Review of The View Up the Mountain by N. T. Laemmle

Reminiscent of the novels Siddhartha and The Alchemist, N.T. Laemmle’s novella, The View Up the Mountain enchants and entices readers into following its never named protagonist through his Great Pilgrimage up a nearby mountain from his village in an unnamed forest. Names, it quickly becomes apparent, are unimportant because this unnamed male protagonist is supposed to stand for Every Man.

With deft agility, Laemmle demonstrates the cyclical nature of human life by having the protagonist see himself, literally, in at least three different forms as he makes his pilgrimage up the mountain and, after succeeding, back down again.

The primary weakness of the novella is that it is a male view of the world, so not universal, and many women will object to the young protagonist’s view of women as mere bed warmers, and then his slightly older man’s view of a woman he becomes obsessed with as a moon goddess—to be worshipped from afar, but never united with. This madonna-whore syndrome won’t sit well for most women keenly aware of its perpetuation in other stories.

Despite the one-sidedness of this story’s telling, which is inevitable in a limited omniscient narrator, Laemmle does a great job of demonstrating how, even as we gain wisdom from our experiences, we can still learn more both about ourselves and about other people.

The basic philosophy espoused in this novella is well worth embracing. I just wish Laemmle could view women as something other than “other,” then the book would be a truly profound addition to the world. ( )