“There is a very short list of people you absolutely do not want to fuck with. Jon Krakauer is one of those people. Because if you fuck with him, there’s a chance that he will write an entire (granted, short) book about what a terrible person you are. It will contain exhaustive detail, including financial and travel records, and will even take passages from your memoirs and show what a hypocrite you are. It will be as fair as possible, granting you those few things you did right, but even that won’t be near enough to balance the scales. I’ve read a handful of takedowns, and this one is a doozy. If Krakauer started a service where, for pay, he would take down a target of your choosing, sort of like those dudes you can pay at the renaissance fair to make fun of someone, he’d make bank.
It’s easily Krakauer’s worst book. Not because it’s inaccurate or doesn’t complete its goal. It’s just not a hyper-compelling read. It’s more like a prosecutor’s case turned into narrative, kind of.
I do have a funny story about Greg Mortenson, the person whose character is in question in this book.
My library did one of those programs where everyone reads the same book for a few years. These seem like a good idea, in theory, but there’s a problem. For one, reading is such a personal thing. That’s why there’s, I don’t know, a billion of books. Because your choice for something to read and mine are pretty different. So what’re the odds of getting something that even 50% of people will actually like?
Sometimes a city will go the route of picking a book that’s “important.” Has a message or the author did something important, and the book itself is kind of secondary. The book is just a delivery system for a message and doesn’t have to be good as a read. These are probably my least favorite type of choice. Because it reinforces that books are A) Homework and B) Kind of shitty as experiences. They’re a vector to get an idea in your head, but if that’s what you’re trying to do, just pick a documentary and try to get the whole community to watch it. Much easier, much less painful for the individuals, even if the documentary is not a great film.
Anyway, 3 Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson was one of our choices. By “our” I mean “not my.”
We got a ton of copies, young reader versions, all that, and because our publicity manager was…I’m looking for nice words to say “insane” and “out-of-touch” and so on. I’m still thinking. Give me a sec…
Because our publicity manager was insane and out-of-touch (sorry, couldn’t pull it off), we had A TON of publicity promo materials. Mostly little quarter-sheet cards with Greg’s face on them.
I had one co-worker at the time who thought Greg was really doofy-looking. I said, in one picture, that Greg looked like her husband, which I should’ve apologized for. I met her husband after that, and they don’t look alike.
Anyway, whenever someone went on vacation, they could count on something happening at their desk. A prank of sorts.
When this person went on vacation, a group of us painstakingly cut out pictures of Greg’s face from leftover promo items, and we taped them everywhere. Over the faces of her family in pictures, corners of her monitor. We put them in places where they would be found, but not right away. Bottom of a computer mouse is a great spot for this. The person sits down after spending 30 minutes taking these dumb faces down, is ready to get to work, and their mouse doesn’t work. They turn it over, bam, another Greg face. The phone cradle is another good one. Tape it over the little button that clicks down and hangs up the phone. When the phone is in the cradle, the Greg face is covered. When the phone is picked up, the person doesn’t usually notice right away. They just don’t get a dial tone. When they reach to click the button, as we do, BAM. Greg face.
There are probably still dozens of Greg faces in her former office space. She left our workplace long ago, but I couldn’t help but think about her when I listened to this book. Maybe she had some insight into Greg face and his stupid Greg face. Maybe she could tell you, just by looking, what Jon Krakauer spent hours researching and writing down. “