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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 30, 2010 - 02:59pm PT
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Well, I got a copy (courtesy Tricouni), and now just have to read it.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 31, 2010 - 08:51am PT
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The easiest way to get started I found, was begin with the chapters about myself and my friends and work up to modern times. I then went back and read the really ancient history.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Oct 31, 2010 - 10:03am PT
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Ybarra’s review is more a frisky swiftboating and polemic of Taylor than a review; it’s a lightweight skimming roughup of the author and the tasks he accomplishes. Ybarra apparently is unaware or unappreciative of the groundbreaking findings Taylor develops through his many pages, noncognizant of the many unanswered questions many of us have had about the past eras and their sociologies. It has not been enough to simply say "they are just there", please. Of course his work is scholarly, which by itself seems to be the basis of Ibarra’s main thrust; it has to be as the subjects Taylor is working with have only been treated facilely so far in our literature and without significant substantiation. I am working on a review myself of Taylor but it will be quite a bit longer and quite a bit more sympathetic to his mission than the NYT’s piece.
Here is a tiny Ybarra piece which goes well; it's on Norman Clyde and the Eastern California Museum:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574345003001544422.html
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 31, 2010 - 10:50am PT
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Peter-
I'm glad to hear you are doing a review.
I was impressed that Taylor is the first historian so far to discuss many of the issues that were raised on the Sacherer thread here on ST in regard to the 1960's era. I was remembering some of that today when I wrote up my remembrances of Larry Dalke, and was reminded again of the totally different ethos of the Colorado climbers toward women climbers in contrast to the Yosemite climbers of the era. Of course I was already biased in Taylor's favor when I found he had referred to me as an independent who was exceptional!
Meanwhile, I thought that he was the first historian to really do justice to Frank and his legacy, probably because Frank's impact was greater on the '70's climbers than on his contemporaries who wrote the first histories. Taylor did so and at the same time conveyed a real sense of Frank's sometimes difficult personality I thought, putting it all in good perspective.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Oct 31, 2010 - 11:06am PT
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Agreed, Jan. I will have the advantage that he doesn’t mention me at all! How funny.
Jan I agree; looking at the role women had in those past days and in the seventies reveals even more about the entire developing ethos of those years. He is able to give shape to what happened to us all from the twenties on through the seventies. It is quite useful and hasn't really been done before. I also very much love how he holds Yc, RR, and others' feet to the fire in pointing out their essential hypocrisy, however self-justifed they may feel. It's good stuff.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 31, 2010 - 11:12am PT
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We are indeed on the same wave length here. I particularly liked how he portrayed the Robbins - Harding feud. I liked what he wrote about Layton Kor as well, both on and off the walls.
I hadn't noticed that he forgot to mention you although it seems there were others left out as well. I'm sure that Hope wishes there was more on Jim Baldwin, especially since Hope interviewed several times with Taylor.
Edit:
I've just been informed by another source that Baldwin's family would not give permission to quote from his letters. Since this was a scholarly work, anything said needed to be authenticated with a living interview or a document. Hence much was known but left unsaid for Baldwin and I'm guessing others as well.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Oct 31, 2010 - 11:22am PT
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Actually (DR has my book right now so I can’t check) I am remembering that the footnote section is huge; isn’t it like 70-80 pages? Taylor really worked hard didn’t he. The NYT Ybarra snippet could have done better, been fairer, putting this important effort forward to the reading public.
The notion that present-day climbing is simply more of what they were doing back in the forties and fifties and sixties is a fallacious one. We have something very very different now that has both quantitatively and qualitatively transformed since those years and is largely apart from what those folks 50 years ago were doing and imagining. And it deserves a big and scholarly effort like Taylor's.
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MHope
Big Wall climber
Scarsdale, New York
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Oct 31, 2010 - 02:33pm PT
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The only other book as definitive as Jay Taylors "Pilgims of the Vertical"
is Glen Dennys "Yosemite in the Sixties" the two books say it all. Hey guys who woulda thunk, us rock bums made the Wall Street Journal!
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Swifter
Social climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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I met J. Taylor some years ago but the only contact with him since has been by mail. I've sent him some photos he wanted, presumably for the book, but wasn't aware that the book had been published...almost 2 months ago, yet! I guess that means I needn't expect to get a copy of the book. I really don't feel like buying a copy but would like to see if I got any credits for my pix. Maybe the library can get one that I don't have to pay to read.
Bob Swift
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colin rowe
Trad climber
scotland uk
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Patrick
You mention in your post "two notable British climbers" who in their accounts produced "errors". Would you mind clarifying what they were please. Thank you, Colin
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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This book grated on me, sorry. Taylor has two main points about modern climbers:
1. Risk. Climbers take risks. It is selfish and morally wrong to take risks, therefore climbers are selfish and morally wrong.
2. Environmental issues. Climbers recreate in nature. Climbers have impacts on nature. Therefore climbers are self-deceiving and/or dishonest if they claim to be supporters of the environment.
He goes to a lot of trouble to dig up quotations to buttress these two points. The final words of the book are an appeal for climbers to “grow up.”
This book starts out really well. One chapter explores the early history of climbing; the upper-class, wealthy Brits who roamed the Alps, formed clubs, excluded women and non-wealthy participants. Taylor takes this unpromising material and brings it to life. He excels at the early history of climbing in the US and the rise of the US mountaineering-club scene--the clubs arose so that climbers could share knowledge, equipment and opportunity. He explains how ideas, some essentially American, some just new, shifted climbing from its European roots into a strongly egalitarian and community-based club/social scene during the 1920s and 1930s.
Excellent stuff. Then, in the second half, the tone slowly shifts and becomes more and more critical. I reached the end disappointed at the negativity. My own take is that Chuck Pratt’s The View From Deadhorse Point contains more truth about wilderness ideology and Heidi Lockwood (in the book “Climbing: Philosophy for Everyone.”) offers a far more enlightened analysis of risk-taking. But I probably need to “grow up.”
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 25, 2013 - 06:13am PT
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Since Chris McNamara posted a threat by Joseph Taylor on the history of Yosemite Guidebooks, I thought I would bump this thread for his book as well.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Jan 25, 2013 - 08:20am PT
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Soooo, that's where the hell that came from!
"Picture Book"
Picture yourself when you're getting old,
Sat by the fireside a-pondering on[?].
Picture book, pictures of your mama, taken by your papa a long time ago.
Picture book, of people with each other, to prove they love each other a long ago.
Na, na, na, na, na na.
Na, na, na, na, na na.
Picture book.
Picture book.
A picture of you in your birthday suit,
You sat in the sun on a hot afternoon.
Picture book, your mama and your papa, and fat old Uncle Charlie out boozing with their friends. Picture book, a holiday in August, outside a bed and breakfast in sunny Southend.
Picture book, when you were just a baby, those days when you were happy, a long time ago.
Na, na, na, na, na na.
Na, na, na, na, na na.
Picture book.
Picture book.
Picture book.
Picture book.
Picture book,
Na, na, na, na na,
Na, na, na, na na,
A-scooby-dooby-doo.
Picture book,
Na, na, na, na na,
Na, na, na, na na,
A-scooby-dooby-doo.
Picture book, pictures of your mama, taken by your papa a long time ago.
Long time ago,
Long time ago,
Long time ago,
Long time ago,
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Phenomenal Cat/Kinks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmySezU9NwA
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Gerg
Trad climber
Calgary
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Jan 25, 2013 - 12:57pm PT
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I don't get it, nobody was around for the civil war, napoleon, etc as they were not theree either to expierence it firsthand.
Have not read it, but the guy is at least a University historian and can dig for info, just as any author gives us insight into events waaay before our time.
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jstan
climber
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Jan 25, 2013 - 01:32pm PT
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Amazon lists one seller asking $201 and the used copies have highlighting. A climbing book with highlighting?
Holy crap! That's some serious recommendation.
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bit'er ol' guy
climber
the past
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Jan 25, 2013 - 10:46pm PT
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it's been played.
save yer $$$$$
buy a Gopro.
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Tricouni
Mountain climber
Vancouver
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Jan 25, 2013 - 11:44pm PT
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Amazon lists one seller asking $201 and the used copies have highlighting. A climbing book with highlighting?
Forget Amazon. ABE.com has as-new copies for $20 + $4 shipping. Cheaper than the new price.
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Jan 26, 2013 - 01:39am PT
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Just scanned the book's preview in Amazon. The author calls me a "dirtbag" a couple times. I don't recall ever meeting him.
Funny thing is, these historians really have little significant source material for what I consider an important era (nothwithstanding it was the era which I thrived in), which is the early 80's to the mid/late 80's.
Roper does well to document the so-called Golden Era to the late 70's, and of course in the late 80's/ early 90's the boom of MTV, video and and print of the main threads, then followed by the internet in the early/mid 90's, but the 80's period has never really been documented very well with the type of broad perspective you see by authentic climber historians (such as Roper).
The 80's was really a time with some unique transitional characteristics between the "olden days" and the modern realm of rock climbing. Certain boundaries were innovatively explored and pushed, with some key seeds and roots of today's mainstream climbing culture (albeit which has evolved considerably since then).
EDIT--just thinking about it a bit more, and perhaps one of the things that was significant about the 80's era was that it was the last era prior to the "MTV era" which portrayed climbing to the public as "cool" which in turn influenced its essence-- and the resulting popular reformation provides fodder for academics like the Pilgrims of Vertical author to write books "explaining" climbing's evolution.
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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Jan 27, 2013 - 04:10pm PT
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Hey Deucey,
Yeah, incisive observation. Maybe Taylor had preconceived ideas about climbing, from the media, and, when he tried scaling rocks himself, found that it very different to the “cool” sport he envisaged.
In his book he relates a story of an ordeal he had rope-soloing Snake Dike, where he ran out the rope to the point where he suddenly realized he was both off-route and looking at a huge, perhaps deadly fall. He became very scared and eventually backtracked with care, survived, retreated. Decide that the risks in climbing were not justifiable. As written, a non-climbing reader would surely agree that he had made a heroic effort to try this sport and the unjustifiable risks make it not worth embracing. One of the big themes of the book is that climbers take unjustifiable risks. And they deceive themselves about the risks they take.
I read this sorry tale of nearly dying and thought, Why the hell would anyone rope solo Snake Dike? You have to carry all the gear up there, the route is unsuitable for rope-soloing as it is runout and has much easy terrain which would require dragging/carrying the gear with you (or rapping, cleaning and jumaring endless easy slab pitches). He made a poor decision and it seemed entirely predictable that things went wrong. But that’s not at all how it reads.
His study of Yosemite climbing started out superbly--I learned a lot from his insights into pre-WWII history--but something went wrong; maybe he was slammed and had to rush to finish, maybe the more recent material was too overwhelming in scope and scale for him to grasp, maybe personal experiences, including his Snake Dike scare, colored his judgement.
Getting into the recent decades, Taylor is roundly critical of the wanna-be dirtbags, the risk-takers, the misogynistic attitudes, the pro-environmental hypocrisy of climbers who pounded pitons and place bolts. He does not really differentiate much between the recent eras.
There are criticisms to be made, for sure.
But the book gets confused, simplistic, picking odd quotes and dubious statistics to buttress what appear to his already-formed opinions about risk-taking and environmental values. Toward the end, disappointing (maddening at times!).
All sports, all persons have contradictions. The best histories spell these out but have empathy for the characters involved. By explaining the characters (ie Robbins, Harding, Yabo, Haan, Chongo, Bachar, Hill, etc, etc, yes, even that pesky Middendorf) as best one can, with empathy, then the contradictions can be, if not explained, at least given some context.
There’s little empathy here; Taylor manages to criticize Lynn Hill, which is quite an achievement.
Roper’s faults lie in the other direction; he is full of empathy and understanding--love, really--of the Camp 4 scene and its characters--his writing is always a pleasure to read--but steers clear of wider judgments. Maybe he's too much a part of the scene to step back very far.
No one has really tried what Taylor has attempted here. Taylor’s book’s a good start to a discussion over the significance of the Yosemite/Camp 4 scene, how it fits into a larger picture--and what picture, exactly, it should fit into.
You should order a copy and read it, deucy. I know you care about this history.
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