This book haunted me. I am trying to understand the desire for the risk. I am haunted by their journeys despite understanding that their lives are constantly at danger. They climb higher and higher into the atmosphere, they step over the remains of previous climbers, some of them better qualified to climb the unforgiving mountain than they are, and still they struggle on. They don't have to do this. They don't need to do it, yet somehow they do. Somewhere deep inside is this desire to conquer. To reach the highest spot... to do something only done by a few. To be a part of an elite group of people. I am trying to understand.
I am haunted by the idea of a death so high above most of our lives, so alone, without company except for insane weather. So much death... And it is not death by cancer or aids. They don't die from car accidents, gun fire, or knifes. They die because they chose to try and conquer a mountain. I keep saying "conquer" because I can't think of a better word. I suppose they don't necesarily think of it like that. But I still can't pose it better.
There is a desperation to the story... and I am just trying to understand. And still I am haunted.

Nick: Librarian, philosopher, and overall weirdo Georges Bataille argued that the possibility of death is a necessary condition for the certainty of life. According to him, only in those strange, secluded spaces between one truth and another--the truth of our being here, now, animated and luminous and the truth of our being nowhere, never, inert and caliginous--only in that soul-stirring, venal threat to man, moment, and, yes, our very minds, do we really have a sense of what we are. Only then, when we are most compromised, most corrupted by our limits, are we free from compromise, uncorrupted and unlimited. Only the uncontrollable threat of another person, a distraction or an accident, or some wild, unknowable sin fulfills us, makes us ourselves, and, I hope, civilizes us. Death makes us more human and more particular. Unfortunately, it also destroys us. What makes this book so troubling is also what makes it so genuine. We're all looking for what we are, so that we can live sincerely, or perfectly, or humbly. More often than not, we find what we're looking for in whatever kills us most beautifully--and indifferently. We should admire these petty fools who climb mountains searching for God, or grief, or nothing. Most of us will search for it, if at all, in this life. Someone should teach us to look a little farther, to strain our eyes on the senseless conflict that drives us toward unthinking eternity and the brilliant, shining now. We should stalk the nearest library, contemplating evil. Or maybe just scale the next peak with the help of two dozen Nepalese.