He's a great writer. I've also got Under the Banner of Heaven on my list, even though it's not my usual bailiwick, just because he wrote it.
People seem to find it very hard to separate "someone made mistakes that contributed to their death" (and when someone dies while climbing Everest, well, if nothing else their decision to climb Everest in the first place definitely contributed!) from "and therefore they DESERVED TO DIE." Krakauer quotes a few letters in the book from people who believed that he implied the second because he said the first, even though he actually portrays pretty much everyone in the most sympathetic light possible. Anyone who reads Into Thin Air and decides Rob Hall deserved it because he made a few bad choices is reading furiously against the text.
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Date: 2017-10-25 02:24 pm (UTC)People seem to find it very hard to separate "someone made mistakes that contributed to their death" (and when someone dies while climbing Everest, well, if nothing else their decision to climb Everest in the first place definitely contributed!) from "and therefore they DESERVED TO DIE." Krakauer quotes a few letters in the book from people who believed that he implied the second because he said the first, even though he actually portrays pretty much everyone in the most sympathetic light possible. Anyone who reads Into Thin Air and decides Rob Hall deserved it because he made a few bad choices is reading furiously against the text.