Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 101

Krakauer’s Into Thin Air

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Upon arrival in the Himalaya, Pittman appeared to adhere as
closely as possible to the proprieties of high society. During the
trek to Base Camp, a young Sherpa named Pemba rolled up her
sleeping bag every morning and packed her rucksack for her. When
she reached the foot of Everest with the rest of Fischer’s group in
early April, her pile of luggage included stacks of press clippings
about herself to hand out to other denizens of Base Camp. Within
a few days Sherpa runners began to arrive on a regular basis with
packages for Pittman, shipped to Base Camp via DHL Worldwide
Express; they included the latest issues of Vogue, Vanity Fair,
People, Allure. The Sherpas were fascinated by the lingerie ads
and thought the perfume scent-strips were a hoot. {Into Thin Air
118-19).
Crucially, Pittman requires these magazines because they are likely to
feature her and her mountaineering exploits: she is portrayed as the vain subject of
popular culture, not a mere follower of it. Therefore, in Krakauer’s narrative logic,
she is both morally beneath “the people” in her vanity, but falsely above “the people”
in her stardom. In contrast, Krakauer worked in construction and has lived the life
of a socially marginal climber. He notes in his account of an earlier trip in which
he was assigned to cover Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone, Men s Journal
and Us, and a number of his rich friends, including Rocky Hill, Pittman’s brother
and her husband Bob Pittman, the co-founder of MTV, that during this trip he “had
precious little in common with any of them, and there was no forgetting that I had
been brought along as Jann’s hired help.” He adds: “Over dinner Bob and Jann
and Rocky compared the various aircraft they owned (Jann recommended a
Gulfstream IV the next time I was in the market for a personal jet), discussed their
country estates and talked about Sandy” {Into Thin Air W 6). Krakauer’s represen
tation of Pittman should be seen in its contrast with contemporary autobiographi
cal representations of formidable women climbers in, for example, Arlene Blum’s
Annapurna, A Womans Place (1980) and Julie Tullis’s Clouds From Both_Sides
(1987), which narrate the experiences of pioneering women. In these narratives,
female participation in climbing is not associated with its commercialization as it
is in Krakauer’s account. Of course, Krakauer is too sophisticated a writer not to
recognize his own contrary positions about his topic.
In his interview with Bryant, Krakauer is explicit about his own ambiva
lence concerning the social character of climbing: