Feeding the Rat: Profile of a Climber

by Al Álvarez

Book Overview

According to Mo Anthoine, who has climbed mountains all over the globe, the famed Mallory only confused the issue by answering the perennial question Why? with Because it is there. What really drives climbers to relish the exhausting, uncomfortable, often dangerous challenge posed by an uphill trek is what Anthoine calls feeding the rat--need to get out, to flush out the system, to court discomfort, and to prevail.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0871133075
• ISBN13: 9780871133076
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Llanberis, Classic Climbing

A book that evokes a time and place very well. While the "older generation" will undoubtedly get a lot out of this, enabling them to reminisce about the good old days, when climbing was not so popular, risks were very personal and sponsors rare, it is a much broader book than that. It is a climbing biography, love story and adventure in one short but very well written volume. The appeal to those who know Llanberis and the characters that populated this small Welsh town in the 60s, 70s and 80s is obvious. However, it is also a eulogy to the concept of mixing work and play very effectively. While Mo and Jackie had way more energy than any normal people, this book also paints a brief portrait of how to build a business, keep it running, make it a role model for outdoor equipment and not lose sight of life in a way that the plethora of dry business and management books would do well to emulate. Whether any of this would be possible in today's regulated world is open for debate. A beautiful book, poignant and hard to put down.

Quite Simply One of the best Mountain Reads Ever

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...

Stirring profile of Mo Anthoine's spirit and accomplishments

I sat down at 8:00 last evening and finished this book in 2 1/2 hours, it was so fascinating and exciting! Mo Anthoine is a wonderful man who cares more about friendship and fellowship on a climb than he does about conquering the mountain. This ethos makes him most admirable. But, Mo Anthoine is more than admirable. His climbing exploits are riveting. Moreover, as a movie climbing double, camera man, and stunt man for movies like *The Mission*, and as the inventor and producer of much climbing equipment, we see Anthoine as a kind of mountaineering Michaelangelo, a true Renaissance man. The book's title, *Feeding the Rat*, refers to a phrase Anthoine uses to describe the mixture of pleasure and fear and pain that is fed in the climber, a feeding he can't get enough of. The book's author, A. Alvarez, writes beautifully, giving his readers a loving portrait of Mo Anthoine, a visceral sense of being on a variety of climbs, and much sound and accesible philosophical material to think about.