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January 10, 2005

Survival Books

I always wanted to write a dissertation on survival stories. It would have chapters on the following topics:

1) Water Logs: Lost at Sea
2) "So Very Cold": Polar Exploration
3) 48 Hour Adventures: Mountain Climbing Disasters
4) "It's What's for Dinner!": Hunger, Cannabilism and Pee Drinking (may each deserve their own chapters)
5) Pets or Food: Animals in Survival Stories (would have a special section on British survivalists)
6) "Survivor": Broadcast Survivalism

Whip out an introduction and conclusion, and you're done!

Here are some of my favorite survival books to date (I'm going to add to this list when I get home and as I think of them -- I can't remember the names of some of them -- like the one with the jewish girl who gets in a plane crash in alaska with a mormon guy who becomes convinced that he needs to convert her for them to be rescued by god -- that was published by Scholastic, which seems to have put out a few survival stories for kids -- and why not! kids love 'em!):

"Adrift: Seventy-six days lost at Sea," by the fabulous Steve Callahan

"The Wreck of the Medusa The Tragic Story of the Death Raft" by Alexander McKee.

The Worst Journey in the World by Aspley Cherry Garrad.

Alive! by Piers Paul Read (here's a nice site on the Andes survivors).

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing

Long Walk : the True Story of Trek To Freedom by Slavomir Rawicz

I was thrilled when I realized that there was an actual Library of Congress subject heading devoted to these things -- "Survival after airplane accidents, shipwrecks, etc." Some people just call them men and women against nature books.

Let's face it, I'm not going to write a dissertation anytime soon.

But Susan and I ARE going to have a survivalist/cannnibalism book club! We will definitely serve snacks when we meet. Let me know if you want to join in the fun!

p.s. You know what's also really good? post-apocalyptic stories! (not the religious ones) but those are fictional -- so far, anyway. More on those later maybe.

My Side of the Mountain was pretty good. Fiction, but still gets the idea. I read it when I was a kid.

Hatchet>/a> looks kind of good -- another one of those Scholastic survival stories. I wonder if they had an editor who was really into them or something??

Posted by mary at January 10, 2005 3:26 PM

Comments

"Minus 148" by Art Davidson. Awesome! IT's about the first expedition to climb Mt. McKinley in winter. "nanda Devi" by John Roskelley (local guy; awesome climber; bonafide sexist asshole) is one of the last books to follow the classic mountaineering narrative (e.g., "Annapurna" by Herzog).

If you're going to include, "Alive," then you might want to include something about the Donner Party.

Your bibliography shouldn't include touchy-feely books like "Into Thin Air"; they shouldn't be so freakin' introspective. The closest they should come to introspection should be something like, "While we were disappointed that Farine was killed in the crevasse we all knew that he would insist on us continuing the climb."

Posted by: Anonymous at January 11, 2005 6:42 PM

Tim has "volunteered" to host a survival bookclub meeting on mountaneering disasters. We will include "Touching the Void" even though he has some qualms. We will also include "Into Thin Air," and "Annapurna" and maybe "Nanda Devi" -- "the last book of it's kind that fits into the classic mountaneering narrative," says Teem.

Here's my proposed reading schedule:

Cannibalism
Castaways
Polar adventure
Mountaneering misadventure (tim hosts)
Aircraft disasters/Lost in Alaska (combined or not?)

And then maybe we move on to post-apocalyptic stories? many of these themes obviously deserve more than one meeting -- I'm assuming we want around 3 books for any particular meeting -- but we can cycle back since many of them are linked.

Posted by: Mary at January 11, 2005 7:13 PM

If we indeed start with cannibalism -- let's get some suggestions:

Alive!
Donner Party book
Cannibal collection
Life of Pi

Some ideas on Polar adventures:
Shackelton
The Worst Journey in the World (just the one chapter)
... something else (so many to chose from!)

Posted by: Mary at January 11, 2005 9:02 PM

Posted by: Mary at January 11, 2005 9:04 PM

There is also Krakauer's "Into the Wild" (the Alaska Denali lupine bean adventure). But it is an anti-survival book. Like "Thin Air," it is very sentimentalized.

Now, Apolcalypse

Josh D. and I tried doing a post-apocalypse film series. But they got a bit tiresome. Esp. the madmax type ones. We wanted to focus on environmental issues, but there weren't as many as we would have liked. They all seemed to focus on the environmental cataclysm rather than life afterward (Solient Green, Hot House, and Waterworld excepted).

Posted by: tony at January 12, 2005 12:41 PM

OK -- I've posted a notice about our bookclub at craigslist:

http://portland.craigslist.org/grp/55327683.html

We'll see what kind of interest we get. I moved the order around a little bit -- I put cannibalism SECOND in order because I think we really want that to be a potluck, but we don't want to invite strangers into our house.

Posted by: Mary at January 12, 2005 5:12 PM

plus if you start out with a cannibalism-themed potluck, you could be inviting some REALLY FREAKY strangers into your house. and who knows what they'd bring for the potluck.

Posted by: melissa at January 12, 2005 5:54 PM

First meeting:

Adrift
Life of Pi

Second meeting

Wreck of the Medusa
Whaleship Essex

Posted by: Mary at January 21, 2005 11:32 PM

First week
one person lost at sea

Second week
lots of people lost at sea eating each other

Third week
people eating each other in the mountains
(Alive & Donner Party)

Fourth week
People in the mountains breaking things

Fifth week
Polar exploration

Sixth week
Alaska

Seventh week
Airplane crashes

Posted by: Mary at January 21, 2005 11:39 PM

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