The Ascent of Rum Doodle

This deliciously absurd, very short book can be enjoyed in a few hours. But the real pleasure is in reading it again to pick up the jokes missed first time. The story of an incompetent group of British amateurs and their attempt to climb the world's tallest mountain (the forty thousand and a half foot Rum Doodle), it is told in the first-person by the hapless expedition leader, Binder. Much of the humour comes from the contrast between Binder's stoical optimism and the disasters which he describes. Rum Doodle has been a classic word-of-mouth hit in the UK. Written in the 50s by an unassuming railway engineer who led a quiet, unassuming life, this flash of genius could easily have remained unread had it not been discovered and championed by Bill Bryson, the US author and Anglophile (who has written the foreward to this edition). If you like Monty Python or the UK version of The Office, you will love Rum Doodle.

There was a period of time a few years back during which I ate up the literature of British exploration like candy - the tragic story of Robert Scott in the Antarctic, the thrilling survival adventures of Sir Ernest Shackleton, and the like. These yarns had in common their Britishness - a bizarre combination of courage and, frankly, foolishness (Scott thought he could get to the South Pole on PONIES and died in pursuit of that belief, accompanied by some people who had never even been south before, while the Norwegian Amundsen sensibly took dogs and experienced skiers and beat him to the destination). Fortunately the British have a world-class capacity to poke fun at their own foibles, and that is what "Ascent of Rum Doodle" is all about. It parodies a (fictional) expedition to ascend Rum Doodle, a 40,000-foot (!) mountain somewhere near Everest Expedition Leader Binder narrates his own story. In the spirit of the literature he parodies, our hero Binder never once falters in his belief of the superiority of his crew and the indomitability of the British Spirit. This, despite his crew consisting of a geographer (who is unable to negotiate the London bus system), a doctor (who is always sick), a climber (too overcome by "lassitude" to get out of his sleeping bag), a native cook (so disastrous that the team attempts to leave him behind on the mountain), and a photographer (who does not capture a single shot during the entire expedition. This hapless crew are babysat by thousands of native porters, who at one point must condescend to actually carry the British crew (fortified by the many crates of medicinal champagne they have burdened the porters with) on their backs. Did I mention they accidentally climb the wrong mountain?? It's apparently a kind of cult classic among people who actually do this kind of adventuring (not just armchair folk like me), but it's a quick and funny funny read, so even if "frostbite" has not been a factor in your reading choices up to now, you should have a go at this one. A humor classic that should be better known in the U.S.

This book is one of my all-time favorite books! I was first introduced to "Rum Doodle" by my dad, Dee Molenaar, who himself had been a member of several mountaineering expeditions in the 50's and 60's. The Ascent of Rum Doodle brims with humor and a unique take on the world of high altitude climbing. I don't know if Bowman himself was a mountain-climber or not, but he certainly seems to understand the dynamics and personalities that sometimes are part of a mountain-climbing expeditiion.

If you're a serious student of mountaineering history and/or literature this is a must read. Rum Doodle will help you to put your passion into proper perspective. If you don't give a damn about climbing but enjoy understated humor this is a fun read. However, if you don't "get" nice and dry British humor don't bother. It's just not the book for you. This is without a doubt the greatest spoof of the British mountaineering expedition accounts ever conceived. Every word of the book will ring true to readers that are familiar with the genre. I've read it three times and still find myself laughing out loud. But then again, I'm a climber so what do I know?

You never know with humour, and for the first half of this book I wasn't at all sure I was going to like it. Was it funny at all? I couldn't make up my mind. Then, more or less as the great climb got well and truly under way, something in my mind meshed with the sublime, ethereal imbecility of the author's theme and suddenly I kept roaring with laughter. In a way, this is a quintessentially English book. Its humour is so gentle, so oblique, so dry. Even the running gags - of which there are many - take a while to bed down. The first reference to carrying cases of champagne up the mountain tends to have little or no impact on your brain. It's such a ridiculously impossible idea that your mind simply rejects it. But it keeps coming back, progressively associated with the expedition leader's stolid persistence in believing that it is all for "medicinal purposes", until suddenly you are swept away by helpless laughter. If you appreciate dry wit, and you happen to have a day to spare (two half-days will answer almost as well), you really owe it to yourself to join our intrepid heros and share their triumphs, disasters and general roaring incompetence. You won't regret it.