{"id":2467,"date":"2009-07-31T00:07:03","date_gmt":"2009-07-31T07:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=2467"},"modified":"2009-07-31T00:07:03","modified_gmt":"2009-07-31T07:07:03","slug":"book-openers-jon-krakauer-he-hooks-me-in-every-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/book-openers-jon-krakauer-he-hooks-me-in-every-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Openers: Jon Krakauer \u2014 A Macho Writer Who Hooks Me in Every Time"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"jon
Jon Krakauer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

I really don’t want to read about a bunch of macho guys trying to scale Mt. Everest and cluttering up the place with their camping litter, excrement\u00a0and\u00a0 frozen dead comrads. Nor do I want to read about a\u00a0gang of twenty-first century macho fundamentalist Mormons dudes raping\/marrying their 14-year-old Mormon nieces and stepdaughters —\u00a0any more than\u00a0I want to read about\u00a0their 19th century macho\u00a0Mormon predecessors doing the same to their\u00a0helpless 14-year-old\u00a0relatives.<\/p>\n

But sometimes a reader gets desperate. Sometimes the only book on the shelf at the library (and in my case it would be a recorded book) — the only book worth taking\u00a0home is about some jocks scaling Mt. Everest or some\u00a0 fundamentalist Mormons acting badly.<\/p>\n

\"dustI give in. I take the book home with me.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Everest book\u00a0was\u00a0Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air<\/em>. The\u00a0Mormon book\u00a0was his Under the Banner of Heaven<\/em>. In both cases, I was skeptical. I wasn’t going to like this book. But I’m a reader and I gotta have a book.<\/p>\n

Now.<\/p>\n

Krakauer Has Me Where He Wants Me<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Once home, I pop\u00a0CD No. 1 into my CD player\u00a0and go for a walk.\u00a0Now, Krakauer the storyteller has me where he wants me. And it isn’t long — one chapter into the book — before I’ve fallen under his spell. I have to hear more.<\/p>\n

Whether it’s\u00a0Into Thin Air,<\/em> about\u00a0Krakauer’s disastrous 1996 ascent of Mt. Everest. Or whether it’s Under the Banner of Heaven,<\/em> his account of murderous\u00a0fundamentalists practicing old-time Mormon\u00a0plural marriage, I can’t stop reading\/listening.<\/p>\n

But now my walking time\u00a0is over. It’s\u00a0time to sit down to my computer and get some\u00a0work done. Instead,\u00a0I pop another disk into\u00a0my CD player and\u00a0look around for some pots to scrub or a parched houseplant to water.<\/p>\n

Krakauer is a storyteller par excellence. But he is also a\u00a0meticulous journalist\u00a0— he spent three years researching Under the Banner of Heaven<\/em> and one year writing it. Some Mormons will argue that this book is not entirely fair to the folks involved, but Krakauer is a researcher and he’s thorough, so he has my respect.<\/p>\n

More than that,\u00a0he has my gut. He’s telling me a story, a true (or close to it) story, peopled with people as real as the ones I’ve met in Anna Karenina<\/em> or Gilead<\/em> or Huckleberry Finn<\/em>.\u00a0Jon Krakauer\u00a0is my idea of a good time.<\/p>\n

Krakauer’s next book, Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman<\/em>, is scheduled for release in September. Pat Tillman — that would be the football player who joined the Army Rangers, did a few tours of duty, and was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Sigh. Another guy book. I don’t want to read it.\u00a0But I’m pretty sure I will.<\/p>\n

\"bookInto Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster<\/em>, Jon Krakauer, Anchor Books\/Doubleday, 1999.<\/p>\n

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith<\/em>, by Jon Krakauer, Random House, 2003.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Update<\/strong>: Yes, I read the Tillman book. And yes it was terrific. That Krakauer dude can write . . .\u00a0 With Three Cups of Deceit<\/em>, Krakauer challenges the veracity of Greg Mortenson’s best-selling Three Cups of Tea<\/em>.<\/p>\n

2025 Update:<\/strong> Krakauer, now in his seventies, tells his Instagram followers that he has written his last book. “Not writing is more fun.”<\/p>\n

For another post about the mysterious male sex, go to “Men’s Secrets.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"jon<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t want to read a book about people dying on the slopes of Mt. Everest. I don’t want to read about murderous Mormon polygamists. Unless, that is, it’s Jon Krakauer telling the story. In which case, I’m in. Read more<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,70,50],"tags":[71,34,359,360,361,362,363,364,365],"class_list":["post-2467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-book-openers","category-on-writing-reading","tag-book-review","tag-dont-miss","tag-fundamentalist-mormons","tag-into-thin-air","tag-jon-krakauer","tag-macho-books","tag-men","tag-mt-everest-1996","tag-pat-tillman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}