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Touching the Void The True Story of One Mans Miraculous Survival

Touching the Void The True Story of One Mans Miraculous Survival

Concise and yet packed with detail, Touching the Void, Joe Simpson’s harrowing account of near-death in the Peruvian Andes, is a compact tour de force that wrestles with issues of bravery, friendship, physical endurance, the code of the mountains, and the will to live. Simpson dedicates the book to his climbing partner, Simon Yates, and to “those friends who have gone to the mountains and have not returned.” What is it that compels certain individuals to willingly seek out the most inhospitable climate on earth? To risk their lives in an attempt to leave footprints where few or none have gone before? Simpson’s vivid narrative of a dangerous climbing expedition will convince even the most die-hard couch potato that such pursuits fall within the realm of the sane. As the author struggles ever higher, readers learn of the mountain’s awesome power, the beautiful–and sometimes deadly–sheets of blue glacial ice, and the accomplishment of a successful ascent. And then catastrophe: the second half of Touching the Void sees Simpson at his darkest moment. With a smashed, useless leg, he and his partner must struggle down a near-vertical face–and that’s only the beginning of their troubles.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars True Story
Very heart jumping book. Keeps you on the edge of every page. Worth the read.

5 Stars Awesome!
Gripping reality……never have I read anything that is such a true tale of seizing whatever energy and means you have to work with ….and choosing to keep going…no matter what….to survive……..brilliant.

3 Stars Good
Joe has a taut, spare style of writing. Perhaps the only negative one can point to is that he goes a little too much into techno-speak on mountaineering. However, this is forgivable since that was the audience he was writing for. That the book became a general public bestseller was a surprise. In a sense he writes sort of like Mickey Spillane- with spare descriptions, clipped, but not as taut as MS. But, there are some soaring moments of poetry- especially one scene where Joe describes looking out of the crevasse at stars at night in a dreamy poetic way that makes a very familiar scene seem new. He also has taken Simon’s story, told to him since they were separated, and crafted a compelling counter-narrative that acts antiphonally with Joe’s own tale. We get to parallax the whole tale, which lends far more realism than a singular viewpoint would.

The only negative part of the book is the ending, in which little aftermath is given. While this is a good technique to start the book off with- we get little background information on Joe and Simon (later in the memoir we get a few digressions to past expeditions by them and others), and a few tantalizing hints as to the rich life Richard Hawking has led- we are so drawn to these characters that to not be given information feels a cheat. But, that would be acceptable had the actual ending been good, narratively or in its mere construction, or left us in a particular moment as we had been in other parts of the book. Instead we end the book with this dreamy recollection of Joe’s being readied for surgery on his broken leg in a hospital a few days after his rescue, and his desire to not be operated on in Peru:

A strong hand pressed me back. Another gripped my arm and I felt the slight pain of the needle. I tried to lift my head but somehow it doubled in weight. Turning to the side I saw a tray of instruments. Above me bright lights came on, and the room began to swim before my eyes. I had to say something….had to stop them. Darkness slipped over the lights and slowly all sounds muffled down to silence.

That’s it. After this rousing tale the reader is left with this wet noodle of an ending. This frustrates a reader far more than the slight drag a reader feels by reading of the duo’s every single little mountaineering movement and the accompanying emotions they felt. That, at least, lent a compelling authenticity to the narrators’ voices. So did the descriptions of the physicality of the men, mountain, and meteorological conditions. The end, alack….

That said, this book is far better written than most of the `creative writing’ peddled at MFA programs. Had he gone there before writing this I’m sure the book would have been over twice its 184 pages, and larded with banal digressions that eked into every little detail of Joe’s and Simon’s childhoods, endeavoring to find the `real meaning’ behind why Simon cut the rope. Fortunately, Joe’s a better writer than that, and better than Simon, a part of whose book Joe quotes from in an afterword called Ten Years On…. It’s obvious from the selection that Joe wrote Simon’s soliloquy in his own book, and does a really good job of empathizing with the man a lesser man might scorn as someone who abandoned him.

It’s rare that such an archetypal story is so concisely well-written, especially considering this was Joe’s first effort- usually these sorts of Gilgameshian man vs. nature epics are long on the epic tale, and short on the ability to convey it. Almost as rare as the adventure it describes.

3 Stars One of those exceptions where the movie is better than the book
Joe Simpson’s disastrous experiences climbing Siula Grande in 1985 make for one of the greatest true adventure stories of the twentieth century. After Joe’s accident on the mountain, he and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, nearly achieved an unlikely descent. When Simon is unable to continue Joe’s rescue, he does the unthinkable (which Joe does not blame him for), and Joe’s hellish troubles begin.

Sounds like the outline for an exciting and heart-wrenching adventure, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, Joe was not an experienced writer when he penned Touching the Void, his first book, and it clearly shows. The reader is often disoriented by Simpson’s use of mountaineering jargon (e.g., cols, ridges, and gullies). And although the book provides a brief glossary, it’s not easy to picture what he’s writing about if you’ve never seen a couloir before. In short, although the story has universal elements, climbers are likely to feel most at home in the account’s setting.

There are some wonderful observations and images in the book, but these gems rarely glitter against the more plentiful heaps of clich

Phil Mickelson Secrets of the Short Game

Phil Mickelson Secrets of the Short Game

Golf writers and broadcasters have run out of words to describe Phil Mickelsons brilliance around the greens, but the question remains how does he do it? Now, in his first-and what will be his only-short-game instructional program. Phils short-game instruction includes how to hit Phils famous Flop Shot, his famous backward, over-the-head shot, and all of the other finesse shots around the green that will help you dramatically improve your up-and-down percentage. Phils approach to “short-game” play-which he defines as shots played from 50 yards in, especially putting and chipping-departs noticeably from conventional golf instruction. Phils way is personal and original, yet he believes it can revolutionize how people teach and play the short game. Because Phils program specifically debunks numerous commonly held beliefs, “Secrets of the Short Game” is sure to be newsworthy-and perhaps even controversial. “Secrets of the Short Game” is the first instructional program from a great p

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