I saw the PBS special the other night, The Search for Mallory -- it was rebroadcast in Canada -- and apart from the dreary voiceover by Rebecca deMornay, I found it moving, particularly as a Buddhist, with the one or two little scenes at the temple near base camp. I think it is funny that after 50 years, Mallory's failure to make the summit is more famous than Hillary's success. I wonder if it means that the whole genre of romantic conquest has undergone a shift: though the resurgence of interest in Shackleton is pretty old fashioned. The technical scenes (the ladder now at the last hurdle and the rest) were so concrete, and had a kind of terrible beauty about them. The photographs of Mallory's body are surely now central icons of some strange 20th century ritual struggle. I now end my classes on Romantic Environmentalism with them.

yours, Peter T.