Life and Death on Mt. Everest
- Book Review,
by Sherry B. Ortner
From Library Journal
Since the late 19th century, climbing mountains has held a certain allure. Expeditions are now reaching all-time highs, as experienced and inexperienced climbers "reach for the top." These two books examine mountaineering on Mt. Everest through different perspectives. Liberally sprinkled with entertaining anecdotes and significant cultural observations, Ultimate High is the story of a determined man with a unique goal. It chronicles both Kropp's ascent of Everest and his 8000 mile journey, on bicycle (with equipment in tow), from Sweden to the Himalayas and back. (To truly conquer the mountain, Kropp believes, one must get there and climb it without artificial assistance.) As it happened, his climb coincided with the much-publicized May l996 disaster (described in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air), so, in addition to detailing his own endeavours, he describes (with riveting clarity) the drama taking place around him. Kropp captures the emotional highs and lows of mountaineering; his astute observations of team dynamics and candid revelations of his mental and physical state provide insight into the climber's world. Taking a more academic and analytic approach, Ortner (anthropology, Columbia Univ.) provides a fascinating examination of the world of the Sherpas. Drawing extensively from autobiographies and her own ethnography, Ortner examines Sherpas both as mountaineers and villagers. In the process, she tackles a variety of subject matter, including sahib/Sherpa relationships and local history, culture, and religion. In doing so, she incorporates quotes from climbers, their chilling tales, and detailed research. Her book is an eye-opening, behind-the-scenes look at mountaineering. Complementary to any work on the Himalayas, it should be compulsory reading for climbers going to this area. Both books are recommended for public and academic libraries.AJo-Anne Mary Benson Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Michael Parfit, New York Times Book Review, October 24th 1999
The title is shameless marketing. But that's O.K. Life and Death on Mt. Everest is so rewarding that anyone lured in by the title's sensationalism will be captured by the book's sense of reality. The word Sherpa has become a synonym for load carrier, but the Sherpas whom Sherry B. Ortner describes are a small ethnic group, mostly Buddhists who live in the high valleys of Nepal and who have made a business of carrying expedition gear up and down the Himalayas. Life and Death on Mt. Everest is an intricate and intimate look at the relationships between Sherpas and the mountaineers who started invading their territory with rose-colored peaks in their goggles in the late 19th century. The book is based both on Ortner's fieldwork, which began in the 1960's, and on the extensive mountaineering and anthropological literature about the region.
From Kirkus Reviews
Anthropologist Ortner's (Columbia) ethnographic immersion into Sherpa life and how it has been affected by the international climbing culture is a remarkable display of agile fieldwork, sensitive to all the distinctive shadings that compose her subject. In the valleys and foothills of the Everest massif live the Sherpas, who for the last 100 years have had their remote outpost unsettled by the influx of mountaineering expeditions run by sahibs (a Sherpa term Ortner uses both ironically and as a handy tag). In an effort to gain a sense of how the two groups interrelatehow much each groups perceptions of the other have validity and in what contextOrtner draws upon a substantial arsenal of ethnographic theory. The work of Clifford Geertz is brought to bear on both camps' intentions and desires; so too Edward Said's notion of orientalism and how it erects ideologically warped imagery. Althusser, Foucault, James Clifford, and Marshall Sahlins help her clear away the fog of colonial complicity and the asymmetries conjured by power and wealth: though she can't slip into the Sherpa perspective like an old pair of shoes for reasons of cultural conditioning, she is ever attentive to it. Ortner is most interested in the nexus of the mountaineers' and Sherpas' values, beliefs, and ideals, and the various relationships that were spawned from their commingling, which often unwittingly reinforced misconceptions. In the records of the mountaineers, she seeks among the representations the allusions within the illusions, measuring the biases and fantasies against the touchstone of the ``cumulative record of high-quality ethnographic work.'' Ortner arrives at a complex but cohesive portrait of the century-long Sherpa association with the mountaineers, an elegant wedding of two distinct cultural strandswith all the inherent harmonies and tensionsa moving picture that shifts focus and emphasis as new elements, from identity politics to the counterculture, come into play. (30 b&w illustrations, 3 maps, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Outside
"This is not another nail-biting saga of alpine disaster, but rather--finally--an authoritative study of the group that has made summiting 8,000-meter Himalayan peaks possible for Westerners. . . . Ortner retells the Everest story from the Sherpa point of view. . . ."
Review
A fascinating new study of the interaction between Western climbers and Sherpas. . . .
Book Description
The Sherpas were dead, two more victims of an attempt to scale Mt. Everest. Members of a French climbing expedition, sensitive perhaps about leaving the bodies where they could not be recovered, rolled them off a steep mountain face. One body, however, crashed to a stop near Sherpas on a separate expedition far below. They stared at the frozen corpse, stunned. They said nothing, but an American climber observing the scene interpreted their thoughts: Nobody would throw the body of a white climber off Mt. Everest. For more than a century, climbers from around the world have journ-eyed to test themselves on Everest's treacherous slopes, enlisting the expert aid of the Sherpas who live in the area. Drawing on years of field research in the Himalayas, renowned anthropologist Sherry Ortner presents a compelling account of the evolving relationship between the mountaineers and the Sherpas, a relationship of mutual dependence and cultural conflict played out in an environment of mortal risk. Ortner explores this relationship partly through gripping accounts of expeditions--often in the climbers' own words--ranging from nineteenth-century forays by the British through the historic ascent of Hillary and Tenzing to the disasters described in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. She reveals the climbers, or "sahibs," to use the Sherpas' phrase, as countercultural romantics, seeking to transcend the vulgarity and materialism of modernity through the rigor and beauty of mountaineering. She shows how climbers' behavior toward the Sherpas has ranged from kindness to cruelty, from cultural sensitivity to derision. Ortner traces the political and economic factors that led the Sherpas to join expeditions and examines the impact of climbing on their traditional culture, religion, and identity. She examines Sherpas' attitude toward death, the implications of the shared masculinity of Sherpas and sahibs, and the relationship between Sherpas and the increasing number of women climbers. Ortner also tackles debates about whether the Sherpas have been "spoiled" by mountaineering and whether climbing itself has been spoiled by commercialism.
From the Inside Flap
"Sherry Ortner's Life and Death on Mt. Everest is a stunning book: it is a probing ethnography of the strange, unequal relationship between 'sahibs' and Sherpas, a suggestive social history of the contemporary leisure class, and a powerful, often painful meditation on the cult and culture of high-risk mountaineering. With a humane, ironic, steady, and compassionate gaze, Ortner looks at lives lived at the edge of an abyss."--Stephen Greenblatt "Sherry Ortner's Life and Death on Mt. Everest is an extraordinary study of the Sherpa people, opening windows into the realities of their lives and minds, a revelatory look at the whole mountaineering thing from their perspective, and an amazingly rich account of the fascinating world of the Himalayas and the Tibetan peoples. This book is a must read for any student of Tibet and the history of the interactions of Westerners and Tibetan peoples."--Robert Thurman "Ortner has always been one of the clearest and most forceful writers among contemporary anthropologists and her wit and lucidity are once again in evidence here."--Arjun Appadurai, University of Chicago "This highly readable book demonstrates the best of what contemporary anthropology can offer scholars and the reading public alike. A fascinating account of a timely subject."--Naomi Bishop
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