THE CULT OF DANGER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1054, 6 November 1959, Page 14

THE CULT OF DANGER

A SUMMER GONE, by Henry Klier, translated by James Kirkup; Geoffrey Bles, E lish price 16/-. PUEBLO, by Michel-Droit, translated by Edward Hyams; Eyre & Spottiswoode, English price 16/-. INCE the war, the cult of danger in mountaineering-exemplified by such ascents in the thirties as the north faces of the Grand Jorasses and the Matter-horn-had to all appearances gone out of fashion. It is interesting then to come across it again, expressed fiction~ ally in this novel by Henry Klier, a wellknown Austrian climber. Here again is the basic desperate unease, the Wagnerian liebestod on the mountain (the Matterhorn north face), the philosophic conviction expressed that unhappiness can only be resolved by violent or hazardous action. But the realityand this is what gives this book its allpervasive sadness — never parallels the heroic dream; and the hero who has made a mess of all his personal relationships in pursuit of the chimerfa, stands stupidly over the abyss longing "for a little patch of level ground, and a mouthful of tea." One should be far more moved by the plight of Michel-Droit’s unhappy Indian, who, far less sophisticated, wants little out of life. The only reason one isn’t is because the author has wasted some fine writing and characterisation on an imptobable plot. Paco, the Pueblo Indian, and his problems, are made the subject of keen sociological comment, -but to make Paco’s sister an ex-Los Alamos atomic scientist who has gone native again because of. moral disapproval of the bomb, is an improbability from which the book does not recover. Yet Michel-Droit can write; he has looked hard at the Mexican landscape and people, and here they areblack shadow, fierce sunshine and exploding colours, all framing the fatalism

of centuries.

R.A.

K.