Eric Newby (1919–2006)

If you read any mountaineering books, you would know that they quickly become boring, even if you are an aspiring mountaineer yourself. These books share a similar pattern: travelling to an unfamiliar place, setting up camp, suffering extreme hardships, ignoring danger, persevering despite atrocious weather conditions, ecstatically reaching the summit, surviving against all odds. Maybe losing a few people, or limbs, or at least digits in the process.
This pattern became so obvious that in show more 1956 W. E. Bowman wrote a satire on all such books called The Ascent of Rum Doodle.
Eric Newby must have been aware of the curtain being drawn on mountain adventures in written form, so he structured his book in very different way. Instead of presenting himself and his partner Hugh Carless as mountain conquering heroes, he honestly depicts themselves for what they really were - two self-indulgent clueless men who impose themselves on locals in a poor nation. They are bullying their way to be dragged up steep mountain valleys close to the high point of their fancy - a mountain top they have not a slight chance of reaching. The account of their adventures written in this ironic self-deprecating way is like a breath of fresh air in the oxygen and imagination deprived atmosphere of mountain literature.
Yet, the humor does not fully save the book. At times the author is trying too hard to be funny, the dialogs are clearly edited and spiced up after the trip. The main drawback though is in the author's inability to observe without bias and reflect on people of another culture that he meets. To his upper-class member eyes they are undoubtfully curious but inferior people, uncultured and dirty, unequal to the aspirations and dreams of the two adventurous imperials. As the author makes fun of himself and his friend, those locals around them are reduced to a complete laughing stock for the benefit of armchair travelers at home. show less

When he left school, Eric Newby worked his way to Australia and back as an apprentice on one of the last generation of sail-powered cargo ships. Immediately after this he found himself plunged into equally adventurous military service in World War II. All of which didn't do much to prepare him for a civilian career after 1945. Offers to join expeditions to exotic parts of the world were slow to come in, so he gritted his teeth and joined the family firm, supplying ready-made clothes to the show more better class of provincial department stores.

In this memoir he tells us about that period of about fifteen years when he was working in the garment business whilst trying to get a toehold as a writer. We get amusing sketches of the archaic business world of Lane & Newby, Mantle Manufacturers and Wholesale Costumiers, and an affectionate portrait of the author's father, an Edwardian oarsman who often sounds like something out of J K Jerome, but seems to have had an acute eye for business (albeit with a blind spot for the bureaucratic obligations of postwar Britain). And of course there's a lot about the nightmarish world of fashion, where you have to decide months ahead of time what your fickle customers are going to want (or rather, what the store buyers are going to want on their behalf). In the Britain of the 1940s, with everything in short supply, and the French liable to change hemlines at a moment's notice, this was clearly no joke, even before they came up with the New Look...

Very much a period piece, but Newby knew what he was doing, and this is still an entertaining read long after almost everything in the commercial world it tells us about has become obsolete. show less

A wonderful travel adventure from the end of the golden age of exploration. Newby is best when he describes with humor and self-deprecation their woeful lack of credentials in the matter of exploration and mountain climbing. After four days of practice in the relative safety of Wales, Newby and his companion Hugh Carless travel to Afghanistan and the Hindu Kush, attempt to climb the 20,000 ft Mir Samir and trek through Nuristan in northern Afghanistan. The fact that they accomplished all show more they did is a great testament to their courage and perhaps naive luck. I can't believe any such journey would be possible today. show less

A self-deprecating fashion industry Brit (he's careful not to describe appropriate experience - he served in British Special Forces in WWII - this omission helps the story's charm), gathers up incomplete, inadequate provisions and goes on a fun little jaunt in vacation spots north of Kabul.

Who knew Afghanistan could be so wonerfully droll...