Kiss or Kill: Confessions of a Serial Climber

Definitivamente, este es mi libro de cabecera de Mark. Lo mantengo al costado de mi cama y puedo leerlo todas las noches.

I thoroughly enjoyed this read. If you're looking for info and direction on how to climb, this is not for you. This book is a personal account of years' experiences from an obsessed climber. It puts you in his mind and gives you the feelings from routes conquered and failed, as well as the entire world that surrounds the life of a climber, including the scrutiny climbers receive, the close-nit bonding of climbers, and the loss of comrades to mistakes made or mere harsh conditions. I loved this book, the insight it offers, and the manner in which it was written. Often as he describes the climbs my hands were sweating, and other times when he tells of friends lost and funerals, I was holding back tears.

In Kiss or Kill, Mark reveals his inner turmoils, uses them to push himself harder, and then puts them on paper. He writes in an opinionated form but backs himself up with facts. Whether you care to practice alpinism or not during your lifetime, no one can disagree that Mark has completed routes that no one else will ever repeat. This book, although none of the chapters are ordered, is about life when everything is said and done. Mark opens up so much and spills out so many of his inner turmoils that one cannot read this book without realizing that they at one point dealt with at least some of the same issue(s). Relationships, all-talk individuals, interviews and death... it's all in this book. Anyone who grew up in the punk and hardcore scene will be able to relate to Mark from the start.

This is an intense book. VERY INTENSE. In his forward, Twight challenges the reader directly when he says that he wants to make them think, think really HARD, about what he's writing. Twight expects the reader to put it down periodically to do that thinking. He succeeded. This book is an intensely personal perspective on climbing, the ethos of climbing, and the friendships of climbing. The stories are, sometimes, not easy to read -- I sometimes found myself re-reading parts of them just to make sure that I didn't miss anything. Later in the book, Twight indicates that the "Dr. Doom" persona that he put on was sometimes (maybe) overdone for the articles he wrote. Nonetheless, the feelings of anger and rage and the feeling that he just wants to climb his own way and to his own standards, without interference, appear completely genuine starting right from his quotes from his favorite punk rock songs. Adding to the level of interest are Twight's comments after every article where, with some experience and maybe mellowing of time, he adds some additional reflections on what the story meant to him then and now. (Note: This book won the 2001 Banff Mountain Book Award for Mountain Literature.)

For those not yet initiated in the ways of author and alpine climber Mark Twight, prepare for a literary onslaught on the senses. This guy gets on the last nerve of every mewling maggot who's ever lived a symbiotic existence with a piece of discount furniture. If you're looking for a grand, sweeping, heroic tale in lily white of the conquering of the world's loftiest peaks, look elsewhere. Twight, like any man who places his life in danger in the pursuit of acheivement in this modern age, is an anachronism, and it is to his credit that he even chooses to share his intensely personal and grippingly described adventures among rock, ice, and death. This is serious business, not some guided hiking tour up some overly traveled behemoth. Twight is a visionary alpinist, a fine writer before awards changed his climbing nickname to "Mr. Twight, sir" from the original, and quite accurate, "Dr. Doom." Twight doesn't mince words or deeds. He climbs, writes, and lives by a personal sense of ethics, and if you've never heard of such a concept, this might be the introduction you're looking for.