Of mountains and good men
A review of Dixon, Descending by Karen Outen
By Naomi Thiers
Dixon, Descending (Dutton, 2024) is an extraordinary book. It’s hard to say what I loved more as I read it—the rich characters or the lively, convincing descriptions of both everyday moments and literal, top-of-the-world moments in the lives of the main character, an educator and amateur mountain climber, and his brother. These two elements—and a story revolving around two middle-aged Black men attempting to summit Mt. Everest and how that attempt fractures their lives—weave a tapestry that is a joy to become wrapped up in.
The novel tells how two brothers, Dixon and Nate, become obsessed with becoming the first Black American men to summit Everest and how they endure the agonizing weeks of pre-climbs (for altitude adjustment) and the actual, protracted summit climb. But it focuses as much on the brothers’ close yet fraught relationship, the bonds of their tight-knit family, and the months after the climb, in which the spectre of ice-bound peaks lingers and the former comfort of their solid identity is shattered. The reader comes to care deeply about these men, especially Dixon, whose point of view fills the novel. We care about the equally rich characters who surround him: Dixon’s risk-loving older brother; his motherly cousin Charlaina and college-aged daughter; Marcus, a fragile boy Dixon counsels at his school job; and Shiloh, a traumatized, sadistic teen bully who becomes Dixon’s nemesis. Even the seasoned climbers and sherpas in Dixon and Nate’s orbit in the many scenes on the mountain emerge as individuals. Readers are shown how the fiasco of this climb rebounds in the lives of these many-angled characters, as well as in the brothers’ lives.
Dixon, Descending is Karen Outen’s first novel. Outen is a much-published fiction and essay writer, writer-in-residence for the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society, and a member of the board of the Writer’s Center in Bethesda. The novel was a Library Journal Editors’ pick and was longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
I’d imagine her characterization is one element the judges admired. In a style similar to Barbara Kingsolver, Outen develops her characters through their day-to-day actions and interactions—as much in quotidian spaces as when Dixon and Nate battle with natural forces on Everest. Dixon’s sense of mission shows in his interactions with kids he sees in his job as a middle school counselor. Nate’s reliance on charm is clear as he lures Dixon with brochures about Everest even as the two clean the attic after their mom’s death. As they pack for Nepal, Dixon--actually the younger of the brothers although the more responsible—inspects Nate’s rucksack to be sure he’s got the needed gear. Nate allows it; Dixon’s over-responsibility is on display here, and in graceful flashbacks to the brothers’ youth, like this one from elementary-school years:
The boys share the sugary jawbreakers they are not allowed at home. “We have to eat it before we get home,” Dixon scolds. Nate sucks his teeth and stashes handfuls of candy in his pants pockets so they bulge. He breaks into a run, stuffing candy into his mouth, down his T-shirt, running backwards and mocking Dixon. “You have to follow the rules!”
As the brothers tell their family and friend Skeeter about their Everest plan at a holiday dinner, the family players show their true form through reactions and quips:
“That’s nuts,” Charlaina snapped. “Who the hell climbs Mount Everest? Guys, people die up there.”
“People die going to the grocery store.” Nate shrugged it off. “We’re not going to die, we’re going to climb.”
Skeet cracked up. “But what Black man wants to climb a cold-ass mountain? What, your lives aren’t hard enough on earth? Look, just come down to the job with me, climb that corporate mountain, you want some misery. It’s nice and white at the top too, just like Mount Everest.”
“It’s that most people don’t do it. That’s what makes it worth it,” Dixon said.
Nate looked pleased.
“Most people don’t shoot heroin either,” Charlaina snapped. “ ’Cause that shit’ll kill you!”
I especially enjoyed two aspects of Outen’s writing style: how just-right details build even lesser characters and the musicality of the book’s prose. For instance, a female climber Nate and Dixon both fall for comes to life in a few strokes:
She shone so bright, her hand slipping onto his knee as they talked, its texture rough and earned. Dixon noticed the way her hair lay along the nape of her neck, tangled in a thin gold chain. The sun had burnished her a rich, golden brown, the firelight gliding and sparkling off her skin.
The novel is presented from Dixon’s point of view. So while we get to know Nate more by his risky actions than by his thoughts or intentions, we get to know Dixon through the way he views the world. We are often in Dixon’s head as he tries to navigate the complexities of being a good man in a rather skewed world—especially being a good middle-class Black man in America.
I think Dixon, Descending is a psychological novel. One thing I most loved about it was the chance to see the world through the eyes and emotions of a Black man. (Outen, who is Black, has noted that she based the main characters partly on her Black male cousins). Dixon’s Blackness can’t be separated from aspects of his personality, like his physical and emotional reserve, which have to do with staying safe in an often hostile culture. In this passage, while near the base camp for “clients” climbing Everest with guides, Dixon and Nate approach a camp of more seasoned climbers (“alpinists”) they met previously. Dixon contrasts his and Nate’s training from childhood with the demeanor of these white men:
Beau and RedCurl sat beside [Jett] in front of their tent. Dixon was struck by the men’s bigness—there was no other word for their visceral appetite for the world. The kind of men who jumped into the stream, then worried about whether they could swim. The world, they were sure, would accommodate them. Dixon heard his parents’ voices echo through him, Be careful, watch yourself, no foolishness now, you hear? Keep your eyes out for trouble. We can’t let our guard down for a minute.
Though Dixon, Descending seems to me to deal with the obstacle course of being Black in America, the novel also explores near-universal themes of what it means to be a good son—or the “good son,”—handling anger and, especially forgiveness. The brothers’ conflicting life approaches turn high-stakes on the perilous final summit hike. Like the corpses of failed summiters exposed when snowpack shifts on Everest, less-seen aspects of Dixon show up. Neither man returns the same.
A lot of the sentences in the book that really sing pertain to being on a mountain, like, “The air below Camp 4 smelled of whiteness, of snow and ice.” Thinking back to an earlier climb on Mt. Kilimanjaro, done while his marriage was failing, Dixon remembers, “there seemed nothing to moor him in the thinning air. But that air carried, like billowing ribbon, the sorrow from him.”
The novel’s structure, which alternates between the past and present, helps the layers of character accrete as the story builds. It lets us get inside and care about the main characters to prepare us for the gut punch of the harrowing description of the summit climb.
The penultimate section, the novel’s heart of darkness, describes the two-day summit. Readers learn a lot about serious mountain climbing, but never feel they’re being given a lecture on it. Also, the obsession many non-serious climbers (mostly wealthy men) have with conquering Everest is neither admired nor romanticized here. The pacing in this part is terrific. Readers are yanked right into the exhaustion, exhilaration, and impossible judgment calls of trying to best the world’s highest peak. I’ve read the section several times and each time can hardly put the book down.
I actually found this whole novel hard to put down—and when I did, many elements of it stuck with me. Perhaps one reason for that is that the book isn’t afraid to let mysteries hang there: mysteries about the characters and about why people often behave in ways that defy self-interest. Why did Nate—who initially didn’t have the climbing experience his brother did—get an unstoppable urge to climb Everest with Dixon? Why did the youngest brother in this family become the responsible one, the protector? Why did several counselors, like Dixon, become interested in the odious Shiloh and persist in helping him (which is actually the note the novel ends on)?
You might as well ask why people willingly suffer and risk their lives to climb an uncaring mountain.
Find your copy of Dixon Descending on Bookshop or from your favorite independent bookstore.
Karen Outen’s fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, The North American Review, Essence, and elsewhere. She is a 2018 recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award and has been a fellow at both the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan and the Pew Fellowships in the Arts. She received an MFA from the University of Michigan. She lives in Maryland.
Naomi Thiers has published five poetry collections including Only the Raw Hands Are Heaven (WWPH), In Yolo County and She Was a Cathedral (Finishing Line) and Like a Bird Released (Sligo Creek Press). Her work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, and many others. She lives and writes in Arlington, Virginia.
