Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Published on November 24, 1951, Annapurna became an instant sensation. For al-
most a year, it stayed in first place on the nonfiction best-seller list in France. Forty-
eight years later, Herzog maintains in L'Autre Annapurna, the topic has been “trans-
lated into almost all languages” and has sold fifteen million copies. (Conservative ob-
servers place the number at closer to eleven million. In either case, Annapurna stands
as far and away the best-selling mountaineering book ever written.) If all the copies of
the topic sold over the past forty-seven years were stacked in a pile, Herzog brags, they
“would surpass the height of a dozen Annapurnas.”
The topic, however, did not make Herzog rich, for from the start all the royalties
were earmarked for the Himalayan Committee. It is no exaggeration to say that sev-
eral decades' worth of French expeditions to the great ranges (including several under-
taken by Terray) were bankrolled by the profits from Annapurna.
When I interviewed him in 1999, Herzog said he was especially gratified whenever
he got a letter from someone (like myself) who had been inspired to climb by reading
Annapurna. “I receive many letters from young Americans,” he said. “All these let-
ters, from boys, from girls, touch me equally. I answer them all.
“I showed the topic [in manuscript] to all the members of the expedition,” Herzog
insisted. “They all approved it. I tried to give each his due. They were all impressed by
it—even Lachenal.”
In L'Autre Annapurna, Herzog relates a curious exchange from the first year of
his convalescence, when the Archbishop of Marseille visited his bedside. According to
Herzog, the cleric forced upon him the comparison to the martyrdom of Christ that
would come to inform his own sense of the meaning of Annapurna. This dignified man
categorized his own visit to Herzog as a “pilgrimage.”
“My son,” spoke the archbishop, “in the light of your own tribulation [ calvaire ],
have you been able to imagine, if only in flashes, what the passion of Christ must have
been?”
Herzog admitted that the analogy of the nails driven through Christ's hands and
feet to his own suffering had sometimes occurred to him.
“So the mountain was your cross?”
Herzog demurred. “My story, alas, concerns only myself. It contains no mystery.
Neither on the summit, nor during the interminable tragedy of the descent, had I any
revelation or vision. Thus—and I am aware of disappointing you, Monsignor—I don't
consider myself the carrier of any message.”
“The most edifying message is your example. You must bear witness to it.”
As so often in this memoir, Herzog puts the words that praise him in another's
mouth. Did such a conversation really take place between the archbishop and the
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