He relied heavily on the people about whom he writes, who left detailed chronicles of their exploits as they laid the groundwork for light and fast movement up, down, and through the mountains — their lives quite literally hanging in the balance.
“Almost all of these guys have written about their expeditions,” Willis says, noting that many climbers keep journals of their efforts that include “blow-by-blow” recollections of the most minute details, so precise that — if a climber had three hands — he could, with the right skills, equipment, and daring, follow right along the route as if reading simple driving directions.
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CLIMBING CLINT: Willis in the mountains. |
The book itself is almost cinematic in its alternation between big-picture “wide shots” of a climber’s position (physically, emotionally, situationally), and tight close-ups where the reader can see the grain of the rock as a climber’s fingers scrabble for purchase. In its transitions between great intensity and great detachment — the drama of a literal cliff-hanger turning into a distant image of a body falling through the sky — The Boys of Everest lacks a consistent tone, which can be jarring when it is not enthralling. And because of its scope, the book is sometimes necessarily choppy, moving back or forward in time between chapters as Willis maneuvers the characters (and their backstories) into position for the denouement: the 1982 assault on Mount Everest that decimated what remained of the team.Willis has been inspired by these risk-it-all adventurers, not just in his life, but in his writing. He faced challenges similar to the people he wrote about: complete freedom to move anywhere he could conceive of, the cold crush of reality on his dreams, the loneliness of the endeavor, and the fact that he was not in control of what happened next. And he was able to explore his own youthful dreams and visions, much the way the subjects of his books did.
Where the climbers themselves disagree or are silent, Willis has used his imagination — always based on as much research and fact as he could find — to fill in some of the gaps, such as recreating the exact circumstances under which a disoriented, exhausted climber just walked off the edge of a mountain into freefall.
He admits this approach is unorthodox, but he takes advantage of resources many biographers lack: the living memories of the people Willis writes about, or their surviving friends and family, revisited repeatedly over the five years he spent writing the book.
In doing what he called taking “liberties,” he felt a deep sense of responsibility with the stories of his heroes: “all we have to give each other, is the reality of our lives,” he says, suggesting that even an accidental misportrayal would be nothing short of betrayal.
He likened his efforts to “being in the story,” and while researching and writing, found a deeper understanding of the men whose lives and feats had inspired the younger version of himself: “When you reimagine a story this way, you end up realizing that it actually happened,” he says, his voice breaking with emotion.
