50 Book Challenge: book six
Touching the Void by Joe Simpson
This is not a book that it is easy to come to without preconceptions, without knowing at least some of the story and without having heard about the dilemma at the heart of it – especially now that it’s been made into a film. I can’t write this without discussion of the circumstances at its heart so if you intend to read it yourself and wish to avoid spoilers you might be better off reading no further.
- – - – -
[Buy from Amazon
Joe Simpson shouldn’t be alive. Back in 1985 he went off, with mountaineering friend Simon Yates to the Peruvian Andes looking for the kind of adventure offered by unclimbed peaks, total solitude and no rescue helicopter or any other kind of back-up. He found it. When things went wrong – and, reading his account of the preparations and the initial climb it’s hard to see how the pair of them actually remained alive and uninjured in this unfamiliar terrain for as long as they did – he was left on an terrifyingly unstable ridge with a shattered leg, few supplies and no obvious way back down. The climb nearly cost both men their lives. In order to save himself, Yates had to make a decision that is now world famous – to die during a terrifying night-time storm on the mountainside or cut the rope with his injured companion hanging from it which was preventing him from getting to safety.
This is a book I bought after finding myself so gripped by the film that I was unable to move off the sofa or drag myself away from watching as long as it was on. I was keenly looking forward to reading it. I tend to see mountaineering books through the prism of one of the earliest one I read – Mountains of the Mind by Robert MacFarlane. This is an extremely controversial book because it dares to ask exactly what the justification is for the kind of climbing described at the beginning of Touching the Void and also to explore the psychology of people that seek out increasingly extreme mountain adventures. His answer is that there is something about the mind that can look forward keenly to an adventure and recall it with nostalgia – but is unable to hang on to the sheer, freezing, agonizing, terrifying awfulness of what it is actually like up there for longer than the time it takes to descend. There has to be something in this argument because both of the Touching the Void climbers did their level best to get straight back into the mountains again – although, as my copy records in a postscript, Simpson has definitely come away from his near-death experience with a degree of circumspection that he didn’t have previously.
This is just one of the questions raised in what is, by any measure, an astounding book. Here’s a quote which sums up many of the themes of the book for me:
As I gazed at the distant moraines I knew that I must at least try. I would probably die out there amid those boulders. The thought didn’t alarm me. It seemed reasonable, matter-of-fact. That was how it was. I could aim for something. If I died, well, that wasn’t so surprising, but I wouldn’t have just waited for it to happen. The horror of dying no longer affected me as it had in the crevasse. I now had the chance to confront it and struggle against it. It wasn’t a bleak dark terror any more, just fact like my broken leg and frostbitten fingers, and I couldn’t be afraid of things like that. My leg would hurt when I fell, and when I couldn’t get up, I would die. In a peculiar way it was refreshing to be faced with simple choices. It made me feel sharp and alert, and I looked ahead at the land stretching into distant haze and saw my part in it with a greater clarity and honesty than I had ever experienced before. I had never been so entirely alone, and although this alarmed me it also gave me strength. An excited tingle ran down my spine. I was committed. The game had taken over, and I could no longer choose to walk away from it. It was ironic to have come here searching out adventure and then find myself involuntarily trapped in a challenge harder than any I had sought. For a while I felt thrilled as adrenalin boosted through me, but it couldn’t drive away the loneliness or shorten the miles of moraines tumbling towards the lakes. The sight of what lay ahead soon killed the excitement. I was abandoned to this awesome and lonely place. It sharpened my perception to see clearly and sharply the facts behind the mass of useless thoughts in my head, and to realise how vital it was just to be there, alive and conscious, and able to change things. There was silence, and snow, and a clear sky empty of life, and me, sitting there, taking it all in, accepting what I must try to achieve. There were no dark forces acting against me. A voice in my head told me that this was true, cutting through the jumble in my mind with its coldly rational sound.
It was as if there were two minds within me arguing the toss. The voice was clean and sharp and commanding. It was always right, and I listened to it when it spoke and acted on its decisions. The other mind rambled out a disconnected series of images, and memories and hopes, which I attended to in a daydream state as I set about obeying the orders of the voice. I had to get to the glacier. I would crawl on the glacier, but I didn’t think that far ahead. If my perspectives had sharpened, so too had they narrowed, until I thought only in terms of achieving predetermined aims and no further. Reaching the glacier was my aim. The voice told me exactly how to go about it, and I obeyed while my other mind jumped abstractedly from one idea to another.
I began a one-footed, hopping descent of the face below the crevasse. I headed diagonally to the right in order to by-pass a steep rock buttress which was directly beneath me. Once past it, I saw that the snow ran smoothly down 200 feet to the glacier. I glanced up at the ice cliff aboye the crevasse. It was a dim past memory, until I spotted the rope, hanging down the right-hand side and knew with a sudden pang that he had also seen it. That string of colour hanging down the ice dispelled any doubts I might have still clung to. He hadn’t gone to get help; he had left in the certain knowledge I was dead. I looked back to my feet and concentrated on hopping.
As well an incredible survival story and an unparalleled insight into the psychology of risk-taking this book raises very serious questions about identity and authorial voice. It is quite unquestionably a factual book narrated by one of the principals in the drama and with a tone that feels very honest and self-critical. However. before going any further, we have to consider all the standard issues that surround someone choosing to tell their own, first-person, unmediated story – what is included, what is withheld, what is re-ordered to give the narrative more shape and sense, how the attempt to objectify it for outsiders changes that narrative. That problem is overlaid by the fact it deals with issues of huge controversy. Simpson’s story provokes all sorts of debates about safety, the ethics of mountaineering and whether it is ever acceptable to sacrifice someone else’s life to save your own. The third stage in this awful tangle relates to his physical and mental condition as he attempts to get himself to safety. It seems very likely that he returned to base camp at death’s door, literally being poisoned by his own body thanks to the effects of his injuries, of dehydration and lack of food. If you are in that state, not to mention the psychological effects of facing near-certain death, how much can your memories and impressions ever be described as objective? Fourth, and last, sections of the narrative are printed in italic script and relate the feelings and experiences of Simon Yates. He is not credited as a co-author and the following quote appears in the acknowledgements: “I must first express my gratitude for his honesty in telling me how much he had been through, and his trust in allowing me to write these sensitive emotions in my own words.” I am not suggesting this is anything other than an honest, truthful and self-critical account of what happened. But deconstructing that lot and trying to work out where, as a reader it leaves you is, quite simply, a nightmare.
I came away from this thinking that Simpson had been a bloody fool who it was impossible not to admire hugely for his courage, acknowledgement of his own fallibility and sheer hard-headed refusal to die. Here’s a quote from the 2003 postscript that demonstrates what I mean:
Oddly enough the physical and emotional trauma experienced in Peru in I985 did not change my life. It was the success of Touching the Void and my future writing and speaking career that materially changed me. The making of
the film will no doubt bring further changes and challenges. I often wonder what would have happened to my life if we had not had the accident on Siula Grande. A part of me thinks that I would have gone on to climb harder and harder routes taking greater risks each time. Given the toll of friends over the years I’m not confident that I would be alive today. In those days I was a penniless, narrow-minded, anarchic, abrasive and ambitious mountaineer. The accident opened up a whole new world for me. Without it I would never have discovered hidden talents for writing and public speaking. Despite having worked hard I do sometimes wonder whether I just got lucky?In Peru we had gone to unusual lengths to take the ultimate risk and yet despite all the pain and trauma it now seems a small price to pay for such an inspiring adventure. Isn’t memory a wonderful deceiver? Almost losing everything in Peru was a sensation quite as life-enhancing as winning. I seem to have been on a worryingly long winning streak ever since. Where will it all end?
It is a hot sunny day in Sheffield as I struggle to write my seventh book, a novel. I’m trying not to be distracted by a forthcoming fly fishing holiday in Ireland followed by a fourth attempt on the North Face of the Eiger. A busy autumn of speaking engagements and publicity for the release of the film beckons. Fighting for my life on Siula Grande seventeen years ago seems to have turned me into a successful businessman which is very odd.
Life can deal you an amazing hand. Do you play it steady, bluff like crazy or go all in? I’ll never know.
To finish, I have a passion for books on mountaineering (as must, by now, be obvious) and I’d picked this book up almost immediately after finishing Chris Bonington’s Everest South West Face. And, on opening it, who should I discover is the author of the introduction than Chris Bonington? This added an engaging serendipitousness to the whole exercise and a pleasing sense of continuity between January’s and February’s reading. As for Touching the Void it is not much more than 200 pages and easy reading. It is gripping, suspenseful and haunting. Highly recommended, as is the film, even if your idea of strenuous exercise doesn’t extend beyond a stroll in the local park.
- – - – -
A review of the film:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2003/11/21/touching_the_void_2003_review.shtml