Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 106
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Popular Culture Review
dition — Mallory, for example, best known for his anti-utilitarian, romantic proc
lamations about the virtue of climbing, climbed in part because the publicity would
grant him a reputation and enable him to secure a teaching appointment under the
new Oxford Extension scheme (Graves 83) — reveals all the more fully the com
mitments of the author, the nature of his successful rhetorical strategy, and the
needs of his contemporary popular audience. Although in his individual example
Krakauer’s need for the construction of a religious allegory is propelled by his
persistent “survivor’s guilt” — his feeling of responsibility for the death of mem
bers of his party and an overwhelming sense of the arbitrariness of his own sur
vival — the popular success of his narrative depends on its attractions for a non
climbing audience ambivalent about the class divisions climbing seems to amplify
more dramatically than other popular spectator sports. Climbing provides perhaps
the best subject for playing on the themes of hubris and Calvinistic virtue, and its
contemporary audience seems prepared to believe that the moral failings precipi
tated by social elitism and consumer culture caused the deaths on Everest.
Sam Houston University
John Trombold
Works Cited
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Bryant, Mark. “Everest One Year Later: False Summit.” Outside. May 1997.
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Graves, Robert. The Long Week-End: A Social History o f Great Britain 1918-1939. New
York: Norton, 1963.
K rakauer, Jon. New York: “ Into Thin A ir.” Outside. Septem ber 1996. h ttp ://
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—. Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains. Doubleday, 1996.
— . Into Thin Air: A Personal Account o f the Mt. Everest Disaster. New York: Villard,
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— . Into the Wild. New York: Doubleday, 1996.
Riggs, Gerry. “Into the Store: A Personal Account of the REI Disaster.” The Seattle
Weekly. December 17, 1997. 22-29.
Skow, John. “Death in the Clouds.” T/we April 21, 1997. Vol. 149 No. 16.
Tullis, Julie. Clouds From Both Sides. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1987.