Inspiration from the writings of others - James Ramsey Ullman

One of my favourite books is "The White Tower" by James Ramsey Ullman (photo below).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ullman was a writer and a mountaineer. Mountaineering was often the subject and the spiritual core of his books.  “For it is the ultimate wisdom of the mountains that a man is never more a man than when he is striving for what is beyond his grasp, and that there is no conquest worth winning save that over his own weakness and fear.” In the White Tower, these are the novel's last words.  

But the plane did not fall. The darkness did not close in. Moment by moment the night and the mist thinned, and the thing that they had hidden emerged from the emptiness beyond. Martin Ordway sat motionless. The roaring of the engine filled his ears, but he did not hear it. The tides of the wind passed over him, but he did not feel them... For now, before his straining eyes, a range of mountains seemed to be rising like a great white wave out of the miles and the night. A range of mountains, and at its core, immense and alone, a single unforgettable shape...

It is an illusion, he thought. A trick of your eyes, or of the mist. But it was not illusion. The mist swirled over it, but it did not vanish. The night encompassed it, but it did not fade. Vast, still and immutable, the White Tower rose out of the darkness of the earth into the darkness of the sky. It was a fact. It existed. It was there.

He turned away. Before him now were only the helmeted head of the pilot and the faintly glowing dials of the instrument panel. The little plane bored westward through the night.

Comments

[Christopher Goddard]

A great ending - like Sidney Carton in "A Tale of Two Cities" or the description of the last of Bendicò in "Il Gattopardo" along with many others - needs to be balanced by a great beginning.