Feeding the Rat: A Climber's Life on the Edge
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Product Description
Feeding the Rat is the story of an extraordinary man: climbing legend Mo Anthoine, who found his greatest joy in adventures that tested the limits of human endurance. That passion for "feeding the rat" made him the unsung hero of dozens of horrifying epics in the mountains, including the famous Ogre expedition that almost killed Doug Scott and Sir Chris Bonington. The book is also the story of the extraordinary friendship between Mo Anthoine and A. Alvarez — the distinguished poet, journalist, and critic — whose deeply moving portrait of his longtime climbing partner is a classic of adventure literature.
Spotlight Customer Reviews:
Summary:
Quite Simply One of the best Mountain Reads Ever
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Comment:
This book is really a homage to the not so well known British Climber Moe Antoine... by itself that it not enough reason to buy this book, but the fact that it has some of best adventure stories, personal experiences, packed into tight chapters --- that certainly is a reason to buy this book and it is the reason it is withing the top 10 of all mountaineering books I have read.
Since first reading this book about 15years ago I can still remember the horrid story of Moe and Al sleeping on a wide ledge in Italian Alps... and the whole ledge simply dissapearing into space whilst they are sleeping..... I will not give away how they survived this one... it was however pure luck or fate.
There are also some real lighter gems in the book as well. The climb of the old fogers on the Old Man or Hoy where the corpulant Don Whillans well into his 50s shows the younger hands how it is done...
This book is a kind of tonic for Alvarez to deal with the loss from cancer (at a very young age) of his climbing friend Moe Antoine. In that sense the climbing stories are always framed against the background of larger issues, personal relationships, love, aging, and the prospect of sudden death -- all shot through with a wonderful humour. Yet there are times when reading this book that one is forced to put down the book momentarily and deal with the larger issues of life...
The book is slim and when you finish it you feel a sense of loss, like a journey that ended... why more people do not read this book I do not know...
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