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tries—evidently the germ of the Peace Corps. “An admirable suggestion, Maurice,”
says Kennedy, according to Herzog. “We need an ideal for our youth.”
One day, in conversation with André Malraux, Herzog comes up with a spontan-
eous
pensée:
“What is culture, if not knowledge become conscience [
connaissance dev-
enue conscience
]?”
The born epigrammatist, Malraux asks if he can make this startling
pensée
his own.
“It's yours, André.”
“Must I cite you?”
“Not at all. What's given is given.”
Robert Oppenheimer, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Charles Lindbergh, Juan Perón,
Brigitte Bardot, Jackie Kennedy—all meet Herzog and fall under the spell of his genius
and charm. In a similar vein, Herzog limns his public career as noblesse oblige, rather
than political ambition: To serve others was “a sacred duty.”
Yet one must conclude that that public career has been a remarkably successful one.
Herzog would never be able to climb again after Annapurna—though he hiked up
Monte Rosa in 1955 with Lachenal as (some would argue) a publicity stunt. But by the
1990s, the man was firmly lodged in his country's pantheon of heroes of sport and ex-
ploration. Herzog's name means to the French-speaking world what Sir Edmund Hil-
lary's does to the English, what Reinhold Messner's does to the German. Meanwhile,
by the 1990s, the names of Herzog's Annapurna teammates had slipped into limbo,
known well only within the insular circles of serious mountaineers.
So things stood, that is, until 1996. That year, the publication of Ballu's biography of
Rébuffat and Guérin's edition of Lachenal's diary exploded like twin bombshells. An-
napurna was suddenly back in the news—but as the subject of revisionist revelations.
The perfect fairy tale of Herzog's book became a suspect fable. The iconoclasts started
throwing stones.
Herzog had told me that the controversy had troubled him not at all: “I have the ex-
perience of the truth.” Journalists close to the scene knew better. Says
L'Equipe
's Ben-
oît Heimermann, “Herzog was distraught about the controversy. He tried everything
he could do to stop it. He tried to use his influence with the press.
“This business has done a fair amount of damage to Herzog's reputation. In
Chamonix or Grenoble, people are disappointed. In Paris, I suppose, he's still a great
man.”
A
MONG ALL NINE TEAMMATES
on Annapurna, none—not even the liaison officer, Francis
de Noyelle—emerges in Herzog's book as more shadowy than Jean Couzy. Indeed, in
Annapurna,
Couzy is almost faceless. The youngest climber at twenty-seven, the one
