‘Solo Faces’ by James Salter     (1979) – 220 pages

The minimalism trend in fiction has come and gone but I still admire it. Why write twenty words when you can write the same thing in ten words? Or, for that matter, why write 350 pages when you could have written it all in 220 pages?

For a subject as austere, rigorous, and cold as French Alps mountain climbing this minimalist approach which James Salter uses seems a good fit.

“The climbing was harder than he’d dreamed. The snow had to be cleared from holds. Higher up, there was ice, a slick, unyielding ice that could not be completely chopped away. His hands were cold. He was breathing on his fingers, clenching and unclenching, trying to warm them.”

Mont Blanc in France is the highest mountain in all of the Alps and in western Europe. There are several dangerous peaks in the Mont Blanc complex which attract climbers such as Vernon Rand who is the main protagonist in ‘Solo Faces’. During the novel Rand, as he is called, scales or attempts to scale several of these peaks.

“A great mountain is serious. It demands everything of a climber, absolutely all. It must be difficult and also beautiful, it must lie in the memory like the image of an unforgettable woman. It must be unsoiled.”

This is the way men wrote about women back in the 1970s, and the mountain climber Rand is very much a man’s man. Rand has that mountain climbing compulsion, ready to risk his life in order to conquer a peak.

‘Solo Faces’ starts out in California with a scene of Rand repairing house roofs which seemed to be an appropriate occupation for someone whose avocation is mountain climbing. Soon he leaves his job and his girlfriend without explanation to head out for the French Alps.

“You’re prepared for everything,” he told them. “If your foot slips you have your hand. You never try something unless you’re sure you can do it. It’s a question of spirit. You have to feel you’ll never come off.”

After Rand rescues two other climbers, he becomes quie famous in France. When Rand goes to Paris, several women are interested in him.

“One woman is like another. Two are like another two. Once you begin there is no end.”

More 1970s attitude.

There are so many harrowing extremely close calls in ‘Solo Faces’, one can only assume that to be a mountain climber in the French Alps, one would either have to be crazy or have a death wish.

‘Solo Faces’ definitely makes you feel the thrill and the danger of mountain climbing.

Grade:     A