Last night I was present at an event deemed historic: the biggest crowd
in all the years that Centennial Hall has been a vital part of Milwaukee's
cultural life.
The SRO crush was for wilderness writer Jon Krakauer, whose new book,
Into Thin Air, somberly recounts the Everest climbing disaster of May 10th
and 11th, 1996, to which he was an intimate and barely surviving party.
Why did so many endure the wait, the stifling conditions, the unrelieved
trauma of the story, and on a night of perfect weather when much happier
diversions were available?
My personal theory is that there was an almost cellular need being felt for
a hero, and Krakauer's heroism lay in his obstinate refusal to wear the
Homeric nimbus that the audience was only too willing to confer.
Last night, in prior radio spots, and in the book itself, Krakauer made it
quite clear that his survival was a matter of plain shithouse luck, and not
attributable to superior intelligence, stamina, will, bravery, experience
or any other laudable quality.
Of course you have clean forgotten, but 2 years ago Air Force pilot Scott
O'Grady was America's Hero For A Day, though his descent into the hateful
slaughterhouse of former Yugoslavia was hardly as willful as Krakauer's
climb up Everest or, for that matter, the incursion of the _ad hoc_ team
that volunteered to bring him back.
However, in a society where everything imaginable, now even our precious Net,
is being minutely commodified in a frenzy to bring us many dubious goods and
services, we occasionally need to be confronted with the exclamation point of
obvious heroism, to be reminded, as once by both Gramsci and Sorel, that men
kill and die for pregnant symbols and not for wage hikes.
However, Krakauer is not only an ancient legend but also a heavily engaged
contemporary; he has much to say about the increasingly blatant and sloppy
commercialism that has engulfed the traditions of the Everest climb,
trashing the mountain and blighting the lives of the indigenous Sherpas
with a paradoxically deepening poverty. He has set up a foundation
to deal with both problems, funded in part by royalties.
In an earlier book Krakauer explored the life and death of an idealistic
young man from suburban Washington who expired in the Alaskan bush while
seeking a purer existence.
In a country ruled by scum, where you can lose your house for a weed's
presence in its vicinity, and where a 12-year-old girl just hung herself
in a local "juvenile facility," I want to make clear that Jon Krakauer
heads my slim list of heroes.
valis
Occupied America
-- All lies have the same pedigree --
