UKC

Which one? Only those who have read both need apply.

In reply to Will Hunt:

OH Bite my jumar. Whillans of course.

In reply to Will Hunt:

Hard Years every time - evinces the era better and there's the fantastic descent from Cloggy story

In reply to Will Hunt:

Found the Hard Years a more enjoyable read.

Lots been said about The Villain on UKC. I found it a pain in the arse to be honest.

The Ent

In reply to Enty:

You're supposed to read it not sit on it.
you can keep that copy btw. ew.

In reply to Will Hunt:

"The Hard Years" is like a nursery rhyme.

"the Villain" is more like a Roald Dahl short story.

In reply to Will Hunt:

The Hard Years

In reply to Will Hunt:

a more pertinent question would be "Portrait of a Mountaineer" or "The Villain"

haven't read both do can't comment

In reply to Will Hunt: If you like reading text books (and love foot notes) then you will enjoy "The Villain".... Both very different books read em both!

Andy

In reply to sandy: Oh and if you've not read it get One Man's Mountains by Tom Patey my fav. climbing book from that era...

Andy

In reply to Will Hunt:

I thought the Hard years read very much like a ghost written sports biography. Quite twee really! Certainly it could never be described as a warts expose although by the sound of it, Joe Brown hasn't got many many 'warts' and is a great bloke.

I thought The Villain was MUCH better. It probably helps that Don was such a contrary character anyway and so the picture of him is multi dimensional. There are plenty of good stories in it too. Some people don't like Jim Perrin's style (he can be very flowery) but I thought he did an excellent job on The Villain. And I didn't even find the oft mentioned page notes irritating.

Bascially both are a good read, but I think The Villain is much better as a biography.

In reply to Will Hunt:

I haven't read The Hard Years for a long time. For me it got rather tedious towards the end with its stories of snow-plodding. It's a pretty vanilla account, but on the other hand it is Joe's own words, at least as written by Peter Crew. The Villain will not appeal to anti-intellectuals, but it's more of a search for the truth.

Anyone ever tried riding down the railway like that?! I'm sorry, but I don't believe the whole tale. I've tried sitting on stones and trying to slide. You don't move. Unless the railway was iced up (which Joe doesn't mention) then I don't get it.

jcm

In reply to Will Hunt:
As has been said once and this seems to be ignored so far, these books are not a comparable choice, if for no other reason than Perrin's writing is streets better than the other two.
One is a biography and the other allegedly an autobiography.
The comparison should be, The Hard Years and Portrait of a Mountaineer. Hard Years in my opinion is probably the most "correct" but does seem clinical at times. There is quite a bit of slagging off and doing Joe down in Portrait. However this was ghosted by a local newspaper reporter and friend of Don.
Anyone taking any notice of this thread, thinking that there might be a choice, needs to read both. Then read Villain. Yes the footnotes are hard work so read it straight through and if you thought it worthwhile do it again and read the footnotes then.
Yes I have read all three a number of times, but then again it's only my opinion.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

I've not read The Hard Years for a long time either. I can remember discovering it in, of all places, Newry Library, in about 1968. I've always felt that it was commendable of Crew to get it done, given that Brown had psyched him out re climbing. And, let's not forget, it was written in a more media-innocent age. Flower power yes, but 1940s/1950s values still prevailed. You didn't tell it as it was; it was bad form to upset folk. Robbins' Tis-sa-ak (sp?) was a revelation; what, these guys had personal problems? (And it's the interpersonal stuff that makes life so very interesting.) The closest Brown comes to this is, I think, with his account of the FA of November, something like, 'Our relationships were, at times, as complex as the routes we did.'

Mick

In reply to anybody who has read The Villain:

I have found Jim Perrin un-readable in the past, will I be wasting my time with 'the Villain'?

Davie

I found The Villain did not live up to it's reputation - the footnotes were infuriating, though other than that there were some good insights into the man.

In reply to Will Hunt:

It's all a matter of taste. Portrait of a Mountaineer left so much out, but it was a contemporary account of the Whillans years written by a chap who knew something of Don. The Vilain is the warts and all version, beautifully written by a master craftsman and easily worth a read. That said, you do have to like Perrin's style. Get a copy from the libray and have a secret try - I'm not lending my copy out

In reply to Wee Davie:

No.

Mick

In reply to :squirt::

Maybe best to regard it as a 'book in stereo' - text in one ear, footnotes in the other.

Mick

In reply to Mick Ward: The Villain is a tendentious (even sententious) 'psychological' profile of Whillans written by a man who worships at the feet of St. Joseph (of Brown). The Hard Years is ok, but it has the depth and insight of a footballer's ghost-written 'auto'-biography. Portrait of a Mountaineer is a more absorbing, more human account of a climbing career that spanned the 50s, 60s and 70s.

In reply to Will Hunt: hard years is easy to read - i haven't finished the villain yet ( a year on).

In reply to johncoxmysteriously: tried it once but just went a lttle way and then slid sideways off the rails.. a big piece of slate would do the job though probably!

In reply to Mattyk:

Same here, on page 108 atm and may have another go next week at getting another chapter read. footnotes are a pain, not so bad if on the same page but, pah.

In reply : Aye like all Perrins writing its shite,boring as hell...

In reply to Will Hunt:

Christmas 2006 I got Learning to Breathe and The Villain.

LTB took me 2 days, TV took me 3 months but I got there in the end.

I must be an anti--intellectual.

The Ent

In reply to Marc C: "The Villain is a tendentious (even sententious) 'psychological' profile of Whillans written by a man who worships at the feet of St. Joseph (of Brown)"

We've been here before, haven't we? There's nothing tendentious about e.g. John Cleare's account of how he chucked an unrepentant Whillans out of his house after he attempted to rape a young woman sleeping in the same room as him. The other two books tend to skip over such unpleasant incidents, the Brown one because it was written in a less sensationalist, more easily offended age and the Whillans one because it was only interested in putting the pro Whillans case.

In reply to John2: Yes, John, we've been here before. But singling out unsavoury episodes - as if they represent the full picture of a man's life - strikes me as being tendentious.

In reply to Marc C: What I'm implying is that far from being a single unpleasant episode it was characteristic of the man. Brown was too reticent to describe similar incidents that took place - he reacted by terminating their climbing partnership. The Whillans book omitted them since it was a hagiography.

If you ever watch the TV programmme about an aged Brown and Whillans climbing Cemetery Gates, Brown says words to the effect of 'When we got older and got wives and girlfriends Don wasn't able to behave normally in a social situation' when asked why their climbing partnership broke up.

There's nothing tendentious about this - it led to the breakup of Whilans' most worthwhile climbing partnership.

What I find tendentious is your persistent refusal to recognise that there were deeply unpleasant aspects to Whillans' personality.

In reply to John2: There are unpleasant aspects about most of our personalities! I'm not denying Whillans had deeply unappealing perosnality traits. What I AM asserting is the duty of a biographer to present a balanced summation of a man's life. Whillans, by most accounts, was a very complex character - bullying/soft-hearted, insensitive/compassionate, etc. You're veering close to repeating the Perrinesque judgement "Joe Brown didn't approve of Whillans therefore Whillans was a wrong 'un'". Would Brown's and Perrin's (or anyone's?) personal behaviours with the opposite sex withstand such scrutiny?

In reply to Will Hunt:

Read both: they complement each other well. Also read the Whillans autobiography edited by Ormerod.

In reply to Marc C: I'm not relying on Brown's judgement alone - I've met more than one climber who knew Whillans and did not like his personality.

Anyway, enough - I'm obviously not going to shift you from such a deeply entrenched position. I await your sympathetic accounts of the life and achievements of Fred West and Harold Shipman.

In reply to Will Hunt: A little while ago, before my security conscious name change, I posted this about The Hard Years:

"I'd say it's interesting but no more and hasn't worn the passing years well as a read, irrespective of the unquestioned achievements of its author. It made plain that one of Jim Perrin's achievements in writing The Villan was to set the context of being a young man in the post war period very well; Brown's book, not unreasonably for a book written in the late 1960s, assumes that this is known and so if you weren't a young man in the post war years, it can be difficult to work through the reserve and understatement and get a real feel for what it was like half a century ago."

On that basis, I prefer The Villan, though I think there's room at the end for a summation of why someone so talented failed ultimately to fully realise their potential; something that compares the makeup and circumstances of others equally talented but ultimately underachieving in different fields who stepped away from the plate before they really should - George Best, say - could bring a lot more insight at the end of the book.

Were Perrin to write a biography of Joe Brown too (and someone really should) we'd have a very rich portrait of two of the more (arguably most, though only arguably) influential figures in the transition of climbing from a gentleman's pursuit to a sport open to all.

T.

In reply to Will Hunt:

I was really dissapointed with The Hard Years. I found it poorly written and lacking in character.
Shame because the man himself is an enigma, the book was written like a statement of facts and I didnt find it as engrossing as it should have been.

In reply to John2: "I've met more than one climber who didn't like Don Whillans". Hmm, that's statistically conclusive then

As for my 'entrenched position', I repeat: I am not denying Whillans had some very unpleasant character traits. But, as someone el;se has just posted, a searching biography of Joe Brown (and I doubt Perrin would be the man to write this) would be very interesting.

As for mentioning Fred West and Harold Shipman in the same context as Don Whillans (!), this really does YOUR 'entrenched position' no favours, and, if anything, confirms my accusation of tendentiousness.

In reply to Marc C: I was only attempting to introduce a little feeble humour into a rather sterile discussion by mentioning West and Shipman.

You really do seem to be coming at this from an entrenched position - Perrin's contention that Whillans was not an entirely admirably character seems to make him (Perrin) the villain in your eyes. I can't think offhand of anyone who has recently produced more worthwhile biographies of climbers than Perrin.

Out of interest, have you actually read The Villain in its entirety?

In reply to John2: Again, my 'entrenched position' is NOT that Whillans was a wholly admirable character...aaargh!!!

I am an admirer of many of Perrin's essays and his biography of Menlove Edwards. My 'position' (entrenched or otherwise)- after reading The Villain in its entirety! - is simply that I feel Perrin doesn't present a fully rounded (ironic choice of phrase in a debate about Whillans!) character portrait or IMO a fair assessment of his achievements. I believe that Perrin's affiliation with Brown biases his presentation. Perrin himself states that one of his aims was to debunk the whole 'Whillans the Dobber' mythology (which was equally pernicious btw). Somewhere between the 'Two Whillans' maybe the Truth lies...

In reply to Marc C: So humour me - what is the evidence for Perrin's affiliation with Brown? And which of Whillans' achievements do you not think were adequately assessed in The Villain?

In reply to Will Hunt: Both good, but found Perrins use of footnotes difficult to cope with. I'm used to them in academic books, and reference or short explanation in other climbing books (Bonnington for example) but overused in the Villain. Most could have been incorporated into the main text.
Pete

In reply to John2: If you don't know how friendly Perrin is with Brown, then you must be 'outside the climbing beltway'.
Ask Gordon.

Not a case of individual achievements not being adequately
assessed. The overall assessment - i.e. that Whillans was second as a climber to Brown, that his climbs were poorer quality, that he was the 'nearly man' - is IMO a contentious summary.

In reply to Marc C: I am indeed outside the climbing beltway, but surely it would have been remiss of Perrin to produce a biography of Whillans without extensive input from Brown.

As for the overall assessment, it is indisputable that Whillans resented the fact that he was not invited on various expeditions on which he would probably have performed very well. The reasons for this must lie in his personality, and Brown was not a one man climbing establishment with power to grant membership of all of these expeditions. It seems to me entirely legitimate and a matter of genuine interest to probe those aspects of his personality that led to him not being invited.

I don't personally remember Perrin asserting that Whillans' climbs were of poorer quality than Brown's - perhaps this is a part of the book that I've forgotten. I seem to remember him thinking the South Face of Annapurna a pretty significant climb.

What is certain is that Whillans produced less climbs than Brown (partly because his climbing career was shorter) and so his achievement was smaller in this respect - obviously though, quantity and quality are two diferent matters.

In reply to John2: Personally I don't like the Villain on several grounds - give me the Hard Years or Portrait any time, (or even Rope Boy - is that still around?)

My main objection to the Villain is that Perrin is so unsympathetic to what seems to me essentially a tragedy - here was an extraordianry talented and bright guy, whose life progressively failed to live up to the promise of his early years - and he was sensitive enough to know it. There were many people who didn't like him, but he made and kept friends with plenty too.

Perrin quotes from Portrait extensively, dishonestly not citing the source when it suits his case, citing it and pouring scorn when it doesn't. It seems to me that a key passage that he doesn't quote is Whillans' disappointment when he realised that he could have been a PE teacher - what a great job that would have been in the 50s for a working class climber! How p*ssed off must he have been to watch his less talented peers get comfortable while he was reduced to traipsing round the country after the dirtiest, hardest jobs going!

In reply to John2: Agree in the main. Only point of contention: your assertion that the ONLY reason Whillans wasn't invited on expeditions was because of his personality. Not the fact that his personality didn't 'fit' or 'match' the climbing Establishment's 'person spec'? So ANOTHER reason might be the prejudice and hidebound culture of the expedition selectors? As you say, he'd probably have performed very well.

In reply to Will Hunt:

The Hard Years every time. I really can't stand Perrin's style of writing. I found that the last quarter I was reading, only because I'd started, and I felt like I should.

Incidentally, I don't agree that the Boardman-Tasker should've been split between The Villain, and Learning to Breathe. Andy Cave's book, was an awesome book. Far better than The Villain. The only reason The Villain was any good, was because of the subject matter. The book itself was pap.

In my personal opinion.

In reply to Will Hunt: If you want a proper read, get 'conquistadors of the useless' by Lionel Terray. Now there's a proper hero!

In reply to withey:

Not personally, but I've watched my friend's video of himself, and a friend doing it. It works fine. It was cold, but I don't think there was any ice on the tracks.

In reply to Will Hunt: The Villain,,

I found the style of writing in The Hard Years very simplistic and stylistically inept but once you get used to / get over that it is a very good read.

Jim Perrin's writing style on the other hand is far more flowing and competent, but I gave up on The Villain. Perrin's habit of taking about 30 pages to describe what could easily be described in 3 pages by including the most irrelevant and pointless asides just got to me in the end...

I suppose the choice should also depend partly on what interests you most. If you want to read about climbing then The Hard Years is a better bet, if you want to read about personality clashes, alcoholism and rancour then go for The Villain.

Btw, as an irrelevant aside, if I had to recommend one climbing book to someone who had not read nothing from the genre before I would choose Mick Fowler's first book.