The first chapter of the book takes place at the chronological end of the story. Hal is competing at a national tennis tournament in the Southwest and interviews with deans at the University of Arizona for a tennis scholarship. Although Hal's first person narration is beautifully written, when he tries to answer the deans' questions, he makes sub-animalistic noises that sound like a goat drowning. They think he has a seizure and send him to the emergency room. There, Hal remembers when he and Donald Gately dig up Hal's father's head, which, the reader will learn about 700 pages later, is where the master of Infinite Jest is.
A few chapters later, Wallace introduces the protagonist and moral center of the novel, Donald Gately, a big man who burgles the homes of rich people to support his addiction to oral narcotics. On a September night two years before Hal's interview at Arizona, Gately breaks into the Brookline, Mass. mansion of a Canadian national, M. DuPlessis, who serves as liaison between Quebecois and Albertan separatists. The loot Gately and his partner, Trent Kite, gain in the burglary includes a non-master copy of Infinite Jest, which they fence and which the Wheelchair Assassins ultimately trace to Antitoi Entertainent (sic) in Cambridge.
In the hundreds of pages between the opening and the climax, Wallace builds intense, enjoyable suspense about the questions the plot raises. What has deprived Hal of the power of speech in the chronologically last scene? Was it the powerful hallucinogen, DMZ, that Hal's best friend, Pemulis, picked up at Antitoi Entertainent? How will Hal and Gately, who have completely separate story lines, come to dig up JOI's corpse together? Will the Wheelchair Assassins succeed in acquiring the master and gaining Quebec's independence? Wallace whetted my appetite for a mind-blowing plot turn that would unite all the story's disparate narrative arcs. Disappointment sets in in the final hundred pages, as Wallace goes deeper into Gately's back story and introduces new side characters and the reader comes to realize that none of the really important narrative questions will be answered.
Another mystery that the book sets up only to leave unresolved is the extent to which Infinite Jest parallels Hamlet. The title of the novel and JOI's eponymous film is taken from Hamlet's description of his childhood clown, Yorick, a "fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy." Ellsinore, the setting of Hamlet, is haunted by the ghost of Old Hamlet, the hero's father and recently deceased king of Denmark. Enfield Tennis Academy, the setting of IJ, is haunted by the ghost of JOI, Hal's father. In both stories, the mother of the hero takes up with another man, who has an apparent familial relation to the hero, right around the time the father dies. In both, the second husband of the hero's mother succeeds the father as the leader of the community where the story take place. Do these parallels indicate that JOI was killed by his wife's lover, Charles Tavis, who succeeds JOI as headmaster of ETA? Wallace doesn't say.
Most of the book is devoted to Don Gately's effort to get and stay sober using the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The ultimate moral value in the novel is avoiding dependency on shit that you can catch a buzz from. The novel suggests that one should do anything necessary to stay sober, and the starting point is getting on your knees every night and thanking God for the day of sobriety that has just come to an end. Gately faults JOI for self-pity when the ghost of JOI complains to Gately that he was unable to connect with Hal and that his critics failed to understand that the purpose of his films was simply to entertain. It dismayed me that in the moral hierarchy of the novel Gately, a recovering narcotics addict, has a higher rank than JOI, a Renaissance man who managed to scale that "high ridge where the mountainside of 'scientific' knowledge joins the opposite slope of 'artistic' imagination." fn1 But Wallace apparently believed that Gately was nobler than JOI because Gately learned to live without intoxication.
Wallace's own life suggests the poverty of a moral system that prioritizes sobriety over everything else. He wasn't enslaved to any intoxicating substance the last two decades of his life, yet he found his sober existence so miserable that he hanged himself at age 46, when he was hundreds of pages into his next novel, Pale King, and married.
Under one plausible reading, JOI is a tragic figure because he cannot want to live without alcohol. This would mean the novel isn't anti-drug because it recognizes that some people are not constituted to live without intoxication. But Gately's success in getting off narcotics through AA's 12 steps suggests that JOI might have been able to give up Wild Turkey if he'd done the same, living one day at a time, praying to God, and going to AA meetings all the time. Wallace's positive portrayal of AA and his lionizing of Gately lend the book a moralistic tone.
Wallace was on firmer ground when he attacked the association between ironic detachment and hipness in pop culture. All the shows telling us that it's cool to be sarcastic and insincere alienate people from themselves by discouraging them from acknowledging that they have true feelings. Instead, they are conditioned to think that it is cool to feel nothing other than patronizing contempt for people who express genuine feelings and opinions. Hal's handicapped brother, Mario, says that pop culture can't depict death and pain with anything other than absurd situations that are intended to make "everybody roll[] their eyes or laugh[] in a way that isn't happy." Tragedy is out of vogue because it requires genuine feelings, and genuine feelings just aren't cool.
Despite its flaws, Infinite Jest is a great piece of literature. Anyone who loves the written word should love this novel. Wallace’s prose style is conversational, relaxed, and frequently obscene, yet it always reads like prose poetry, and every sentence deserves to be read out loud. The drunken monologue that JOI's father gives to JOI at age 10 before the boy's first abortive tennis lesson is among the best 20th-century American fiction I've read. In it, Wallace transcends postmodernism and puts himself in the same camp as Hunter S. Thompson and Kerouac.
Wallace's writing is full of useful but difficult words that caused me to break out the dictionary scores of times. And Wallace had a capacity for inventing fictional personalities that merits comparison to Orwell, Tolstoy, and Shakespeare. The novel has dozens of realistic, complex characters. Although the book leaves unanswered the questions that kept me turning pages for the length of the 1080-page novel, the ending has spine-tingling beauty. For good reason the publisher overruled Wallace's decision to subtitle the novel, A Failed Entertainment.
fn1 The quoted line is from Nabokov's memoir, Speak, Memory.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Review of Infinite Jest, Part 1
David Foster Wallace fills his 1996 novel, Infinite Jest, with dozens of compelling and realistic characters, and his writing is often spine-tingling, but in the end the plot is deeply disappointing, even as the novel's final image delivers a pang of memorable, melancholy beauty. This is the first part of the spoiler-filled review I wrote after spending four months reading Wallace's 1,080-page novel.
At the end of the 20th century, a Las Vegas singer turned politician, Johnny Gentle (the alliteration doubtlessly refers to Ronald Reagan), wins the U.S. presidency on a third-party ticket that promises gun rights, an aggressive foreign policy, and environmental regulation that will make the sidewalks clean enough to eat off of.
When NATO is dissolved, the United States refuses to accept the return of nuclear missiles deployed in Manitoba unless Canada agrees to join a North American super-state, the Organization of North American Nations. Canada reluctantly bows to this demand, stirring anger among Quebecois separatists, who now must pry Quebec not just from Canada but also the ONAN in order to gain independence.
President Gentle's plan to blast America's solid waste into space proves to be infeasible, so the president and his puppet-master, Rodney Tine, decide to convert northern New England, from Maine to Massachusetts, into a repository for the country's toxic waste and garbage.
Canada agrees to accept the waste dump as an addition to its territory in response to President Gentle's threat to detonate nuclear missiles on the U.S.-Canadian border. Runoff from the waste dump, which is called the Great Concavity by Americans due to its inwardly bent southern border, causes birth defects in Quebec, which further stokes separatist sentiment.
Of the Quebecois separatists, Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (the Wheelchair Assassins) are the most militant. These men lost their legs playing La Culte du Prochain Train, in which adolescent boys compete to see who will be the last to jump across train tracks as freight trains speed toward them. “Hearing the squeak,” the sound of the assassins' wheelchairs, has become synonymous with the violent assassinations they carry out.
The assassins want to acquire a master copy of Infinite Jest, the last film that James O. Incandenza, Jr. completed before committing suicide. JOI was a physicist who made a fortune by working out a new means of electricity generation called annulation. Later he took to making films with the lenses he designed and founded the Enfield Tennis Academy, where wealthy kids are taught to subordinate the self in order to play high-level tennis. He got drunk on Wild Turkey every day until the final three months of his life. Infinite Jest was JOI's attempt to arrest the progression toward solipsism of his youngest son, Hal, a nationally ranked junior tennis player who has a verbal IQ score far above the genius range. JOI feared that Hal was becoming a figurant, an extra on a TV show who's seen in the background but has no voice. With Infinite Jest, he wanted to create a medium that would allow him to have a conversation with his son.
The film doesn’t have this effect, but it turns out to be so entertaining that a person who catches a momentary glimpse of it loses the will to do anything other than watch the movie. In the film, a beautiful woman leans into a crib and says "I'm so sorry," over and over again. The scene is shot from the floor of the crib with a wobbly camera that mimics the visual field of an infant. Why would JOI think that this material would interest Hal? Why do audiences find the image so captivating that they can think of nothing else afterwards? Wallace doesn't offer satisfying answers to these questions.
The Wheelchair Assassins plan to turn thousands of Americans into zombies through the mass dissemination of Infinite Jest. They hope that Washington will blame Ottawa for their acts and that Ottawa will expel Quebec from Canada to demonstrate that it is not responsible for the assassins' campaign of entertaining people to death.
At the end of the 20th century, a Las Vegas singer turned politician, Johnny Gentle (the alliteration doubtlessly refers to Ronald Reagan), wins the U.S. presidency on a third-party ticket that promises gun rights, an aggressive foreign policy, and environmental regulation that will make the sidewalks clean enough to eat off of.
When NATO is dissolved, the United States refuses to accept the return of nuclear missiles deployed in Manitoba unless Canada agrees to join a North American super-state, the Organization of North American Nations. Canada reluctantly bows to this demand, stirring anger among Quebecois separatists, who now must pry Quebec not just from Canada but also the ONAN in order to gain independence.
President Gentle's plan to blast America's solid waste into space proves to be infeasible, so the president and his puppet-master, Rodney Tine, decide to convert northern New England, from Maine to Massachusetts, into a repository for the country's toxic waste and garbage.
Canada agrees to accept the waste dump as an addition to its territory in response to President Gentle's threat to detonate nuclear missiles on the U.S.-Canadian border. Runoff from the waste dump, which is called the Great Concavity by Americans due to its inwardly bent southern border, causes birth defects in Quebec, which further stokes separatist sentiment.
Of the Quebecois separatists, Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (the Wheelchair Assassins) are the most militant. These men lost their legs playing La Culte du Prochain Train, in which adolescent boys compete to see who will be the last to jump across train tracks as freight trains speed toward them. “Hearing the squeak,” the sound of the assassins' wheelchairs, has become synonymous with the violent assassinations they carry out.
The assassins want to acquire a master copy of Infinite Jest, the last film that James O. Incandenza, Jr. completed before committing suicide. JOI was a physicist who made a fortune by working out a new means of electricity generation called annulation. Later he took to making films with the lenses he designed and founded the Enfield Tennis Academy, where wealthy kids are taught to subordinate the self in order to play high-level tennis. He got drunk on Wild Turkey every day until the final three months of his life. Infinite Jest was JOI's attempt to arrest the progression toward solipsism of his youngest son, Hal, a nationally ranked junior tennis player who has a verbal IQ score far above the genius range. JOI feared that Hal was becoming a figurant, an extra on a TV show who's seen in the background but has no voice. With Infinite Jest, he wanted to create a medium that would allow him to have a conversation with his son.
The film doesn’t have this effect, but it turns out to be so entertaining that a person who catches a momentary glimpse of it loses the will to do anything other than watch the movie. In the film, a beautiful woman leans into a crib and says "I'm so sorry," over and over again. The scene is shot from the floor of the crib with a wobbly camera that mimics the visual field of an infant. Why would JOI think that this material would interest Hal? Why do audiences find the image so captivating that they can think of nothing else afterwards? Wallace doesn't offer satisfying answers to these questions.
The Wheelchair Assassins plan to turn thousands of Americans into zombies through the mass dissemination of Infinite Jest. They hope that Washington will blame Ottawa for their acts and that Ottawa will expel Quebec from Canada to demonstrate that it is not responsible for the assassins' campaign of entertaining people to death.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Fanny and Alexander
Ingmar Bergman planned to present Fanny and Alexander as a four-episode television movie with a run time of 312 minutes. He cut the theatrical version down to 188 minutes. Given my attention deficit, I thought Alicia and I would end up watching the film in two settings, but when we got to the two hour mark late on a Friday night we were both engrossed and wanted to see how the story would end.
The movie version is made up of three hour-long episodes, which describe Fanny and Alexander's idyllic lives as the children of two well-off actors, and the joyless existence they lead after their father (Oscar) dies and their mother (Emilie) remarries a strict Lutheran bishop. The film opens with rollicking Christmas eve celebrations in Uppsala, Sweden at the turn of the 20th century. The local theater company, which is directed by Oscar, puts on a play about the birth of Christ with heart-stopper Emilie playing the Virgin Mary. The performers attend a banquet given at an upscale restaurant owned by Alexander's uncle, Gustav Adolph, who admonishes his staff not to cast supercilious glances even though the actors are downmarket from the restaurant's usual clientele. Following the banquet, Alexander's extended family gathers at his grandmother's mansion to bring in Christmas day with joyous singing, drinking, and dancing. Gustav Adolph (the restaurateur) beds a 15-year old maid, to which his fat and broad-minded wife turns a blind eye.
At the beginning of the second episode, Oscar's theater company rehearses the scene in Hamlet in which the ghost of Hamlet's father reveals that he was murdered by Hamlet's uncle, Claudius, who then married Hamlet's mother and gained the throne of Denmark. Oscar, playing the ghost, suffers a stroke and is taken back to the family mansion. Before dying, Oscar tells Emilie that in death he will be closer to her, Alexander, and Fanny than he was in life. Next to the deathbed is a pail splashed with green fluid that Oscar vomited during his death throes.
As the funeral procession bears Oscar's coffin to the grave, Alexander mutters obscenities to himself in a rhythmic chain--shit, pussy, fuck, cunt, shit, pussy, fuck, cunt. The handsome and strict Lutheran bishop who presided over the funeral begins to court Emilie. The performance of the actor playing the bishop is tremendous; seldom have I felt so much loathing for a film character. Before the bishop announces to Alexander that he and Emilie will marry, he browbeats Alexander through threats and mild physical abuse into confessing a lie he told at school. Alexander, angry at Emilie for accepting the bishop's courtship, told his classmates that she had sold him to a circus which he would join come summer. Once Alexander confesses the lie, the bishop says that, "Imagination is a splendid thing, a mighty force, a gift from God. It is held in trust for us by the great artists, musicians, and writers." In other words, little boys commit a sin when they use their imaginations.
Emilie accepts the bishop's marriage proposal and agrees to his further request that she and her children sever all ties with their former lives. They do not bring any of their belongings to the austere castle where the bishop resides with his spinster sister, cruel mother, and mute aunt. The aunt is a repellent specimen, obese, immobile, dependent on others for feeding, and bluish in complexion. Through punishments which range from being locked in a bedroom to sustained beatings, the bishop tries to break Alexander's spirit and force the boy to love him. Emilie realizes she has made a terrible mistake, but she has no way out, as a lawyer confirmed that if she left the bishop the courts would award him custody not only of the child she was carrying for him, but of Alexander and Fanny as well.
In another invocation of Hamlet, the ghost of Alexander's father appears to Alexander's grandmother and urges her to take action to protect the children from the bishop. The grandmother enlists her secret lover, Isak, a Jewish banker, to rescue the children. In the final episode, Isak uses Jewish mysticism in an attempt to get the children out of the bishop's castle, and Isak's nephew uses his own mystical gifts to examine Oscar's hatred of the bishop.
The film begins with the joys of childhood and ends with a horrifying killing. Let The Right One In is similar in that it presents a haunting depiction of childhood innocence and the macabre, but Fanny and Alexander is more satisfying because of the intelligence of the dialogue, the depth of Bergman's characters, and the ghost of Old Hamlet haunting the story.
The movie version is made up of three hour-long episodes, which describe Fanny and Alexander's idyllic lives as the children of two well-off actors, and the joyless existence they lead after their father (Oscar) dies and their mother (Emilie) remarries a strict Lutheran bishop. The film opens with rollicking Christmas eve celebrations in Uppsala, Sweden at the turn of the 20th century. The local theater company, which is directed by Oscar, puts on a play about the birth of Christ with heart-stopper Emilie playing the Virgin Mary. The performers attend a banquet given at an upscale restaurant owned by Alexander's uncle, Gustav Adolph, who admonishes his staff not to cast supercilious glances even though the actors are downmarket from the restaurant's usual clientele. Following the banquet, Alexander's extended family gathers at his grandmother's mansion to bring in Christmas day with joyous singing, drinking, and dancing. Gustav Adolph (the restaurateur) beds a 15-year old maid, to which his fat and broad-minded wife turns a blind eye.
At the beginning of the second episode, Oscar's theater company rehearses the scene in Hamlet in which the ghost of Hamlet's father reveals that he was murdered by Hamlet's uncle, Claudius, who then married Hamlet's mother and gained the throne of Denmark. Oscar, playing the ghost, suffers a stroke and is taken back to the family mansion. Before dying, Oscar tells Emilie that in death he will be closer to her, Alexander, and Fanny than he was in life. Next to the deathbed is a pail splashed with green fluid that Oscar vomited during his death throes.
 |
| Emilie aids Oscar, dressed as the ghost of Hamlet's father, after he collapses. |
 |
| The bishop forces Alexander to confess his lie. |
In another invocation of Hamlet, the ghost of Alexander's father appears to Alexander's grandmother and urges her to take action to protect the children from the bishop. The grandmother enlists her secret lover, Isak, a Jewish banker, to rescue the children. In the final episode, Isak uses Jewish mysticism in an attempt to get the children out of the bishop's castle, and Isak's nephew uses his own mystical gifts to examine Oscar's hatred of the bishop.
The film begins with the joys of childhood and ends with a horrifying killing. Let The Right One In is similar in that it presents a haunting depiction of childhood innocence and the macabre, but Fanny and Alexander is more satisfying because of the intelligence of the dialogue, the depth of Bergman's characters, and the ghost of Old Hamlet haunting the story.
Chamonix Travelogue
Wednesday, March 23
We arrived in Geneva, Switzerland at 7:20 a.m. on a Continental flight that was about an hour late. We took a shuttle operated by Mountain Dropoff to Chaumiere Hotel in Chamonix and arrived at 10:00 a.m. The driver couldn't find the hotel and claimed that I had given the wrong address. It turned out the address was right; the driver didn't know the way.
 |
| The palatial Chaumiere hotel |
Check-in at Chaumiere started at noon, so we dropped off our luggage and changed into ski gear. We took a train 10 km northwest up the Chamonix Valley to Argentiere, the town below Les Grand Montets ski domain. Alicia rented boots, and we bought Mont Blanc Unlimited Passes, which gave access to all the ski areas in the valley, plus Verbier ski area in Switzerland, Courmayeur in Italy, and the upper cable cars (telepheriques) in Chamonix, including the Aiguille du Midi.
We skied at Grand Montets from about 11:20 to after four. The lower cable car ascends from an elevation of about 1260 meters to 1972 meters. The upper cable car climbs another 1300 meters to an elevation of 3275 meters (10744 feet). From the top of the upper car you can do off piste skiing on the Argentiere Glacier and the glacier on the mountain's frontside. Two difficult patrolled runs descend from the top. Pointe de Vue winds along the boundary of the ski area, skirting crevasses on Argentiere Glacier and giving breathtaking views of the mountains to the northeast, which form the Franco-Swiss border. Cyclones is a steeper run that comes down the frontside and bisects the glacier. That day I talked Alicia into skiing the Pointe de Vue. The gorgeous gorgeousity of the mountains on the other side of the glacier and the ice fall where the glacier terminates beggars description.
 |
Alicia on the Argentiere Glacier, with the mountains at the Swiss-Franco border in the background. |
The temperature in the valley was unseasonably warm. There was practically no snow below 1700 meters. The one run that you could ski from the top of the lower cable car on Grand Montets to the base was a blue run that was covered in slushy artificial snow.
After completing the descent (just over 2000 vertical meters), we took the number 11 bus to Chamonix Sud, which was about three quarters of a kilometer from our hotel at 322 Route de Gaillands. At the hotel, we showered for the first time since Monday night. We walked into central Chamonix, where we had pints of Amstel at Le Terrasse, a bar that occupies an Art Nouveau building. When you descend the bar's spiral staircase you appear to be walking over the swift mountain stream adjacent to the building. Afterwards we had fondue and a bottle of wine at a French restaurant.
After completing the descent (just over 2000 vertical meters), we took the number 11 bus to Chamonix Sud, which was about three quarters of a kilometer from our hotel at 322 Route de Gaillands. At the hotel, we showered for the first time since Monday night. We walked into central Chamonix, where we had pints of Amstel at Le Terrasse, a bar that occupies an Art Nouveau building. When you descend the bar's spiral staircase you appear to be walking over the swift mountain stream adjacent to the building. Afterwards we had fondue and a bottle of wine at a French restaurant.
 |
The north side of the Chamonix Valley from outside the Chaumiere |
We got back to the hotel at about 9:30 p.m. Western Europe time, which was 2:30 p.m. CDST. We had not slept since 7:30 a.m. CDST on Tuesday (about 32 hours earlier). Before leaving for Argentiere that morning, we had taken 12 hour non-drowsy Claritin, which contains pseudo-ephedrine. The stimulant had enabled us to power through the day, but now it had worn off. We fell asleep immediately upon retiring and slept for nine hours.
Thursday, March 24
We got up at 7:15 and had breakfast at the hotel. We put on our ski boots and took the train to the central train station, where we tried to board a bus going to the Courmayeur ski domain in Italy. The bus was fully booked, as was the next day's. We decided to ski again at Grand Montets. While we were waiting for the next train, we had coffee at a cafe that was full of mountaineers and locals. Chamonix is at the foot of Mont Blanc, Western Europe's highest peak at 4810 meters. The Chamonix Valley is considered the birthplace of modern mountaineering. Chamonix is different from ski towns in North America in that mountaineering sets the tone rather than downhill skiing. If you know the routes and are proficient with crevasse rescue systems, you can ski across the Argentiere Glacier, skin up the mountains, and ski down into Switzerland. You can ski across the Mer de Glace Glacier, skin up another set of peaks, and ski down into Italy. The professional mountaineers I saw everywhere in Chamonix, and the Alps towering over the town on all sides, made me want to acquire the skills required to safely ski from Les Grand Montets into Switzerland, or from Aiguille du Midi into Italy. The milieu and mountain aesthetics of Chamonix renewed my commitment to putting mountaineering at the center of my life.
After we settled up at the cafe, Alicia and I picked up baguettes and Roquefort cheese which we would have as lunch. I called a guiding service, Evolution 2, to see whether I could join a group for a guided descent of the Vallee Blanche, which descends about 2200 vertical meters from the Aiguille du Midi to the Montenvers train station. Because the routes pass over the Mer de Glace Glacier, which is riddled with crevasses, to ski them safely you must either have your own crevasse rescue system or go with a guide. The woman I spoke with said that there were no groups that I could join, but I could put my name down on a waiting list, which I did. The charge for joining a group of 4 or more was 79 euro per person, versus 350 euro for a private session. The woman said that Alicia could not join a group because she had no off piste experience.
We skied our first run at Les Grand Montets at around 10:30. At 3:45 we caught the second to last cable car to the top. We skied Pointe de Vue down to a chalet on the perimeter of the ski domain, had a pint of Konigsberg, and then dropped down through the trees to the run with artificial snow that led to the base. The slush on the lower run was a drag unless you were good at skiing on mashed potatoes.
 |
Four views of the Argentiere Glacier from the Pointe de Vue run |
We had a drink at a bar 25 meters from the bus stop. We wanted to catch the number 1 bus, which would drop us off next to Chaumiere. We saw the number 1 entering the lot from a distance, picked up our skis, and began walking toward the bus stop. As we arrived at the bus stop, the number 1 drove past without stopping. The bus system was maddening. The next number 1 would depart an hour later, so we took the number 11, which required us to schlep our skis from Chamonix Sud to the hotel.
As we were getting off the bus, Evolution 2 called and said I could join a group on the Valle Blanche the following day. I needed to visit their shop and pay before they closed at 7:30.
Elated, I carried both Alicia's and my skis on the walk back to Chaumiere. After I showered, I hurried to Evolution 2's shop. I had not given up on having Alicia ski the Vallee Blanche with me. I told the lady at the desk that Alicia had skied the top runs on Grand Montets, including bumpy terrain. She asked a guide whether Alicia could handle Vallee Blanche. I showed him the runs on the map that Alicia had done. He said she would probably be okay. Alicia and I met at La Terrasse. She was happily surprised when I revealed that I had secured her a spot in the Vallee Blanche group.
 |
We had pizzas for dinner. On the walk back we stopped at an English hostel up the road from Chaumiere, where we had pints of Stella Artois. We talked about Alicia's dissertation and I sketched vague ideas for the paper, like translating it into Italian or adding an interdisciplinary twist by applying the philosophy of aesthetics to her subject, Renaissance English literature.
Friday, March 25
The Vallee Blanche routes start below the summit of Aiguille du Midi (elevation 3842 meters) and descend down the Mer de Glace Glacier to the Montenvers train station. When there is a lot of snow, you can ski all the way back to Chamonix, a trip of 17 km. The distance to Montenvers is about 12 km.
At 7:40 a.m. Alicia and I left the hotel and began walking to the Aiguille du Midi cable car, schlepping our skis on our shoulders. Our guide, Sisi, arrived after us. She was a short, blond Frenchwoman whose age was made indeterminate by her wind- and sun-weathered skin. The rest of the group arrived later. There were two British women and two British men who were vacationing, and another Briton, Andy, who lived in Chamonix and was studying to become a mountain guide. Sisi had each of us put on a harness that would be used to haul you out if you fell into a crevasse. She gave Alicia and me transceivers that signal your location to rescuers if you are buried in an avalanche.
Thus equipped, we took the cable car up the Aiguille du Midi, which is vertiginous even if you are comfortable with heights. The first section climbs from Chamonix at 1035 meters to Plan de l'Aiguille at 2317 meters. The car then travels directly, without an intervening support pylon, to the upper station at 3,777 m (an elevation gain of 1460 meters). On the upper section, the car seems to rise straight up into the air, at a distance of maybe 20 meters from the frontside of Aiguille du Midi, which is forbiddingly vertical. At the top, we hiked the stairs to the observation terrace. From there you have inspiring views of the west face of Mont Blanc. I will set foot on its summit before I die.
The Vallee Blanche routes start below the summit of Aiguille du Midi (elevation 3842 meters) and descend down the Mer de Glace Glacier to the Montenvers train station. When there is a lot of snow, you can ski all the way back to Chamonix, a trip of 17 km. The distance to Montenvers is about 12 km.
At 7:40 a.m. Alicia and I left the hotel and began walking to the Aiguille du Midi cable car, schlepping our skis on our shoulders. Our guide, Sisi, arrived after us. She was a short, blond Frenchwoman whose age was made indeterminate by her wind- and sun-weathered skin. The rest of the group arrived later. There were two British women and two British men who were vacationing, and another Briton, Andy, who lived in Chamonix and was studying to become a mountain guide. Sisi had each of us put on a harness that would be used to haul you out if you fell into a crevasse. She gave Alicia and me transceivers that signal your location to rescuers if you are buried in an avalanche.
Thus equipped, we took the cable car up the Aiguille du Midi, which is vertiginous even if you are comfortable with heights. The first section climbs from Chamonix at 1035 meters to Plan de l'Aiguille at 2317 meters. The car then travels directly, without an intervening support pylon, to the upper station at 3,777 m (an elevation gain of 1460 meters). On the upper section, the car seems to rise straight up into the air, at a distance of maybe 20 meters from the frontside of Aiguille du Midi, which is forbiddingly vertical. At the top, we hiked the stairs to the observation terrace. From there you have inspiring views of the west face of Mont Blanc. I will set foot on its summit before I die.
 |
The summit of Mont Blanc seen from the observation terrace on Aiguille du Midi |
Things got interesting after we finished the sightseeing. By far the most dangerous part of the Vallee Blanche is coming down the steep arête that leads from the Aiguille du Midi to the start of ski routes. The arête is descended by means of steep switchbacks in the snow. The aiguille drops away steeply to the northwest; if you slipped you on the switchbacks would fall hundreds of meters. If you had crampons and an ice axe, the descent would be cake, but none of the clients except Andy had crampons. When we went down, we held a safety rope that runs parallel to the switchbacks in one hand and our skis in the other. We also were roped up to Sisi, who could use her ice axe and crampons to arrest any falls that might occur.
After the tedious descent of the arête, we unroped and put on our skis. Sisi announced that we would ski down a mogul slope with crusty snow so that she could evaluate our abilities and select the appropriate route for the descent. Alicia was hesitant with her turns. Sisi became upset and jumped to the conclusion that Alicia would be falling constantly on the descent. "We have a very long way to go! If you are falling constantly we will never get there! You will be miserable!" she barked at us. Trying to ease her concerns, I answered, "Don't worry. We have skied lots of difficult terrain. We are game for this." Sisi replied with exasperation and sarcasm, "Oh, I know all about you Americans! You are game for everything!" Her tone asserted that Americans often overestimate their abilities and end up in over their heads. I replied that I skied expert terrain in the American west all the time. Sisi answered, "It's not you I'm worried about; it's her," indicating Alicia. "We'll be okay," I replied, "We're tough nuts to crack."
Sisi then discovered that one of the British women lacked a transceiver. She reprimanded the woman, saying, "I asked you if you had a transceiver before we left! From now on you must do everything I say! This is not a game!" Sisi gave the woman the transceiver that Sisi herself had intended to wear on the descent.
Sisi's handling of the situation was feckless. If Alicia had demonstrated a lack of skill that meant she could not safely descend Vallee Blanche, then Sisi should have insisted that Alicia take the cable car back to Chamonix. By becoming upset, and suggesting that Alicia would be falling constantly, Sisi threatened to shatter Alicia's confidence in her ability to ski the valley safely, when in fact Alicia had more than sufficient skill to handle the descent, as she demonstrated during the event. Sisi's disparaging comments about Americans were gratuitous and marked her as a rank amateur.
Notwithstanding the bad start, the descent down the valley was a wonderful aesthetic experience. The mountains and the glaciers surround you on all sides; they render the few people there insignificant and nearly invisible. I skied pretty well and Alicia was fine as soon as she got her legs under her. It turned out that Alicia was a stronger skier than two other members of our group, an older British man and a foul-mouthed British woman who was divorcing her husband.
 |
Here is the arete which leads down from Aiguille du Midi to the start of the ski routes. |
 |
The last two shots show the Aiguille du Midi from the beginning of the ski routes. |
After the tedious descent of the arête, we unroped and put on our skis. Sisi announced that we would ski down a mogul slope with crusty snow so that she could evaluate our abilities and select the appropriate route for the descent. Alicia was hesitant with her turns. Sisi became upset and jumped to the conclusion that Alicia would be falling constantly on the descent. "We have a very long way to go! If you are falling constantly we will never get there! You will be miserable!" she barked at us. Trying to ease her concerns, I answered, "Don't worry. We have skied lots of difficult terrain. We are game for this." Sisi replied with exasperation and sarcasm, "Oh, I know all about you Americans! You are game for everything!" Her tone asserted that Americans often overestimate their abilities and end up in over their heads. I replied that I skied expert terrain in the American west all the time. Sisi answered, "It's not you I'm worried about; it's her," indicating Alicia. "We'll be okay," I replied, "We're tough nuts to crack."
Sisi then discovered that one of the British women lacked a transceiver. She reprimanded the woman, saying, "I asked you if you had a transceiver before we left! From now on you must do everything I say! This is not a game!" Sisi gave the woman the transceiver that Sisi herself had intended to wear on the descent.
Sisi's handling of the situation was feckless. If Alicia had demonstrated a lack of skill that meant she could not safely descend Vallee Blanche, then Sisi should have insisted that Alicia take the cable car back to Chamonix. By becoming upset, and suggesting that Alicia would be falling constantly, Sisi threatened to shatter Alicia's confidence in her ability to ski the valley safely, when in fact Alicia had more than sufficient skill to handle the descent, as she demonstrated during the event. Sisi's disparaging comments about Americans were gratuitous and marked her as a rank amateur.
Notwithstanding the bad start, the descent down the valley was a wonderful aesthetic experience. The mountains and the glaciers surround you on all sides; they render the few people there insignificant and nearly invisible. I skied pretty well and Alicia was fine as soon as she got her legs under her. It turned out that Alicia was a stronger skier than two other members of our group, an older British man and a foul-mouthed British woman who was divorcing her husband.
A little before noon we reached a beautiful stone refuge (elevation 2516 meters) two thirds of the way down the valley. Our group stopped for lunch at the cafe there. Sisi socialized with other guides. Alicia and I shared a delicious quiche and an onion soup with a wedge of cheese. An hour after lunch we finished the descent. To get to the Montenvers train station (elevation 1913 meters), we first had to hike down about 60 meters of thin snow and rocks at the terminus of the Mer de Glace Glacier. Then we climbed up four flights of stairs that lead to the cable car that takes you to the Montenvers train station. While hiking down to the stairs and then climbing up the stairs to the cable car, I lessened Alicia's load by strapping both her skis and mine to the back of my rucksack.
 |
| Schlep those skis, you dumb beast of burden. |
On the cable car, I asked how long the route we had done was and what the vertical drop was. Sisi didn't know. "I don't care about the numbers. I just had a great day in the mountains," she said. The bitch is as ignorant as she is snide and amateurish, I thought. Andy, the Briton who was studying to be a guide, said that the route from the Aiguille du Midi to Montenvers was about 12 km long and descended about 2300 meters (6,900 feet).
That night Alicia and I had dinner at a pizzeria near the center of Chamonix and pints of Amstel at Le Terrasse. Back at Chaumiere, I settled up with the proprietor so that we could get an early start on Saturday, when we would check out and return to Geneva after a final day of skiing at Les Grand Montets. Before bed, we walked up the road to the hostel and had pints of Stella Artois.
Saturday and Sunday, March 26-27
The bus we wanted to take was not running so we again took the train to Argentiere. I felt rusty on the slopes in the morning, but in the afternoon I connected my turns on the mogul runs along the Blochard cable car. Alicia photographed and videotaped me while I skied. My technique is inferior to that of strong skiers, but I have improved a lot in the past few years. My skis are more parallel, my posture is more erect, and at times I am fluidly connecting my turns on moguls.
That night a driver named Rob drove Alicia, me, and four other people back to Geneva at breakneck speeds. I enjoyed getting jostled around the back of the van as he negotiated the serpentine mountain roads. In Geneva, we stayed at the S.H. Hoteles, which made up for its affordable room rates by gouging you on its food and drink prices. On Sunday morning, we caught a flight back to the States. On the return flight (as I had done on the outbound flight as well), I listened to Philip Glass's electronic opera, 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, which supplied the musical theme for our excursion.
The trip was grueling, challenging, and pricey, but aesthetically it was worth everything we put into it. It renewed my desire to acquire the mountaineering skills that are necessary to safely ski the glaciers between the cable cars of the Chamonix Valley and the mountains that form France's borders with Switzerland and Italy. The trip also demonstrated that Alicia and I are a cohesive team that can meet the challenges presented by international travel, unstable French mountain guides, and glacier skiing.
That night Alicia and I had dinner at a pizzeria near the center of Chamonix and pints of Amstel at Le Terrasse. Back at Chaumiere, I settled up with the proprietor so that we could get an early start on Saturday, when we would check out and return to Geneva after a final day of skiing at Les Grand Montets. Before bed, we walked up the road to the hostel and had pints of Stella Artois.
Saturday and Sunday, March 26-27
The bus we wanted to take was not running so we again took the train to Argentiere. I felt rusty on the slopes in the morning, but in the afternoon I connected my turns on the mogul runs along the Blochard cable car. Alicia photographed and videotaped me while I skied. My technique is inferior to that of strong skiers, but I have improved a lot in the past few years. My skis are more parallel, my posture is more erect, and at times I am fluidly connecting my turns on moguls.
That night a driver named Rob drove Alicia, me, and four other people back to Geneva at breakneck speeds. I enjoyed getting jostled around the back of the van as he negotiated the serpentine mountain roads. In Geneva, we stayed at the S.H. Hoteles, which made up for its affordable room rates by gouging you on its food and drink prices. On Sunday morning, we caught a flight back to the States. On the return flight (as I had done on the outbound flight as well), I listened to Philip Glass's electronic opera, 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, which supplied the musical theme for our excursion.
The trip was grueling, challenging, and pricey, but aesthetically it was worth everything we put into it. It renewed my desire to acquire the mountaineering skills that are necessary to safely ski the glaciers between the cable cars of the Chamonix Valley and the mountains that form France's borders with Switzerland and Italy. The trip also demonstrated that Alicia and I are a cohesive team that can meet the challenges presented by international travel, unstable French mountain guides, and glacier skiing.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)