In long years of mountaineering Oates fought the self-loathing that had infused him as the gay kid in the Baptist pew. And in The Mountains of Paris, he ascends to a place of wonder. In luminous prose, Oates invites readers to share a sense of awe--whether awakened by a Vermeer painting or a wilderness sojourn, by the night sky, a loved one, or echoing strains of music--lifting the curtain on a cosmos filled with a terrifying yet beautiful rightness.