We joined Quentin Stern in the release of this book with some trepidation. Our hesitation has to do with what we kindly describe as Stern’s “checkered” career and what critics have described as his rather cavalier use of sources. Still, we’ve decided this work has some merit. Having decided to proceed, some explanation is in order.
Quentin Stern comes from what became the Silicon Valley in Northern California. His parents were well to do; his father owned a large fish distributorship in the Central Valley. Stern spent his formative years laboring in the fish factory, work he abhorred. He attended a well-regarded prep school, but was expelled during his second year for setting the chemistry lab on fire one weekend. After graduating from a public high school, he attended Fresno State College, working on a degree in journalism.
Dropping out of college a semester shy of his degree, he took a job selling advertising and writing articles for a Central Valley shopping mall weekly. His first break came when he relocated to New York and talked his way into a job at the New York Examiner, starting as the mail boy. This was a propitious time for the newspaper as it had just been acquired by Michael Sodoc, who was eager to make it an integral part of his media empire. From all accounts, Stern was aggressive in landing a reporter job, dropping off articles he’d written at night, currying favor with anyone in a position to hire him.
The newspaper and Stern were a perfect fit, it seems. Every skill he’s come to rely on since came to him in the dog-eat-dog world of the Manhattan dailies. Stern soon earned a byline and the first stories began to surface about his methods. More than one source claimed to have been misquoted and several denied ever being interviewed. Fellow reporters accused him of stealing stories.
But for all the smoke, nothing came of it. He prospered at the paper and, three years later, took a job as a background reporter for the Sodoc News Service. He’s vague about why he made the switch. It may be, as some critics have charged, that he was getting out while the getting was good, or, as he says, he was looking to make a change. Regardless, at SNS he had no on-air time; he worked as a combination researcher/ writer of special features.
Away from the newspaper, however, his competitive nature and hard-edged personality did not wear well. Before the year was out, he was let go, only to land a job in Florida with the National Inquisitor.
From reporter to television journalist, he found himself a tabloid writer and it was in this role that he hit his stride. Here, it seems, there were fewer questions about sources and methods. He soon began a popular series of stories on Tarja Koivisto, several years before she married Derek Sodoc, about whom he also wrote. So it was natural following the adventurer’s tragic death that Stern should be recruited to write this tell-all. From tabloid journalist, he was now a writer of an exposé.
This book draws on personal interviews with some of the participants. Other interviews took place by telephone, e-mail, or ICQ. Any number of articles was written after the event, and the careful reader should notice their inclusion without direct attribution. A number of climbers that year maintained blogs and Stern has acknowledged drawing on them as well.
To the best of our knowledge, this is a reasonably accurate account of the events. Stern was not on the Sodoc expedition, though on occasion he writes as if he was. This is also an intimate account, occasionally told in the first person. Understandably, some sources wished not to be identified. Accusations and innuendo relating to sexual indiscretions and drug use have been on the Internet for months and have appeared in any number of published stories. Stern has shed fresh light on them and the role they may well have played in so many deaths.
In part, Stern says, that’s why he wrote Abandoned on Everest: to expose those he says are responsible for climbers dying. When pressed, he laughingly admits the advance had a lot to do with it. Finally, he claims he wrote the book because it was “fun.”
We consider this to be a valuable contribution to contemporary history and if it is not the final word on those unfortunate events, it is nonetheless a version of them worth telling and considering.
But from what Stern says, it’s not over. “This story is unfinished,” he told us. “I have the distinct feeling the other shoe has yet to drop. When it does, I’ll be there. That’s one story I want to tell firsthand.”
Charles G. Irion
Ronald J. Watkins