Novels with Climbing

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TomT

Trad climber

Aptos.

Jun 28, 2012 - 10:29pm PT

For those of you who followed this thread, this is a plug for Mark Rodell's novel "A Stance of Wonder." It is available on Amazon. He has worked hard on it for a few years. He got critical help from several of you, persevered and self-published. I ordered the paper version, just got it today. Very cool cover- has comments on the back from Dick Dorworth, Doug Robinson, Jeff Lowe and some cool illustrations from Pat Ament. Story is set in my favorite places on earth - the Eastside and Yosemite and Thailand where Mark lives now. Lots of climbing and insights abut the life we love. This new novel covers a lot of territory.

Mark was my main climbing partner through the 60s and 70s. We were and are best friends. I was a church kid and Mark - well sometimes I had to drag him out of bed at 6 am Saturday after a long Friday night and stuff him and his gear in the back seat of my Malibu. Saturday mornings were rough, but later in the morning he was rearing to go. He paid attention to the beauty of the places and people we encountered - his writing will take you there. Every Monday we dragged in to Los Gatos High from another epic weekend in Yosemite, Pinnacles or the Leap, totally spent, in time to sleep in class. It was hard to explain to coaches (he -football, me - soccer) why we could barely walk much less sprint that day.

Mark has that artistic impulse, and always writes from experience. He is a master of description and dialogue; there are vivid, beautiful and haunting phrases and images from his first novel that visit me from time to time. That first book is about a brakeman and trains, written after Mark's 15 year career with Southern Pacific as a brakeman. Mark use to write poems when he was on a train; I still have a file full of them. When brakemen got bought out, Mark took the money and went back to college and grad school at Cornell. He left the states many years ago to teach English in Thailand and Nepal, and now teaches literature and writing at a Thai University. He has lead a full life, traveling, skiing, climbing and can tell us in meaningful ways how it unfolded.

laughingman

Mountain climber

Seattle WA

Jun 29, 2012 - 01:54am PT

One of the better pieces of climbing fiction is a Japanese graphic novel I read in high school called kokou no hito about a fictional solo climber named Mori Buntarou. The Multi-volume story culminates in a solo style ascent of the (then) unexplored west face of K2. The story was, interesting to say the least, the author actually spent the time to learn about climbing and it had a decent story line.

Bootleg editions can be found on the net...

Mark Rodell

Trad climber

Bangkok

Topic Author's Reply - Jun 29, 2012 - 08:15pm PT

Wow, I have not seen this thread in a long time. Reading all the posts again brings back a lot of memories. Three years ago I reached out to this group. Thank you again for your words.

The novel, A Stance of Wonder, is now available at Amazon books as a paperback. Putting it into a correct ebook format and then into a reasonable paperback format was tough for me. I may need to tinker with it again but for now, it is there. Cheers Taco folk.