On "Three Cups of Deceit"

I'm a fan of Krakauer, and his work in this article reminds me a lot of Banner Under Heaven, his deeply researched history of and expose (I think you can call it that) of Mormon culture (which, admittedly, I'm only halfway through--but it's incredibly disturbing and fascinating). Here I see a similar process--the focus on one character in particular, and how that person is connected to a broader organization, institution, or other affiliation. While learning about one person's story in particular, we are taken down all these side roads and tributaries of related persons, or histories, that at first seem unrelated but are slowly woven in to the matrix. Krakauer's main focus seems to be information--the gradual and methodical unfolding of a series events, the carefully paced and finely wrought narration of those events, presented in such a way that allows for the reader to come away with her own view of the situation. As Banner sometimes implicated Utah politicians as negligent for not prosecuting child abusers in Mormon country (i.e., Mormons weren't always functioning in a vacuum), "Three Cups"--despite the fact that his main criticism is on Mortenson--sort of implicates American culture for buying into the feel-good narrative. I haven't read Mortenson's books, but the way Krakauer presents it here, the questions scream out: Why weren't the publishers suspicious? Why didn't others pick up on the saccharine tidiness of the endings of these books? How come no one questioned Mortenson's Taliban abduction story? Maybe people did and I just missed it, but it seems like we were all too happy to accept the do-good work of Mortenson, that to question it would have been to poke at a finely constructed sense of hope. "How could those of us who enabled his fraud—and we are legion—have been so gullible?" Krakauer asks on page 68. Shortly after he quotes Callahan:

"The way I’ve always understood Greg," Callahan reflects, "is
that he’s a symptom of Afghanistan. Things are so bad that
everybody’s desperate for even one good-news story. And
Greg is it. Everything else might be completely fucked up
over there, but here’s a guy who’s persuaded the world that
he’s making a difference and doing things right.” (68)

Whereas I admire Krakaeur for his exhaustive research, his broader implications, and for outing (or further outing) Mortenson--I can't help but be somewhat suspicious of the fact that the point of the article is to reveal Mortenson's fabrications and difficult personality. Well before halfway through I get an "okay, enough already" feeling. I actually find Callahan's narrative with what he did experience out in the Wakhan, and details such as Abdul Rashid Khan's "wry sense of humor" (64), the most compelling parts of this article. I also loved learning about Hoerni and Wilson, and how Hoerni and Mortenson hit it off. To me, what Wilson contributed was the most revealing in terms of Mortenson's character: "he struggled to find a place in our Western culture" (29).

I think others mentioned their frustration with the abrupt ending, ending on Hornbein's words rather than his own, and I think I feel a similar frustration--I wanted Krakauer to bring it up to the next level, to say something grander about the pressure of catering to consumers and making sure that a book hits the shelves by Dec. 1st, just in time for the shopping season. Or I wanted him to leave us on a bigger note of the feel-good narrative, how we're all gullible readers. I guess I'm left wondering to make of all this except, don't lie, and don't do major heroic-looking tasks simply to "anchor the narrative" (67), which I think I knew already. Perhaps I'm expecting too much?

On the other hand, I do get the sense that Krakauer's work isn't really finished here, and that this article is an investigative cliff hanger: the saga will continue. I checked out Central Asia Institute's website, and Mortenson's defense to the various lawsuits that have ensued is pretty pathetic. And I become suspicious looking at the FAQ page--each "question" leading to basically the same explicit instructions on how to send money (there's really nothing else you can do for the organization)--including which currency to send it in. (I love this repeated line: "While our co-founder, Greg Mortenson, would like to provide personal guidance in your efforts, there are already too many demands on his time.")

On a structural note, I admire the way Krakauer deftly juggles the three various threads he's working with towards the end of the article. The three sections coalesce nicely, and Krakauer's able to show how the fabrication of the events, the shady financial dealings, and the empty schools all tie together:

All that remained was the final chapter—
which couldn’t be written until the school was completed.
Anxiety over whether a happy ending would take place in
time for Stones to arrive at bookstores before Christmas cre-
ated considerable suspense in the offices of Viking Penguin.
To generate suspense on the page, Mortenson injected
the failing health of Abdul Rashid Khan into the narrative. (64)

And so on and so forth.

So, I guess what I take away is a great example of how to research properly and how to construct an intricate, fool-proof, and compelling narrative. But at times I feel like the effort to keep reaming out Mortenson detracts from the piece, oddly enough. (For example, I feel like Krakauer is a little to eager to emphasize how Mortenson failed to summit K2). I'm compelled to explore the idea of how responsible we are as readers, and how we might even be "enablers of fraud," as Krakauer suggests.