Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 100

94

Popular Culture Review

Thin Air. Indeed, Krakauer’s observation, at the conclusion of his book, that Pittman
had become “the lightning rod for a great deal of public anger over what had
happened on Everest” — exemplified by scathing Vanity Fair and Hard Copy (a
television tabloid) coverage of Pittman — is a bit disingenuous.
By autumn, things had gotten so bad that she confessed tearfully
to a friend that her son was being ridiculed and ostracized by class
mates at his exclusive private school. The blistering intensity of
the collective wrath over Everest — and the fact that so much of
that wrath was directed at her — took Pittman completely by sur
prise and left her reeling. (288)
Yet such hostile reaction at what Krakauer takes care to note is an “exclusive pri
vate school” was clearly related to Krakauer’s initial story of the climb in the
September 1996 issue of Outside magazine, which portrayed Pittman and her climb
ing guide. The article relates that Scott Fischer, “who had climbed the peak with
out oxygen but had never guided the mountain, was still trying to get established
in the Everest business. He needed to get clients to the summit, especially a highprofile one like Sandy Hill Pittman, the Manhattan boulevardier-cum-writer who
was filing daily diaries on an NBC World Wide Web site.” Thus Krakauer is less
than candid with his audience — and perhaps himself — in his later understated
description of her public fall from grace in Into Thin Air, for her ostracism was
prepared in part by his own emphatic descriptions of her and others’ desire for
publicity. Moreover, in his later book-length narrative he again passes on the in
formation that Fischer, one of the guides who did not survive the climb, was very
excited by the prospect of leading Pittman to the summit for all of the television
publicity it might give his climbing company — there is contained in this theme an
implied sense of cause and effect, even of divine justice {Into Thin Air 170).
Krakauer describes Pittman directly as “a millionaire socialite-cum-climber” who
had raised “more than a quarter of a million dollars from corporate sponsors to
secure the talents of four of the finest alpinists in North America” {Into Thin Air
115-16).
[T]he society columnist Billy Norwich hosted a farewell party for
Pittman at Nell’s in downtown Manhattan. The guest list included
Bianca Jagger and Calvin Klein. Fond of costumes, Sandy ap
peared wearing a high-altitude climbing suit over her evening dress,
complemented by mountaineering boots, crampons, ice ax, and a
bandolier of carabiners.