peak, climbing in whiteout conditions in bitter cold, hauling loads back and forth until they were essentially forced to pioneer the light-and-fast technique, with one sleeping bag they shared, then making the horrendous walk out—dodging quicksand, scrabbling through the taiga’s fiendish terrain, winding through ankle-spraining tussocks, crawling on their knees through alder thickets, then fording (and nearly drowning in) a glacial-melt river—with little food and less luck.
A bold deed that’s rattling and—given the character displayed by Washburn and Bates—exemplary. (Photographs)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2002
ISBN: 0-7432-2432-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
At this rate, Tyson may write a multivolume memoir as he continues to struggle and survive.
An exhaustive—and exhausting—chronicle of the champ's boxing career and disastrous life.
Tyson was dealt an unforgiving hand as a child, raised in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn in a "horrific, tough and gruesome" environment populated by "loud, aggressive" people who "smelled like raw sewage.” A first-grade dropout with several break-ins under his belt by age 7, his formal education resumed when he was placed in juvenile detention at age 11, but the lesson he learned at home was to do absolutely anything to survive. Two years later, his career path was set when he met legendary boxing trainer Cus D'Amato. However, Tyson’s temperament never changed; if anything, it hardened when he took on the persona of Iron Mike, a merciless and savage fighter who became undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. By his own admission, he was an "arrogant sociopath" in and out of the ring, and he never reconciled his thuggish childhood with his adult self—nor did he try. He still partied with pimps, drug addicts and hustlers, and he was determined to feed all of his vices and fuel several drug addictions at the cost of his freedom (he recounts his well-documented incarcerations), sanity and children. Yet throughout this time, he remained a voracious reader, and he compares himself to Clovis and Charlemagne and references Camus, Sartre, Mao Zedong and Nietzsche's "Overman" in casual conversation. Tyson is a slumdog philosopher whose insatiable appetites have ruined his life many times over. He remains self-loathing and pitiable, and his tone throughout the book is sardonic, exasperated and indignant, his language consistently crude. The book, co-authored by Sloman (co-author: Makeup to Breakup: My Life In and Out of Kiss, 2012, etc.), reads like his journal; he updated it after reading the galleys and added "A Postscript to the Epilogue" as well.
At this rate, Tyson may write a multivolume memoir as he continues to struggle and survive.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-16128-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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