Product Description

Long recognised as one of Britain's finest mountain writers, this collection brings together the best of Jim Perrin's essays and articles on climbing. Perrin has selected these from four decades of describing and commenting on the experience of rock-climbing and the characters of the climbing community and includes rare, uncollected pieces, substantial new essays, ones that have been long out of print, and a lengthy and frank autobiographical introduction from one of the wild and subversive cult and grassroots figures of the British sport.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #408954 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-01
• Released on: 2006-04-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

About the Author
Jim Perrin is Britain's finest mountaineering and outdoor writer with regular, outstanding features in the Daily Telegraph, Climber and TGO. His 1985 biography of Menlove Edwards (Menlove) won the Boardman Tasker award and The Villain, a portrait of Don Whillans, was recently published to critical acclaim.

Customer Reviews

Uppermost heights of mountain literature
The author is an accomplished climber, a highly respected writer, and a regular contributor to magazines and journals. `The Climbing Essays' is up amongst the finest of Jim Perrin's previous writings, and amongst the best ever produced by anyone anywhere. Very few activities spawn such a huge volume of high quality literature as do climbing and mountaineering, and with his latest book, two-times winner of the Boardman-Tasker Award Jim Perrin, has raised the standard to new heights.

Jim Perrin was one of the foremost rock performers of the 1960's and 1970's, yet as well as climbing with his peers he climbed with old-timers and with succeeding generations, and he is still climbing at an extreme level. He was in the vanguard of those consigning aid-climbing to history, but he is no purist as he acknowledges with fluidity of debates on climbing ethics or acceptance of the aging process as he bridges aspiration and reality. Jim Perrin has the ability with words to alter perceptions of the past and re-orientate for the future.

After some initial autobiographical sketches it is other climbers, their styles, and the venues for climbing that provide the context for Jim's essays. In all cases these are exceptional, but perhaps pre-eminent are the pen-pictures of other master mountaineers and climbers. He uses subtle humour to achieve a blend of subjective introspection with being objectively outspoken, and sympathy together with being caustic, and defending as well as attacking; and though always powerful he is not dogmatic. In over 300 pages there are over 70 magnificent easily read short articles collected over 40 years. In addition to unequalled climbing commentaries from a talented climber `The Climbing Essays' encompasses more peripheral matters with independently expressed views. It is enhanced by such as direct consideration of literary subjects, tributes to other writers, or observations on the impact of photography.

Readers will be informed, entertained and enthralled, but must be prepared for eye-openers - there is no place where Jim Perrin fears to tread. His drug taking and permissiveness are somewhat bewildering to older generations, but without damage cannot be omitted from his essays. Similarly what may appear as unhealthy concentration on death is a vital element of exploration of risk and consequence. The introduction by Robert Macfarlane conveys it all, describing `The Climbing Essays' as mingling: "joy and tragedy and action and beauty of a climbing life lived to the uttermost: a life lived as fully on the lateral as on the vertical".

The Climbing Essays
This is an amazing book which has already won an award in SCotland and is shortlisted for English language books at the Welsh Book Awards - no doubt it will be standard reading for many for years to come