On the High Wire
by Philippe Petit (Translated by Paul Auster)
Like an instruction manual for high-wire walking by Kafka, figurative and applicable to any art, but practical advice when taken literally (though few will take to the sky). Great introduction and translation by Paul Auster.
A must for fans of Man on Wire, which I saw in the theater an hour before I heard that DFW was dead, which wrenched back the nobility of humanity I sensed after cinematic exposure to the feats and flat-out Herzogian superherodom of Monsieur Petit.
Alone on the Wall
by Alex Honnold (with David Roberts)
Should come with a glossary of terms Alex uses like “send the gnar,” “worked,” “beta,” not to mention all the minute variations in rock like a “smear.” But otherwise I flowed over these pages (had them pretty much dialed/couldn’t put it down) like Alex over a 3000-foot granite slab. Read because I watched recently and loved “Free Solo” and “Meru” and “The Dawn Wall,” and although I had this one in my queue for months I didn’t decide to fire it up until mid-way through On the High Wire by Philippe Petit, a similar daredevil obsessive singular athlete who most famously walked a high wire between the Twin Towers in 1974. Petit’s book is more like an esoteric instruction manual and his sensibility seems so Euro slanted and enchanted, whereas Alex Honnold is in many ways the opposite yet equivalent force — there’s no reason to try to judge which insane act of expertise and athleticism and fearlessness and reduced to a perfect form sort of simplicity is radder, as Alex would say, but I had Petit’s book in my head the whole time I read this one. Alex, although fluent in French thanks to his language teacher mother, is so very Californian, a low-key dude interested in “chicks” and gnarl adventuring, but more than that he’s so casual, so matter of fact, so sincere and “down to earth” yet intentionally and naturally simple that he makes Petit seem, in the best possible way, like a pretentious clown at times, an entertainer/death-defying magician more than whatever Alex is, a California climber bro with good intentions and something gloriously wrong with his built-in fear sensor — his prose reflects this, straightforward compound sentences with some conversational inflection, unobtrusively integrated slang, exclamation points.
If we read for “worlds” really more than anything else (the great Frank Conroy’s assertion in a writing workshop I was in, fall 2004) Alex succeeded on a language level to immerse me in the sounds and sense of one of the world’s elite “dirtbag” climbers, living in his van, flying all over the world, sponsored by well-known outdoorsy namebrands, low-key climbing steep shit solo, setting speed records, and every once in a while learning that another of their extended climber posse has died — they’re compared to gladiators but there’s also something ninja-ish about them, the respect for what they do, the art and science of it, but also an appreciation that an aspect of its awesomeness is the ever-present underlying consequence of a freak accident, an avalanche, or really even just a split-second of inattention.
There’s a definite transcendent spiritual side to what Honnold and Petit do, demonstrating the far-edge potential of our spirit’s ability to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles with persistence, practice, concentration, focus, opportunity, full-on commitment, and a little help from friends.
Alex in particular succeeds in doing what they say good writing should do: he makes the strange seem familiar, “freeing” for readers the sense that what he’s doing is even possible, climbing without ropes or any sort of protection straight-up El Capitan in Yosemite, 3K feet of granite, perched on tiny “smears,” indentations, ripples, worming up vertical fissures, ALL WITHOUT A ROPE OR NET OR anything to make it anything less than a death sentence if he simply slips. He’s so good, such a master in terms of technique and temperament — the Hendrix of climbing — he makes it seem effortless, a sure sign of mastery, and yet when you watch videos or look at a picture (or even read about it) it induces vertigo and a sense of my god dude is gonna die. When I watched the film, for days after I wondered if he just fell off some cliff in Chad or Patagonia or Nevada — reading this I started worrying about him again.
Loved the interviews with his friends, expert climbers, the equivalents of Beck, Clapton, and Townsend acknowledging that Hendrix is on another level. Very much liked the alternation between Alex’s italicized testimony and David Roberts’ narration, which brought the reader to earth, put things in a perspective that Alex certainly does not seem to have.
Alex’s environmental instinct, his charitable foundation etc, is interesting in terms of karma, that is the chance that his good deeds keep him from falling off the wall somehow, but felt tacked on in this — although I suppose he does spend his life in National Parks and is glued to these rocks and experiences them in a way no one else on earth really does. I liked also that the last few sections were written by Alex without David Roberts — for the parts about his monumental soloing achievement, Alex had to push on alone to where only he could go.
There was something very Zen monk-ish about his description toward the end of every move, the hand-holds, each step, the tension in however many digits of his fingers — like the way a monk spends an afternoon walking across the stones of a garden, focused on every single movement as though life and death hung in the balance.
Generally, I tend to rail against novels that simplify the complexity of existence but this memoir celebrates the simplicity side of the continuum, intentionally living with few possessions, doing all the time what he most wants to do, minimizing his impact, trying to come as close as he possibly can to perfection.
If you haven’t seen it, I’d definitely recommend “Free Solo” first or even a tour of the related YouTube before reading this, but those who do make it through this won’t be disappointed.
The Push: A Climber’s Search for the Path
by Tommy Caldwell
“Pitch” perfect memoir about persistence/perseverance and overcoming adversity in the form of things you cannot control (premature birth, developmental delays, special ed, big ears etc, being taken hostage in a war-torn country, spouse’s infidelity, cut-off finger, assorted random injuries), and goals that must be overcome to fulfill one’s dream.
Flowing anonymous American prose, insightful, vivid, inspiring, but also defined so many terms and explained so many things that Alone on the Wall just sort of aired and moved through. Read this thanks to Tommy’s excerpts that appeared in Honnold’s book, which has a much deeper POV, comparatively, is almost like a sort of poetry at times lingo-wise (listen to Alex and Tommy take about 25 minutes to describe in-depth a sub-two hour climb of the Nose in El Cap — they really dive deep into the language of climbing and although almost none of it makes sense to a bystander like me their elite insider expertise achieves a pleasurable hypnotic evocation of their feat: https://soundcloud.com/american-alpin…).
Also loved The Dawn Wall which is pretty much the audiovisual complement to this textual experience — an immersive experience in the world of an elite big-wall rock climber, not just the climbs and cliffs but the psychological, emotional, interpersonal nuances of dedicating one’s life to something with huge existential rewards, limited financial prospects, and massive mortal risk.
Makes it seem not so daunting to do whatever it is we do every day on the comparatively horizontal surface of the earth.