Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Mountains & Desire: Climbing vs. the End of World
Author: GREBOWICZ MARGRET
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 03/08/2021
Imprint: WATKINS PUBLISHING
Price: $25.00
Publishing status: Active
On the 100th anniversary of the first attempt to climb Mt Everest, Margret Grebowicz shows
how and why climbing and mountaineering are still important today.
In 1923, a reporter asked George Mallory why he wanted to summit Mount Everest.
“Because it’s there”. Today the question \”why do this?\” is included in
nearly every mountaineering story or interview. Meanwhile, interest in climbing is steadily
on the rise, from commercial mountaineering and climbing walls in university gyms and
corporate workplaces to the flood of spectacular climbing imagery in advertising, cinema,
and social media. Climbing has become a theater for life on the edge, exposing the limits of
human bodily performance and environmental limits. But what about the limits of desire,
motivation and #goals? Is the hundred year old question that the reporter asked of Mallory
still an expression of sincere curiosity about mountains and mountaineering or a symptom
of an ever-deeper well of uncertainty about why anyone does anything at all?
Taking the degradation of Everest and the success of Free Solo as its starting point,
Mountains and Desire chases after what remains of this pursuit – marred by its colonial
history, coopted by nationalistic chauvinism, ableism, and the capitalist compulsion to
unlimited growth – for both climbers and their fans.
ISBN: 9781912248933
Pages: 120