I come at Jon Krakauer’s book, Three Cups of Deceit, as an admirer of his reportage from reading his earlier startling, meticulously researched Into the Wild. He is methodical in his approach to uncovering the facts from verifiable and secondarily confirmed sources. The question to consider is agenda. What does Krakauer have to gain or lose in telling this story in this particular voice of revelatory investigation?
It doesn’t become apparent what injury Krakauer has suffered at the hand of Greg Mortenson’s mismanagement of the Central Asia Institute’s charitable donations until page twenty-seven. Jon had been sucked in by what he dubs “The Myth,” the tone setting title of his first chapter. Krakauer’s indignation is at the breach of his own trust in the man, the hero of do-gooders seeking a better solution to the problems being attacked by the current internationally waged War on Terrorism—along with that of so many others, philanthropist to school child. It is an intellectualized rage. But, Krakauer pauses several times in his chronology of Mortenson’s fabrications, as they are shown to conflict with his careful reporting, taking time to look at or for the greater good, the true and the complicity of a world hungry for hope—an educated society, grieved by war, that begs a secular savior.
First, on page twenty-four, Jon pauses to credit Mortenson with human compassion as demonstrated by his trip in 1996 to the man who was his first major benefactor. Jean Hoerni lies on his deathbed (apparently reported or verified by Hoerni’s wife to Krakauer) and Greg Mortenson, the nurse, uses his skills to ease the philanthropist’s suffering.
Next, Krakauer mentions Mortenson at ten years of age, Lutheran missionary child living in Moshi “inspired by” his admiration of Mother Teresa, in information gleaned from Three Cups of Tea, thereby establishing his character as rooted in a charitable upbringing. But, the later conflation of her death with a visit to India several years after her death, portrayed as a humble, poignant moment spent by her body, cuts away at the integrity of even the childhood respect, now sullied by Mortenson’s opportunistic use of her mystic to build himself a more saintly persona.
Krakauer also weighs the hundreds of schools built, “tens of thousands of children” in Afghanistan and Pakistan served, the “tireless advocate of girls’ education” (67), and the reality of a politically morally complex world, all against the lies, financial opportunism, ethno-religious fear mongering, and outright fraud, theft, and self-aggrandizing marketing of the man and his books. He chooses the voice of another wronged and disenchanted former Mortenson believer, Tom Hornbein, to shovel the last dirt atop the grave Krakauer is digging for CAI’s dream-maker, the fictitious portrait painter, the man of action in the down and dirty world of tribal “power brokers” (57).
“My transcendent feeling,” Hornbein writes to Krakauer, “is grief for the loss of what might have been”(70). Unlike Mortenson’s novel-worthy language, zippy dialogue, convenient foreshadowing, and orchestrated plot lines, Krakauer serves up his emotional punches through documented interviews, research, and correspondence within a narrative framework.
- Aletha, I'm glad you took the time to pick these moments out. I was almost surprised when Krakauer would stop to acknowledge good things Mortenson has done. It was very big of him, and seemed exceedingly fair. The more I think about it, the more I see that if these moments weren't in the piece, it would be almost unbearable and probably less credible.
- September 4, 2011 5:12 PM
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