Mount Silenus: A Vertical Odyssey of Extraordinary Peril

by Petronius Jablonski

When novice climbers Trevor and Gaspar attempt Mount Silenus they discover that inspiration from a famous book makes a poor substitute for experience. Accuracy is important on mountains, especially one darkened by legends of a prehistoric sloth — the Abominable Unau — and the indigenous people who make sacrifices to it. As the text bears less and less resemblance to the terrain, squabbles over its interpretation become a battle of faith vs. reason. Those are best fought on flat surfaces.

Why does a man climb a mountain? To taste the distilled essence of life, to glimpse the clandestine maneuvers of his soul, and because he believes everything he reads. For two high school teachers who skipped their climbing classes, a masterpiece advocating spontaneity over skill proves irresistible. Unknown to them, the reclusive author honed his technique scaling barstools and brooding over the unjust fame of Nietzsche. He ignored eyewitness accounts of the Abominable Unau for stylistic reasons. Stories about wrathful apparitions infesting a labyrinth of caves didn’t make the cut either.

During a quixotic journey in the general direction of the summit, Trevor and Gaspar join a scientist investigating paranormal activity on one of the plateaus. The book fails to warn about traps set by the mountain people to protect the sacred site from desecration. When they fall into icy catacombs they must confront the source of the legends to survive. Inspired by a disastrous attempt on Denali.

245 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 28, 2015

About the author

Preserving thoughts for the enjoyment and edification of strangers, renouncing revelry, friendship, and love for the unlikely esteem of men unknown, is this not madness incarnate, or the closest one can come to rule over day and night, divide them, and see that it is good?

Petronius Jablonski studied Philosophy, Psychology, Mathematics, Philology, Classics, and Physics at UW Parkside. Some Call It Trypophobia is a collection of published stories and an existential analysis of the phobia. Schrödinger's Dachshund is his first novel. Mount Silenus began as therapy for Post-Traumatic Mountaineering Disorder and never looked back. Jablonski writes extensively about music, though there is only one song he reviews.

See his magnum opus and masterpiece, The Annals of Petronius Jablonski, for a thoroughgoing critique of Western Civilization [sic]. Included are the paradigm-shattering contributions of Petronius’ Shovel©, Petronius’ Blender©, Schadenfreude Before-the-Fact©, Quietude©, and Petronius’ Garage©, each equal in momentousness to Occam's overrated Razor and Plato's much-ballyhooed Cave.

He grew up in Cudahy, Wisconsin, where he began chronicling versions of the Mary Weatherworth meme. This urban legend about a blind, mirror-infesting apparition endures and mutates like some Campbellian myth. Bizarre and horrifying accounts uncoil across Schrodinger's Dachshund, winding toward their origin. Jablonski went undercover with the Sentinels of the Chandelier to study the mysterious connection between their Gnostic teachings and the Weatherworth meme. Lawsuits pend. Less abstract threats loom.

He is working on a book titled The Sweetness of Honey: A Novel of Vengeance, Honor, and Bobbleheads. If he abandons this project he would be a man without dreams, and he doesn’t want to live like that. He’ll live his life or he’ll end his life with this project. (Herzog)

Of all the books in the Library of Babel he could read, the one where Proust dumps Albertine and adopts a Basset Hound is his top pick.