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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 27, 2013 - 08:36pm PT
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I agree with crunch that the end of the book seems kind of rushed. My guess is that Joseph ran out of both time and energy. He has written other academic books on other topics and probably did not want to devote the rest of his life to the history of climbing.
Perhaps a better or at least easier approach would be to limit the time span from early history to early 70's perhaps, and then write volume II, or let someone else do it who lived through the later eras. The problem with that approach is economics. The average academic book sells only 600 copies. The other problem is academic.
To be at the top of one's field, one can not write mere description if doing any kind of social science, but have to have some kind of theoretical slant that is supposed to be new and highly critical of the subject and other accounts of it, to prove the worth of one's own contribution. This approach has of course been criticized as being too formulaic and sacrificing information for theory.
I encounter this dilemma all the time in my own academic writing. I've seen numerous theories come and go in the years since I went to grad school, while the descriptive accounts of people and places (ethnography) remain interesting. Of course this brings up another problem for social science academics anyway. If social science doesn't keep theorizing then many branches of it will be subsumed into historical studies. The difference between ethnography and anthropology is that of description versus description plus theory.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Jan 28, 2013 - 12:19am PT
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Awesome remarks, Crunch! As you say the initial section on early climbing history in California,
"The Sierra Club Days" period, is remarkable and I would have to say what makes the book invaluable.
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Jan 28, 2013 - 08:07pm PT
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Crunch, I'm only pesky when it comes to telling the story of how you climbed the PO through storms with a lawn chair and carpenter's hammer.
Perhaps with your talent for writing, you can lead the academics to the essence of the true dirt-bag's perspective.
Someday I plan to put my thoughts and feelings to pen once I have the time and perspective to peruse the various journals I've kept of the good ole days...
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Captain...or Skully
climber
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Jan 28, 2013 - 08:10pm PT
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I'd say get on it, Deucey. Life is unpredictable, you know.
Maybe that crunch would also? You guys Are Our History, (like it or not)...
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Jan 28, 2013 - 10:38pm PT
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some good comments on this thread-- cumulatively, the good ones add up to a smarter review than the ones in the WSJ or the AAC. i'll try to do a few posts. i'm not speaking for jay here. i'll try to explain the process from the inside of the profession as best i can.
crunch (echoed by peter, jan and deuce) 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 . . . colored his judgement.
you forgot to leave out-- maybe he didn't get good advice. heh
he wasn't rushed. except insofar as books are shaped by logistical and market forces. i suggested breaking it into two volumes. but the financials weren't in favor, and i think jay was ready to be done with it. and i honestly don't think it would've mattered, because of two generic problems.
there are two generic issues in treating history (especially US history) after the 1960s. (actually, there's more, but i'll highlight these two.) the first is a problem with all recent history: we don't know how it turns out. constructing a historical narrative means you have a temporary fix on the endpoint and can read back from there. we don't have that here. the fight over "risk" (i.e., between "trad" and "sport") is ongoing. the fight over access is ongoing. there isn't a nice clear endpoint that provides a criterion for deciding which story lines are important and which are subtext, which characters are key and which minor, and so on.
the second problem is indeed the problem of stuff getting overwhelming. this is a generic feature of sources and topics in recent history, but in climbing it's like this: for the period up to the early sixties, jay has a limited set of institutions that provide the key story threads and archival sources: NPS, Sierra Club, RCS, AAC, a few important climbing clubs, and a pretty limited total number of actors. but in the '60s those institutions collapse (save for the overwhelmed and increasingly distant and underfunded NPS), and whirl is king. C4 becomes a tent camp of randoms from god knows where, and turning over every other week. the problem isn't lack of sources-- it's the surplus.
too many potential story lines, too many actors, and way too many sources. EPA alone means that just the NPS documentary side explodes. so if it feels like the wheels are coming off at the end of the book, that's actually a pretty faithful recreation of what's actually happening.
That doesn't mean that no one can write histories of the late seventies and eighties-- but it does mean that those histories are going to get either increasingly narrow and focused. free climbing? soloing? hard aid? tourism? the changes in the NPS? the changes in the Sierra Club? changes in the sociology of the climbing community? the closing of California's mental institutions? globalization and consumer climbing culture? international air travel? we can go on forever.
i do think that as a "book," pilgrims would've been "better" or at least neater had it tied up all its loose narrative ends by ending with the dawn wall. but it would've sold way fewer copies, this thread wouldn't still be up (and may never have happened), and there are stacks of really good research in that last bit that other folks can now build on. and we would've lost that had jay taken my advice more to heart. heh
btw, jay was a serious lifestyle climber long before he became a historian. i recommended he 86 all the personal memoir sh#t in the book, but editors, publishers, and the vast majority of americans-- including everyone on st this thread just more evidence-- believe that memoire is the ultimate form of expression and way more "authentic" and believable and "historical" than anything else, let alone something as lame as histories based on primary research that has run the gauntlet of peer review.
btw2, i haven't asked him about the snake dike deal. but i have a hypothesis. heh.
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McHale's Navy
Trad climber
Panorama City, California & living in Seattle
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Jan 28, 2013 - 11:03pm PT
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I did it again! I read halfway through this thread before realizing I was reading posts from 2010! I'll have to get the book just to see quotes like,
"I have begun my campaign to wipe out CMI and Long and Leeper too. Phuck them all. Leeper gets phucked up for even thinking he can make a better piton than I can."
Haha! That's classic. I hope there's more sh#t in there like that or I'll want my money back. I did buy a GoPro today though, so the book might have to wait. I did that even before I saw Bit'er Ol Guy's post;
it's been played.
save yer $$$$$
buy a Gopro.
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