‘In the story’: Cape Elizabeth author Clint Willis explores himself in a biography of others

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Clint Willis grew up reading the stories of adventurers like Chris Bonington, a twentysomething English climber around whom collected a group of young mountaineers who would redefine their sport, and, for some, the definition of the possible.
Willis, a longtime rock climber who now lives in Cape Elizabeth, read their climbing journals, spending as much time between the pages as some of the writers spent on the sides of mountains.
And when he grew up, Willis, rooted in rock climbing, made the intellectual leap to mountaineering. He has never climbed a big peak, but that didn’t stop him from bringing armchair adventures to a wider audience, beginning with the November 1997 publication of Epic: Stories of Survival from the World’s Highest Peaks. It was the first of a series of anthologies of particularly strong writings by mountaineers pushing the limits of their bodies, minds, and spirits.
Following shortly with High: Stories of Survival from Everest and K2 and Climb: Stories of Survival from Rock, Snow and Ice, Willis created collections, as he noted in introductions to several of them, that were the kinds of anthologies he himself wanted to read. Those books and about 40 others published the stories that didn’t make the headlines — except maybe in passing — but were true-life, human stories of a person or a small group going well beyond what most of us think we can achieve, doing something incredible, and surviving.
With his newest book, The Boys of Everest: Chris Bonington and the Tragedy of Climbing’s Greatest Generation, Willis heads into new territory. But though it is not an anthology and he has written every word, the stories he tells are still very dependent on the writings of others. (Some were even included in his earlier collections.) The book, on local shelves now, has been named a finalist in the “mountain literature” category at the prestigious Banff Mountain Book Festival (with results to be announced Thursday).
Bonington and his friends attempted — and climbed — some of Europe’s most spectacular peaks — the Eiger, the Bonatti Pillar of Petit Dru, the Central Pillar of Freney on Mont Blanc — and made early or first ascents of Himalayan routes thought by many to be unclimbable. Their efforts were monumental, their suffering at times crippling, their survival seemingly impossible.
What’s more, they climbed these peaks with little or no support from the traditional climbing establishment, and largely without native porters or sustained “siege-style” assaults, like those common on Mount Everest even today.
These men were legends-in-the-making; among them were Joe Tasker and Peter Boardman, whose writing was nearly as powerful as their climbing, and Don Whillans, who invented the high-altitude shelter known as the Whillans Box on a series of climbs with Bonington. But it was their writing that earned Willis’s respect, almost more than their physical and mental exertions. “These guys are my heroes,” he says.
Willis writes as though he’s an expert mountaineer who knows firsthand the cold and pain and blood of a daring high-altitude climb. He isn’t. He writes as though he witnessed the events he describes. He didn’t. Yet his voice is authoritative because he’s steeped himself in the climbers’ first-person accounts and experienced the thrills and hardships of climbing vicariously for so long that he has internalized the sport’s emotional vocabulary.
He relied heavily on the people about whom he writes, who left detailed chronicles of their exploits as they laid the groundwork for light and fast movement up, down, and through the mountains — their lives quite literally hanging in the balance.
“Almost all of these guys have written about their expeditions,” Willis says, noting that many climbers keep journals of their efforts that include “blow-by-blow” recollections of the most minute details, so precise that — if a climber had three hands — he could, with the right skills, equipment, and daring, follow right along the route as if reading simple driving directions.
The book itself is almost cinematic in its alternation between big-picture “wide shots” of a climber’s position (physically, emotionally, situationally), and tight close-ups where the reader can see the grain of the rock as a climber’s fingers scrabble for purchase. In its transitions between great intensity and great detachment — the drama of a literal cliff-hanger turning into a distant image of a body falling through the sky — The Boys of Everest lacks a consistent tone, which can be jarring when it is not enthralling. And because of its scope, the book is sometimes necessarily choppy, moving back or forward in time between chapters as Willis maneuvers the characters (and their backstories) into position for the denouement: the 1982 assault on Mount Everest that decimated what remained of the team.
Willis has been inspired by these risk-it-all adventurers, not just in his life, but in his writing. He faced challenges similar to the people he wrote about: complete freedom to move anywhere he could conceive of, the cold crush of reality on his dreams, the loneliness of the endeavor, and the fact that he was not in control of what happened next. And he was able to explore his own youthful dreams and visions, much the way the subjects of his books did.
Where the climbers themselves disagree or are silent, Willis has used his imagination — always based on as much research and fact as he could find — to fill in some of the gaps, such as recreating the exact circumstances under which a disoriented, exhausted climber just walked off the edge of a mountain into freefall.
He admits this approach is unorthodox, but he takes advantage of resources many biographers lack: the living memories of the people Willis writes about, or their surviving friends and family, revisited repeatedly over the five years he spent writing the book.
In doing what he called taking “liberties,” he felt a deep sense of responsibility with the stories of his heroes: “all we have to give each other, is the reality of our lives,” he says, suggesting that even an accidental misportrayal would be nothing short of betrayal.
He likened his efforts to “being in the story,” and while researching and writing, found a deeper understanding of the men whose lives and feats had inspired the younger version of himself: “When you reimagine a story this way, you end up realizing that it actually happened,” he says, his voice breaking with emotion.

Press Herald to host section-front ads

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram will begin publishing paid advertisements on the front pages of its Business, Outdoors, and Sports sections starting October 1, according to employees who spoke on the condition they not be named, for fear of losing their jobs.

The move comes two years after the paper spent $500,000 to redesign its material to fit a narrower page (a change, according to company statements at the time, that reduced newsprint costs by five percent), and at a time when the paper’s Seattle-based parent company’s commitment to Maine is in question.

Section-front ads represent both a throwback and a look at the future. In centuries past, when newspapers’ editorial copy was unashamedly partisan, many newspapers melded advertising and reporting with little apparent worry that readers would perceive bias in news coverage of a paper’s large advertisers. In recent times, the practice has been considered a violation of the strict division between editorial content and advertising. But page-one advertising is becoming increasingly common as publications scramble for additional ad revenue. And in years to come, the industry may see more publishers adopt the strategy of selling such very-high-profile advertising positions.

Maine daily newspapers are split on the topic. Richard Warren, publisher of the Bangor Daily News, says section-front ads are “not a topic of discussion” at his paper, and though he says he “wouldn’t rule it out . . . it would be a change in our traditional approach.” But the Lewiston Sun Journal sells ads on its front page.

The New York Times and the Times-owned Boston Globe began selling section-front ads earlier this summer. And this month, the Wall Street Journal began running ads on its front page, selling for a reported $75,000 or more per day.

In July, the executive editor at the Press Herald/Telegram’s parent newspaper, the Seattle Times, wrote a column defending his paper’s section-front ads in parts of the paper where “content essentially is a consumer guide and the ad content is an important part of the total content mix, such as Motoring, Job Market, and Travel” — not the news-oriented sections that are getting section-front ads at the Press Herald/Telegram.

The trend worries newspaper ethicists, such as Bob Steele of the Poynter Institute, who wrote in July that his major concern was not ad placement, but the possible shift away from using newspaper profits to pay for improved journalism.

“We must make sure the journalism does not suffer,” Steele wrote. “If we are to make more bucks by selling the out-front space, let’s make sure that some of the increased revenue goes right back into the commitment to journalism.”

On another front, though neither publisher Chuck Cochrane nor editor Jeannine Guttman returned calls seeking comment, three postings on the newspaper’s help-wanted Web site suggest that at least departing staff is being replaced, perhaps signaling the end of a year-old hiring freeze.

Ubu Studio to close next month

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Frank Turek, the collager-assemblist owner of Ubu Studio at 316A Congress Street, will close the gallery at the end of October, he confirmed Monday.

Specializing in the “underground” art scene, the gallery has been home to shows like “Pseudo Science Fiction,” by Mike Libby and “Copyartistamps,” by Reed Altemus. But after two years, Turek is retreating to do his own work, some of which has been on view at the gallery. He has rented a studio workspace in the State Theatre building on Congress Street.

And he may end the gallery’s run with a bang, providing a venue for “Can’t Jail the Spirit: Art by Political Prisoner Tom Manning and Others,” the controversial art show cancelled by the University of Southern Maine September 8, seven days into a scheduled seven-week run.

Turek said he is still working out the details of the show, but if things go as planned, it would open October 6, for the First Friday Artwalk.

Widow speaks out - Wife of fallen trooper: marchers don't understand

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Across the Casco Bay Bridge, at a fund-raiser for the family of New York State Trooper Joseph Longobardo, killed in August while attempting to capture a man who had escaped from a New York jail, members of Maine’s law-enforcement community gathered around the widow of the man murdered by Manning in a 1981 highway shootout.

Donna Lamonaco, wearing a T-shirt with a picture of her husband, New Jersey State Trooper Philip Lamonaco, and a blue bracelet with his name, took questions and hugs from supporters.

She had originally planned to come to participate in a protest against the exhibit at USM, but after university president Richard Pattenaude ordered the paintings removed she converted her visit into a fund-raiser and a chance to thank “all of the Maine law-enforcement officials” who objected to the exhibit.

One of those was Breen Savage, a retired Maine State Police corporal and chairman of the Northeast Conference of the Blue Knights, a law-enforcement motorcycle group.

“The night that Phil died, I was working the Maine Turnpike,” Savage said, recalling that Manning’s group and other violent political-action groups in the 1970s and ’80s had police officers worried they would run into armed men and women during traffic stops.

“Today we call people like that urban terrorists,” Savage said. Then, there was no special word for them, just “outlaws, criminals, crooks.”

Lamonaco said she didn’t mind Manning’s supporters marching so much as she feared they were confused. “You want to march, march,” she said. “If you’re going to march behind a cause, make sure you understand both sides. I don’t feel they understand ... Thomas Manning is nothing but a murderer.”

She did object to people saying Manning had a right to express himself, saying he had lost that right when he went to prison. He can do art, she said, and keep it in his cell.

“You don’t have the right to . . . send it over the walls.”

Now that the paintings are outside the walls, though, she wants to be a living reminder: “I don’t have the right to say you shouldn’t be looking at them, but if you look at them, know the full story of what they represent.”

One-stop shopping for eye candy

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Whether you’re after meaty jocks or beauteous babes, you can find them in one place this weekend: Fitzpatrick Stadium on Park Avenue in Portland.

More than a dozen Maine beauty queens, including Mrs. Maine-US, Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino, and Mrs. Maine-International, Nicole Massey (as well as a few Miss Maines), will be honorary captains of the Southern Maine Raging Bulls football team during Saturday afternoon’s game, a collaboration the team is calling “Beauty and the Cleats.”

The Raging Bulls, a AAA semi-pro team (whose collaboration with the beauty queens got started because one of their players works for Hamilton-Guarino’s husband) are the only Maine team in the eight-team Colonial Conference of the New England Football League. They’re 3-3 on the season, tied for second in the Suburban division, with four games left to play.

The Bulls will be slamming into the Medford Mustangs starting at 1 pm (tickets are $6), and we can expect the home-grown raging beauties to be jumping around on the sidelines, cheering the players on.

The team’s final two home games of the season will be against the North Shore Generals, at 6 pm on September 16, and the Lowell Nor’easters, at 6 pm on September 23. There’s no telling if the beauty queens will show up for repeat performances, so don't miss this week’s game.