The Wormlips Scrapbook

I had a traumatic evening. When I went to enter this post, my blog locked me out, telling me it suspected me of inappropriate or possibly illegal activity. It’s ugly when even your own blog turns on you.

Three anxious hours later, during which I was unable to touch a single thing I’ve ever done here, all was well. For the one or two techie people among you, here’s what happened. Thank you, Michael Hampton, for correcting your Bad Behavior.

Yo-Nenny and I are starting a club. It’s about books. First we talk about books we want to read. That’s fun. Then we pick the book. That’s fun too. Then I buy us each a copy; not as much fun. Then we start reading them, which will be great, at least until the book gets too bendy from use. And then, several pages later, we decide if we want to continue our club, and if we do, does that mean we have to finish the book.

We’re starting with Swann’s Way, which I haven’t read for thirty years, and she, never. In tandem we’ll read Proust’s Way by Roger Shattuck.

My friend Larry is planning a new radio series about Proust, which will consist of a reading of the seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time in their entirety, in French and in English, which will take almost as long as it’ll take Eleni and me to get to the madeleine scene. Beyond that, he’ll have interviews with Proust scholars, an exploration of the history and culture of the era, and all kinds of other cool stuff. He’s done a brief audio promo, not yet for public release, that’s worth listening to. Bard College will sponsor the programs.

Larry retired from radio last year; that’s why he’s doing this little project.

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This incredible film is the original 1953 documentary of the Hillary/Norgay team’s ascent of Everest. I hadn’t realized the expedition had been documented in movie form, and found out only by accident when I discovered it hiding on Side B of the Into the Thin Air of Everest DVD.

The beginning is inauspicious: a classic propaganda film [produced by Countryman Films] with waving Union Jacks and the newly coronated Queen Elizabeth buoyed down the avenue in a carriage borne by those fuzzy-topped marching dudes. Soon, though, patriotism fades to the back as the real story begins.

I think the most powerful thing is the pace. It’s slow. It’s tedious. It’s anything but romantic: the antithesis of its methamphetamine-driven counterpart, Into the Thin Air of Everest. In The Conquest of Everest, the interminable scenes of treacherous crawls over crevasses, vicious winds, backbreaking efforts to axe steps into the ice, life-threatening effects of altitude on breathing and movement … all capture the unrelenting brutality of the experience. Subsequent expeditions have been made much easier because of work done on this trip.

Oddly, I also understand a little more why these people put themselves in such danger and misery to climb a mountain … and the rewards afterward, for those who survive.

Another great thing about the movie is that every phase of the journey is chronicled, from the moment team members first meet to the preparation and testing of climbing equipment to the long trek to base camp to the actual ascent.

I recognized a lot of the scenes that have been excerpted for contemporary documentaries, and what was really fun was seeing the footage that those films leave on the cutting room floor: children and wives of porters watching as the men start up the trail, oceans of rhododendrons, close-ups of glacial rivers, passing flocks of birds… some of the best stuff, if you ask me.

The route they took to Everest Base Camp is roughly the same as what we’re planning if my goddamn foot gets better in the next few minutes, so that was of particular interest to me. Also amazing to see the base camp looking virginal, not yet littered with empty oxygen tanks and whoknowswhatall, as today’s guidebooks show.

Oh, and finally … the music: violins mark the touching moments, while deep brasses sound danger, like the tornado scene in The Wizard of Oz. Wonderful!

The unsung hero of this documentary (well, aside from all the Sherpa porters) is the filmmaker, Thomas Stobart, who — invisible to us — endured inhuman conditions, and whose work took patience, courage and a creative eye.

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Poor old Peak 15. It’s like a brilliant woman whom men see only for her perfect body.  Into the Thin Air of Everest: Mountain of Dreams, Mountain of Doom portrays Everest as remarkable mostly because of its recreational opportunities, which afford humans infinite potential to chalk up “firsts”:

• First attempt
• First successful summit
• First via the south
• First by English [Chinese] [American] team
• First without oxygen
• First without porters
• First solo
• First American woman to summit without dying (surname: Allison!)
• First climb in the name of international peace…

It reminds me of those toys I used to see when M was little: Baby’s First Purse, Baby’s First Tackle Box, Baby’s First Golf Clubs, Baby’s First Laptop Computer Playset, Baby’s First Cell Phone, Baby’s First Baby…

So, back to the movie: the production style is offensive, produced in Fear Factor style with driven techno music and dizzying sequences of oddly angled images. The script bugged me, too: it kept referring to the mountain as though it’s a scheming enemy to be subdued: climbers attack it, assault it, conquer it.

On another level, though, the film is worthwhile. It’s the only one I’ve seen in which a present-day Sir Edmund Hillary appears, and there are interviews with a bunch of other climbers important in Everest’s mountaineering history. The ones active before the 70s are pretty cool people: true adventurers and athletes. But the newer crowd appears vacuous. Some are there as entrepreneurs, leading the inexperienced up the mountain for $60,000 a head. Others seem more dazzled by the fancy, high-tech climbing gear than by climbing.

Anyway, for the Fear Factor generation there’s footage of people with faces black with frostbite, and the last minutes of various people shortly before they toppled to their deaths, and some of the frozen corpses that speckle the mountainside. One in five people dies in trying to reach the summit.

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