Goodreads | Into the Wild

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Dixie Diamond rated it:

(review of isbn 0385486804)

04/15/08

bookshelves: biography, outdoors

Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: Don't Try This At Home

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

My grandfather--not an Alaskan but an experienced outdoorsman--would have tied this kid to a tree and let the bears play tetherball with him.

A small part of me appreciates the effort Krakauer put into researching this book. A much bigger part of me is completely disgusted both with McCandless himself and with Krakauer's mindless adoration of him. Krakauer pulls out all the stops to make McCandless look like a phenomenon, and seems to agree with McCandless that the world should have handed ...more

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Melinda rated it:

(review of isbn 0385486804)

07/25/08

Read in July, 2008

This book is a wonderful cautionary tale. I will probably read it again with my daughter when she is old enough to discuss it. Unfortunately, I'm afraid the reason most people will read the book and see the new upcoming movie, is for a different reason. Chris McCandless (in the book, and from what I understand in the movie), is a hero and courageous for flying in the face of everything he grew up with to find a better way. A young man unhappy with the materialism, hunger, and waste in the wo...more This book is a wonderful cautionary tale. I will probably read it again with my daughter when she is old enough to discuss it. Unfortunately, I'm afraid the reason most people will read the book and see the new upcoming movie, is for a different reason. Chris McCandless (in the book, and from what I understand in the movie), is a hero and courageous for flying in the face of everything he grew up with to find a better way. A young man unhappy with the materialism, hunger, and waste in the world; angry with his father for not being a perfect father to him; intellectually superior, a fantastic athlete in top condition... and yet a young man who died because of his own decisions and his own actions. He cut off ties to his family, hitchhiked and worked his way to Alaska, headed "into the wild" in April 1992, and was found dead in August 1992 most probably from starvation. How wonderful to "fight against the odds" and "ask real questions". Unfortunately, Chris didn't really fight against any odds, he took the easy way out by cutting off real relationships. Chris may have asked real questions, but he denied real people the opportunity to answer them in any way, because he had already decided what was "the right way". This is not heroic. It is immaturity. It is tragic and sad, yes, but not heroic or courageous.

After reading the book, I think Chris died because he was foolish. Intellectually bright, yes. Athletically gifted, yes. But he had no wisdom. Wisdom has been defined as "skill in living", and wisdom is not always bestowed on the young and the healthy and the intellectually smart. The opposite of wisdom is foolishness. His anger and questioning drove him not to wisdom, but to self-reliance and an overweening arrogance in his own ability to "get through it". Well, we see the result of those decisions and those attitudes.... to quote Darwin, Chris is an example of how "survival of the fittest" applies. Chris was not "fit", therefore he did not "survive". But why wasn't he fit? He was smart and young and gifted in many ways, but he chose to abandon relationships and abandon those who loved him and create himself anew with no relationships and no ties. He walked away from people who loved him, made friends with people who came to love him, and walked away from all of that to find his answers "in the wild" on his own. The way away from love and relationship leads not to life, but indeed to death. And death is what Chris got.

The book quotes Chris' mother as saying, "I haven't prayed since we lost him." (pg. 202) An older man who befriended Chris, Ronald Franz, also says, "When Alex left for Alaska, I prayed. I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one; I told him that boy was special. But he let Alex die. So on December 26, when I learned what had happened, I renounced the Lord. I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist. I decided I couldn't believe in a God who would let something that terrible happen to a boy like Alex." (pg. 60) But God didn't do anything to Chris, except let him do as he wanted? If Chris sought real answers to his hard questions, God is there, and God can help, but you have to know you need help and submit to someone wiser than you. Chris McCandless never submitted willingly to anyone, and he certainly never admitted anyone else had teaching or wisdom for him. He was smarter than everyone else, better able to see the truth than anyone else. So the heritage Chris McCandless left is one that drives his mother to stop praying, and converts an old man to atheism. Is this the heritage anyone would want?

So read this book, but read it with questions in mind. Why are we lauding a young man as a hero who was actually a foolish man? What kind of society are we in where real courage and real heroism are somehow playing 2nd fiddle to selfishness and arrogance? When are you so intellectually intelligent that you become stupid? Is there any time when foolish decisions could be called "courageous"? In a search for truth and what really matters in life, is it acceptable to think nothing of hurting those people who are most vulnerable to you? When you die, will the way you lived your life cause others to abandon their faith or grow in their faith? Is it ever courageous to be selfish and think only of yourself? Is it harder to walk away from a relationship, or to stay in a relationship and work on making it better? Would you ever teach anyone else that the way to have real relationships is to limit yourself only to those people who cannot ever hurt you?

Real courage, real heroism comes when you love others and you serve others. Real courage has nothing selfish in it. Fathers and husbands who remain with their families and provide for them, even though they would rather have a mid-life crisis and leave it all, they are courageous and heroic. They remain, they work, they don't father or husband perfectly, but they remain in difficult relationships. It courageous to stay in the hard parts of life, and try. Mothers and wives who sacrifice and serve again and again and again without books being written about them, without thanks, but who continue to love and give of themselves to others. That is courageous. It is hard to stay in messy relationships. It is easy to leave. It is courageous to stay and do hard things. It is easy to leave and do what you want.

So, let's read this book, but read it as a cautionary tale. This is what happens when you seemingly 'have it all', but have not love. When you die, will people be driven to become atheists? Will people stop praying when you are dead? Or will you live a life of wisdom and love? Will you leave behind you a heritage of godly love and service? Will people pray more because of the example you left them? Will they be more loving, better mothers or fathers or sisters or brothers? Or will they become angry and arrogant and foolishness? Yes, this is a good book to read. But let's read it for the right reasons and with the right questions.

[NOTE: In the book, and in the movie, the author proposes that Chris ate some poison berries which caused his death. But tests have been made around the area, and plants that would have been available to Chris were tested, and no toxic berries or plants have been found. The truth is probably that he starved. Too few calories coming in, high expenditure of calories for hunting and keeping warm resulted eventually in such a calorie deficit that he died.]

Some good articles I found on Chris McCandless include:
http://www.newsminer.com/news/...

http://nmge.gmu.edu/textandcom...

Alaskan Park Ranger Peter Christian wrote: “I am exposed continually to what I will call the ‘McCandless Phenomenon.’ People, nearly always young men, come to Alaska to challenge themselves against an unforgiving wilderness landscape where convenience of access and possibility of rescue are practically nonexistent […:] When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn’t even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail without even a map of the area. If he [had:] had a good map he could have walked out of his predicament […:] Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide.”[18:] Some may argue that this is what he wanted all along, given his troubled past
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Forrest rated it:

(review of isbn 0307387178)

02/26/08

Read in January, 1998

n April 1992, a young 20-something walked into the Alaskan bush to live off the land and experience Reality. His emaciated body was found four months later. Some of you may have heard about the incident; it was reported in an article in Outside magazine, and carried by some news services. Some lauded him as a new Thoreau, living life to the fullest and taking the consequences; others say he was a stupid, hopeless romantic, an example of what happens when suburbanites try to do The Nature Thing. ...more n April 1992, a young 20-something walked into the Alaskan bush to live off the land and experience Reality. His emaciated body was found four months later. Some of you may have heard about the incident; it was reported in an article in Outside magazine, and carried by some news services. Some lauded him as a new Thoreau, living life to the fullest and taking the consequences; others say he was a stupid, hopeless romantic, an example of what happens when suburbanites try to do The Nature Thing.

Who was Chris McCandless? He was naïve. He was Immortal. Like many of that age, he thought that if he wanted something passionately enough, he was entitled to it. Many of us secretly envy his kind, the drifters who revel in "owning no more possessions than you can carry on your back at a full run," for whom each day is an adventure, an indelible experience. To paraphrase Monty Python, those who live free in the wilderness subsequently die free in the wilderness.

The author suggests that one of his flaws was that he refused to learn from others. He was native talent embodied, making him very good at anything he tried. But he wouldn't listen to the advice of experts, to realize his potential for excellence. Also, one friend commented that although he was a tireless worker even on the nastiest jobs, he didn't have much common sense.

He was independent, that's true enough. He as much as said he wanted to see if he could make it on his own. But it was also clear to me that he needed people for survival. While he survived some dangerous (if stupid) situations on his own, he needed people to pull his fat out of the fire on occasion. For example, in the beginning of his long journey, he ignorantly got his truck disabled in a flash flood; some motorists found him on the verge of heat stroke from traveling through the desert all day. When he was hopelessly lost in a Mexican swamp, Chris stumbled upon some duck hunters who towed his canoe to safety. In the last and terminal episode of his short life, his saviors showed up three weeks too late.

Maybe I'm being too hard on the guy. After all, he managed to last longer than most of us would. But his sin was naiveté, and Nature doesn't give a tinker's damn about our reasons for screwing up.

What killed him? A combination of things. Number one, he purposefully went into the bush without a quad map (lacking a "blank spot on the map" to go to, speculates Krakauer, he ditched the map so that "In his mind, if nowhere else, the terra would thereby remain incognita"). When he had found what he had been looking for and began to hike his way out, he found his way blocked by a river flooded by glacier meltwater. With no map, he couldn't know that a 30 minute hike would have brought him to an abandoned hydrology station with a functional cable crossing. And so he was forced to wait out the summer.
The second error, more forgivable but fatal, was that he poisoned himself. Despite all his hunting and gathering, July found him scrawny and gaunt. Trying to improve his diet, he at the seeds of the wild potato, which at the time contained an toxin which blocks nutrient intake. I say forgivable because his plant books made no mention of this, although a botanist would have guessed this property of the potato family. If he was in good health, his body would have flushed the inhibitors from his system in time, but as it was he had no sugar or protein to spare.

Jon Krakauer, an outdoor writer, is fixated on McCandless. He draws on Chris' writings and photos along with interviews with family and people Chris met on his trek. In the book he relates the ends of others who braved Alaska for whatever reason, from arrogance to ignorance to insanity. He uses his own personal experiences, including his relationship with his father and a foolhardy, nearly fatal climb on a peak in (again) Alaska to bring some insight to Chris' mindset.

So is there a moral to this story? That Mother Nature doesn't suffer fools gladly? "Be Prepared?" As with most things, I suspect that the meaning found in this story will be personalized, unique for each one who reads it....less

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Maudeen rated it:

(review of isbn 0385486804)

01/14/08

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: people who have seen the movie, lovers of the outdoors

I first read Into the Wild ten years ago when it first came out after finding out that parts of it are set in Carthage, Miner County, South Dakota pop. 187, a town where my mother has family and where her cousin was once mayor. My great-grandmother is buried in Howard, the Miner county seat. So that was the book and movie’s initial appeal. I mean this town is the true “blink-and-you-miss-it” town. That is, if one would ever even happen to drive through it as it isn’t on a main road. So I...more I first read Into the Wild ten years ago when it first came out after finding out that parts of it are set in Carthage, Miner County, South Dakota pop. 187, a town where my mother has family and where her cousin was once mayor. My great-grandmother is buried in Howard, the Miner county seat. So that was the book and movie’s initial appeal. I mean this town is the true “blink-and-you-miss-it” town. That is, if one would ever even happen to drive through it as it isn’t on a main road. So I wondered, how young Chris McCandless, the subject of the book and movie ended up in Carthage in the first place.

Then I read that Sean Penn was finally making a movie adapted from the book and filming in Carthage. I thought it would be really interesting to see Carthage on the big screen. The first day it was showing in our little theater here in town I Shanghaied my husband (who really isn’t a movie goer, in fact if you ask him, on a scale of 1-10, that he’d suggest going to a movie as a form of entertainment he’d probably tell you –2) into going with me for the matinee. Now John had seen the Oprah show where Sean Penn and Emile Hirsch (who portrays young McCandless in the film) were guests along with author Jon Krakauer and didn’t think too much of McCandless so he was even less excited than usual about seeing this film. If he had known ahead of time that it was 140 minutes long he’d probably had left the theater after his first carton of Milk Duds. But the trooper he is, he persevered for my sake.

The movie adequately told the story of young Christopher McCandless who after graduating from Emory University, took off on a two year road trip, calling himself Alexander Supertramp. Very early on his car was destroyed and he abandoned it, burned what little money he had left and took off on foot. Some one say he was idealist others an adventurer, but others just reckless. Everyone seems to have his or her own opinion. What is clear is that he was found two year later dead in an abandoned bus just north of Denali National Park in Alaska. However his adventures along the way and the people he met tell a very interesting story. And the just how he died is still fodder for speculation although Krakauer does give his theory. Hirsch as McCandless is wonderful – his portrayal deserves an Oscar nomination as does that of Hal Holbrook as Ron Franz, the elderly recluse who befriends him. Told mostly in flashbacks, the movie suffers from uneven editing. I was also disappointed in the cinematography—the Alaskan scenes could have been brilliant but they were just average. That said, the South Dakota prairie was breathtaking. And it was fun to see Carthage. I think the entire town was filmed.

After watching the movie, I was compelled to read the book again. At only 207 pages it’s a fairly quick read. It was even more meaningful after watching the movie. I read many passages out loud to my husband and told him I thought he might change his opinion of McCandless. He is now reading the book. I don’t have the absolutely negative opinion of young Chris as many people have. He was a bit reckless, that’s for sure. But no more than many young men. As Krakauer mentions late in the book, it’s that attribute of daring that contributes to many young men signing up for the military—particularly in times of war. Yes, he did some things wrong. But don’t we all. The only reason that we’re reading about him was that he made some little mistakes that ended up killing him. He was actually a smart kid and I found a lot in him to be admired. It was sad he had to die. Any loss of life is sad. And that is what bothers me the most. That a parent lost a child, that a sister lost a brother, that a world lost a promising young man. There are lessons to be learned here, of course, but was the price too great? ...less

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Aaron rated it:

(review of isbn 0385486804)

12/30/07

bookshelves: journalism

Read in December, 2007

Really enjoyed it. McCandless had in him an exceptionally large dose of the passions that at one point or another consume most young men, if only for a brief period. His strong distaste, bordering on hatred, of modern American life, with all its easy pleasures is idealistic rebellion at its purest.

While he chose nature has his release from the artificial trappings that he rejected, I think many men, myself included, share or at least empathize with his idealism. In my frequent solitude, I'v...more Really enjoyed it. McCandless had in him an exceptionally large dose of the passions that at one point or another consume most young men, if only for a brief period. His strong distaste, bordering on hatred, of modern American life, with all its easy pleasures is idealistic rebellion at its purest.

While he chose nature has his release from the artificial trappings that he rejected, I think many men, myself included, share or at least empathize with his idealism. In my frequent solitude, I've often considered the arbitrary, temporary comforts that material things bring and the silly, meaningless routines that working adults follow until dying in a much less poetic manner than McCandless (or any other adventurer).

Most men - most people - don't try to understand or transcend the more humdrum aspects of daily life and live out a philosophy or ideal like McCandless. His case is exceptionally rare, especially in a time where the course of one's life - especially a youth's life - is supposed to be predictable. Birth. High school (preferably a private one). College (preferably a 'nice' one). Job for 35 years. Retire. Take a cruise. Die. But McCandless' journey was extreme by any measure.

I think people can find some kind of basic, almost primal pleasure in whatever they choose to do. For Buddhist monks, this could be as simple as sweeping the monastery floor. For disaffected college-aged adults, this could be as (comparatively) complex as an hour in the batting cages or even a game of catch. And here, I am speaking specifically of the satisfying the yearning that McCandless felt so strongly - the complete detachment from the forms that govern life that results not from the dissection of the routine and quotidian, but from a more simple, subtle satisfaction that continually eluded him. He felt his yearning was satisfied in the Alaskan wilderness. And there is certainly something special about the Alaskan wilderness, but the feeling he was after is universal, I am sure of it. A euphoric escape from the banalities of existence and the inevitable frustrations those banalities bring - bills, the mortgage, and so forth. Something altogether rapturous. McCandless wanted the rapture to last forever, but by the end of his story (and the end of his life) I think he had recognized that moment could never be realized forever. Perhaps he had stumbled onto the sublime: that feeling is temporary, not permanent, and cannot be realized emotionally or existentially, but must be incorporated into one's very being, into one's intellect. I think that's why he left the bus.

Intelligent people (like McCandless and Krakauer) eventually make peace - or at least a ceasefire - with society, with the system. Some embrace it, chasing ideals or material pleasure or self-satisfaction or to kill off their personal demons. McCandless' rebellion was a fierce one, but ultimately, he made his peace. What he would've done to sustain that peace is anybody's guess. But his peace, and the peace of many others like him, is an uneasy one. Predictably, I'm predisposed to play the role of the armchair historian. And so I can't help but ask myself if the methods by which we organize the society we live in are not at the root of the matter, and more importantly, how many more McCandlesses are there? How many more souls will the system alienate and eventually destroy? Could a pragmatist, a realist working within the system and relishing every minute of it convince me his beliefs were honest? I don't know anymore. I'm really not questioning whether or not our society can sustain itself. To me, it's obvious that the system works. But assuming that McCandless' frustrations are either irrelevant or obscure is to misunderstand what it's like to be an American, and even a human. ...less

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Lissa rated it:

(review of isbn 0385486804)

09/26/07

Read in January, 2007

Into the Wild is an expansion of an article that Jon Krakauer wrote for Outside magazine about a young man named Chris McCandless. McCandless came from a wealthy family in Washington, DC, but had strong ideals about communing with nature, living a life where everything you owned could be fit on your back, and finding one's true self. Therefore, when he finished with college at Emory University, he cut himself off from his parents, donated the remainder of his college money to Oxfam ($24,000), an...more Into the Wild is an expansion of an article that Jon Krakauer wrote for Outside magazine about a young man named Chris McCandless. McCandless came from a wealthy family in Washington, DC, but had strong ideals about communing with nature, living a life where everything you owned could be fit on your back, and finding one's true self. Therefore, when he finished with college at Emory University, he cut himself off from his parents, donated the remainder of his college money to Oxfam ($24,000), and took to the road. He eventually abandoned his car, and took to hitchhiking and riding freight trains to get around the country. He became one of America's itinerants.

Eventually, in his pursuit to become one with nature and make meaning of his life, he decides to have one "final adventure" in the Alaskan bush. Chris McCandless goes "into the wild" (hence the name of the book) intending to live off the land. What ends up happening is that he starves to death.

This book presents a chronicle of these two years of Chris McCandless's life, from the time he left Emory University until his death. Krakauer has taken the time to find and interview many of the people that McCandless stayed with during that time, and the book is peppered with entries from Chris's journal and passages in books that he underlined and annotated (books by Tolstoy, Thoreau, and others like them).

This book was interesting, but I was left with the feeling that Krakauer didn't really have enough material to make a whole novel out of Chris McCandless's oddessy. There are several chapters that meander off into Krakauer's own life, and a survery of other individuals that felt it necessary to renounce civilization and wander off into the wilderness. These chapters don't really illuminate Chris McCandless's life so much and feel like filler, to make the book over 200 pages.

Krakauer clearly admires this young man. After reading the two chapers about his own youth and ambitions, it is easy to see why. krakauer clearly possesses(ed) some of the same traits as Chris McCandless, including the same reckless streak. I came away from this book with an entirely different view of McCandless.

Throughout the account, Krakauer talks about all of the letters he received in response to his original piece in Outside, and how most of those condemned Chris McCandless for his arrogance. He tried to persuade the reader not to condemn him in the same way. He has failed to persuade me. The impression I get from this book and from McCandless's own words is that he was a arrogant, self-centeredyoung man who never failed at anything in his life. Sure, there is something admirable in his willingness to give up everything to live out his ideals fully. But there is also something supremely stupid about walking into the Alaskan bush with nothing by 10 pounds of rice, and a .22 caliber shotgun. The reality is that a simple MAP would have saved his life, but to carry a map would have been contrary to his ridiculous ideals.

I think my thoughts are closest to those of Nick Jans, who wrote:

Over the past 15 years, I've run into several McCandless types out in the country. Same story: idealistic, energetic young guys who overestimated themselves, underestimated the country, and ended up in trouble. McCandless was hardly unique; there's quite a few of these guys hanging around the state, so much alike they're almost a collective cliche. The only difference is that McCandless ended up dead, with the story of his dumbassedness splashed across the media ...His ignorance, which could have been cured by a USGS quadrant and a Boy Scout manual, is what killed him....less

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Stacey rated it:

(review of isbn 0385486804)

08/05/08

hmmm. Well, having seen the movie the book felt redundant as I think they just about covered it all fairly well in the movie. Surprisingly. I did enjoy reading about other transcendentals who had hit the trail long before Chris did; many of whom met the same fate. It's a curiously interesting topic of discussion and I'm glad Krakauer included the references in the book, however, by the time he got to his own adventures I lost interest and realized the book was starting to get redundant as well. ...more hmmm. Well, having seen the movie the book felt redundant as I think they just about covered it all fairly well in the movie. Surprisingly. I did enjoy reading about other transcendentals who had hit the trail long before Chris did; many of whom met the same fate. It's a curiously interesting topic of discussion and I'm glad Krakauer included the references in the book, however, by the time he got to his own adventures I lost interest and realized the book was starting to get redundant as well. It started to feel like perhaps he didn't have quite enough material for a full book about Chris or the rebellious idealism that plagued him and others like him (and perhaps a further analysis of the topic?) and threw in other articles he thought might relate regarding his own foolish bravado - by defending Chris he's defending himself? Arrogance is a word that come to mind. And I think the quote from the Eskimo is fitting as well: hubris.

I did appreciate the middle of the road attitude Krakauer paved. He allowed those who vehemently criticized Chris to have their say and even threw in his own opinions while still respecting Chris and his family. He kept the book objective as best he could with such a spitfire topic - particularly with reactions of the Alaskans. But geez, is it really any one's business? The saving grace for me in this book is it's ability to discern idealism from reality. Meaning, Krakauer doesn't let us idolize or idealize Chris or what he did (though he does defend him a bit more than I think necessary). He puts Chris's story in perspective by offering many similar stories by men who are unknown - mostly because their bodies were never found. What makes Chris different is his body was found. Chris was special in his passion for a more honest pure life where his ideals match his reality and felt home with the land he traveled on - he was special because he took chances few of us will ever allow ourselves to take - but he's one of many. Just because we don't see them in a movie or have their story made into a companion book doesn't mean their stories or lives are any less important to be told or their passion any less.

And quite frankly, their stories are perhaps more respectable as Chris held his family to insanely ridiculously selfish standards and hurt more than he loved and was perhaps blind to his own hypocrisies. Not exactly something to be idolized. But he was young and we all feel immortal when we're young don't we?

Can those who feel that yearning to go to another world and escape modern society really learn from the mistakes the others before them made anyway? I'm guessing their whole rebellious point is they want to make their own mistakes - that's part of their quest and no one can tell them different. Yes, even Thoreau would have thought him foolish for not being prepared but his passion and courage he would find admirable - though doubtful he would appreciate his insistence on allowing concessions for some and not others and not seeing the world's layers as pure in and of themselves. In other words, allowing anger and disgust to be his driving force rather than spiritual growth and understanding. Not to mention forgiveness. Unfortunately they both lived in a world that didn't value what they valued in the way they wanted to value it.

I didn't read Into Thin Air but was an avid rock climber in my youth and have seen the movie many times. Arrogance goes hand in hand with mountain climbers and rebellious path pavers. It's to be expected. I appreciate Krakauer's allowance of it and acceptance of it - these types of stories and books would be false representations otherwise. He doesn't excuse himself - he sympathizes and that's perhaps a better use of energy than condemnation; I'm not sure Chris could have been so objective. ...less

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Bobbi rated it:

(review of isbn 0385486804)

07/23/08

Read in July, 2008

Wow. Jon Krakauer writes well, has a strong voice, and tells a compelling story. I couldn't put it down.

Into the Wild grew out of the widely-reported story of the death of a young man in a remote area of Alaska in 1992. For everyone who wonders why some young men take unreasonable risks, Jon Krakauer offers you Alex...more Wow. Jon Krakauer writes well, has a strong voice, and tells a compelling story. I couldn't put it down.

Into the Wild grew out of the widely-reported story of the death of a young man in a remote area of Alaska in 1992. For everyone who wonders why some young men take unreasonable risks, Jon Krakauer offers you Alexander Supertramp. Upon his graduation from Emory University in 1990, a young man named Chris McCandless adopted this moniker, severed all ties with his family, burned all of the cash in his wallet, and set out to live off of the land. Two years later, his frozen body was found in the Alaskan bush. McCandless, who had given all of his money to a charity dedicated to eradicating hunger, had starved to death.

Right now, you may be thinking, why hasn't Bobbi posted a spoiler alert? Well, I'll tell you. What I've just described comes from the intial pages of the book. The genius of Krakauer's writing is that he takes a story where the end is already well-known and brings us full circle while never losing our interest. Whether he is exploring McCandless' complicated relationship with his family or describing his time as a hobo (yes, people still jump onto boxcars), Krakauer takes the reader with him as he retraces Chris/Alex's journey in a circular fashion that mirrors the geography of the trip. McCandless' story is told through McCandless' notes in the margins of the books that were his sole companions, as well as the recollections of people he encountered in his journeys, some of whom only spent a few hours in his company.

Chris/Alex made quite an impression on the people he met, and upon the author, whom he never met. Jon Krakauer has done an excellent job of showing how his fascination with his subject mirrors McCandless' own fascination with the dream of roughing it in the Alaskan wilderness. For this reader, the best part of the book is the section (two chapters) near the end, where Krakauer describes his similar ordeal and pulls everything together. Suddenly, you see McCandless through Krakauer's eyes, and you understand his motivations, you buy into his theory of how exactly he died, and you are, to some degree, there in Alaska with him.

In the hands of a lesser writer, projecting oneself onto a story like this could come across as grandiose or misguided; somehow, Krakauer avoids these disasters, instead offering insight. Implicit in every page is Krakauer's conviction that his own youthful adventures could have ended in the same way that McCandless' did, and that living to tell the tale has charged him with the responsibility to tell it. Tell it he does, and well. He also responds passionately to those who believe that McCandless was incompetent or that he wished to die. Krakauerrejects the idea that McCandless wasted his life while also mourning his lost potential -- though the nature of that potential will forever remain a mystery. I couldn't help imaging that, under different circumstances, McCandless could have gone on to become a passionate doctor, a professional athlete, a serial killer, a legendary adventurer, or a great humanitarian. We'll never know.

Incidentally, I hear that [Krakauer:]'s new book, to be titled The Hero, will be published in the fall. Continuing his fascination with risk-takers who met tragic and untimely deaths, this time he will write about the life and death of Pat Tillman. Whether I agree or disagree with his take on events, I am certainly looking forward to enjoying his point of view on a story about which we think we know all that there is to know....less

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Jamie rated it:

(review of isbn 0307387178)

01/19/08

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: Anyone

I first heard about Christopher McCandless in college or shortly thereafter, some years after he died, via a song by Harrod and Funck, who were college favorites. But then I knew nothing about him except from the lyrics of their song "Walk Into the Wild" (they change his name slightly to Chris McCandle).

Then this fall "Into the Wild" with Sean Penn at the helm came out in theaters with Emile Hirsch playing the tormented Alexander Supertramp. I went to see it and the mov...more

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Moxie rated it:

(review of isbn 0385486804)

01/26/08

Read in June, 2007

Reading the stories that were pieced together after Alexander Supertramp's death, I discovered an image so familiar that I almost feel like I've met him a thousand times: that kid in LA who was obsessed with sacrifice and had recently driven almost 6000 miles non-stop in a fit of resignation, because he had mentally committed himself to stop searching for anything good or beautiful in the world and live out the rest of his life sweeping floors in some small east-coast town, only to mentally stum...more Reading the stories that were pieced together after Alexander Supertramp's death, I discovered an image so familiar that I almost feel like I've met him a thousand times: that kid in LA who was obsessed with sacrifice and had recently driven almost 6000 miles non-stop in a fit of resignation, because he had mentally committed himself to stop searching for anything good or beautiful in the world and live out the rest of his life sweeping floors in some small east-coast town, only to mentally stumble across THE SECRET, MAN! at some distant mile marker on highway 80, immediately turn around, and drive straight back. Or that guy in South Carolina who's introspection had gotten down to the granularity of seconds passed during his day, such that he'd obsess over past details which lasted for a mere instant. He was always looking for that one inflection, that one pause, which would snowball into something that could unlock the secrets of the world.

I think that most of the tramps I've met in my travels fall into one of two categories. The first are the mystics who quote Jack London, Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. They think hard about morality and defining a strict collection of ideals. They've rejected society as a bunch of self-destructive hypocrites who don't know or care about right and wrong.

The second are the itinerant individualists who find classical literature boring and stifling. They think about and search for experiences which are exciting and in contrast to the rest of the dull world. They've rejected society for being too morally confined.

Alexander Supertramp clearly falls into the first category, but what's interesting is that both groups of people are out there, doing the exact same things in the exact same places, for the exact opposite reasons.

Reading about his time on the road, it's hard to believe that he was out there for two years, almost all alone the whole time. His only friends were the people who'd taken him in along the way, and I know those people. I've slept on the floor of the motel room where that older alcoholic guy who has inexplicably taken up residence in the middle of Missouri, and the reason he invites you over is because he's so desperately lonely that he wants to drink all night, confess the all horrible things he's done in his life, and then break into heart-wrenching tears because he's not allowed to see his daughters anymore -- and he doesn't even know where they live now anyway. He wants to have you over because "Here, now, I can give you this trinket ring that I bought for her so long ago but don't know where to send anymore. You take it!" I think that'd be a hard two years, no matter how adventurous, if that's the only human contact you've got.

I think the most important message in this book, though, is the uncertainty that comes with rejecting all constraints from within. After he died on his Great Alaskan Odyssey, people came out of the woodwork screaming "I told him so!" "That fucking idiot," they'd complain, "wouldn't listen to those of us who know what it takes out here." But how was he supposed to know that this time was the time that the advice was real? They'd told him that that he couldn't live without money, that he couldn't hitchhike anymore, that he couldn't ride freight trains, that he couldn't canoe all the way down the Colorado river. When someone tells you that something is impossible, it's hard to listen when you know that they'd claim many other things that you've done are impossible as well. Only this time, they could be right....less

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Paul rated it:

(review of isbn 0385486804)

08/29/07

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: Those Longing for a Deeper Relationship with Nature

Ah, nature. That lovely, peaceful place where we go for a few minutes or hours during a hike in the mountains or for a day or two during a camping trip. Just driving by the forests on the mountains of Utah, I so long to pull over on the side of the road, leave my car just as Chris McCandless did in Nevada, and journey into the wild.

Uh, yeah.

After reading this book, I realize that I have much to learn. I do believe that nature is gentle and yet the consequences of taking it lightly a...more Ah, nature. That lovely, peaceful place where we go for a few minutes or hours during a hike in the mountains or for a day or two during a camping trip. Just driving by the forests on the mountains of Utah, I so long to pull over on the side of the road, leave my car just as Chris McCandless did in Nevada, and journey into the wild.

Uh, yeah.

After reading this book, I realize that I have much to learn. I do believe that nature is gentle and yet the consequences of taking it lightly are predictable and fatal. I have thought much over the past year about leaving behind the painfully stifling existence we have created for ourselves in American cities, corporations, and in our own homes. My first choice would be to live closer to nature, to work in nature, to sustain myself in nature. That is pretty funny when I think about it because I see little chance of surviving as a vegan in nature. Hmmm.

So this book, needless to say, was a real eye-opener for me. Chris McCandless was a fascinating young man in my humble opinion, and I do believe that those who criticized him for what they labelled his "hubris" for believing that he could wonder off on his own and survive in the barren wilds of Alaska are only projecting onto him the repressed longing within their own hearts for a more intimate relationship with the movements of our planet and the ecosystems it so wonderfully supports. Yet, this book was downright creepy to me in that Chris was a man who had excellent survival skills in the outdoors. He had been surviving on the road on his own for several years with brief interludes into town to work to make money for his next foray into the wilderness. He was no novice, and he was very intelligent and instinctual when it came to nature.

Still, he died.

I won't go into what brought about his end because Krakauer, in this narrative at his gripping best, weaves a dramatic piece of nonfiction that takes off running with the reader breathlessly following from one page to the next as we (reader and author) together attempt to comprehend the tragic conclusion of the life (in this form) of Christopher McCandless. But it revealed to me just how much I have to learn and understand about the wilderness if I expect to survive (in this form) out there on my own.

As for the work itself, as I said this is Krakauer at his best. His knack for using history to inform the present and putting together a complex and unflinching rendering of the lives of real people is, in my small experience with nonfiction, unmatched. In fact, before reading his work "Under the Banner of Heaven" last year, I had almost no use for nonfiction. Not anymore. His books are as good and as suspenseful and as real as any fiction I have read. (I know some may call say that phrase "real as any fiction" is oxymoronic, but true lovers of fiction know that it has produced some of the most honest expressions of reality - namely that all reality is subjective - of which humanity is capable.) If you love nonfiction, read this book. If your thing has always been fiction (like me), read this book. It will haunt you and it will inspire you.

For now, I go into the next book. ...less

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Matt rated it:

(review of isbn 0385486804)

09/11/08

"Into the Wild" is one of those polarizing books. You either love it, its main character, and the iconoclastic, boundary-pushing ethos it espouses. Or, you hate it, sickened by the selfish, self-centered, self-pitying main character who was handed it all on a platter but decided the platter wasn't shiny enough, so he runs away, leaving a shattered family in his wake.

The character, Chris McCandless, was a real person. Back when I was in sixth grade, he walked into the Alaskan wildern...more "Into the Wild" is one of those polarizing books. You either love it, its main character, and the iconoclastic, boundary-pushing ethos it espouses. Or, you hate it, sickened by the selfish, self-centered, self-pitying main character who was handed it all on a platter but decided the platter wasn't shiny enough, so he runs away, leaving a shattered family in his wake.

The character, Chris McCandless, was a real person. Back when I was in sixth grade, he walked into the Alaskan wilderness and never returned. Of those who love or hate this book, and therefore, love or hate Chris, I fall into the former camp.

The feelings you take from "Into the Wild" flow directly from your feelings for Chris. Jon Krakauer is a serviceable writer, but you certainly aren't going to be blown away by his prose. His utility as a writer comes mainly from the fact that he's put his money where his pen is (he...he...he...that sounds gross). That is, he's actually done incredibly daring and dangerous feats, and has lived in the world of daredevils and risk-takers of which he writes. He's gone up Everest, which he detailed in "Into thin Air" (which left me cold, pun intended). In "Into the Wild", he talks about climbing the Devil's Thumb, comparing the compulsions that drove Chris McCandless with his own inner voice.

I think Chris, in his own way, was a towering figure; thus, I thoroughly enjoyed "Into the Wild." He was a smart kid, a college grad, who came from money. His parents were messed up, but really, whose parents aren't? After college, instead of going to law school (don't go to law school, by the way), he gave away $20,000, burned his credit cards, and set out to see the west. Whatever else you call him, you can't call him a poser. Like everyone, he had his share of dreams and demons, and he set out to follow his dreams and fight his demons. There's something to be said for what he put his parent through. Still, the world forces us to be our own person. He went forward the best way he knew how, defining himself along the way. The tragedy, of course, is that the lessons he learned - about the value of friends and family - he learned too late.

I don't really need to defend Chris. Krakauer does that. He is unabashedly in his corner, defending his choices, his skills, his desire to go alone to the far places, like John Muir before him. He was himself, fully and completely, which is saying a lot, in this day and age. Or any day and age. He was part adventurer, part philosopher, and part monk (the monk part fascinates Krakauer, who spends a lot of time wondering whether Chris died a virgin).

I saw the movie, directed by Sean Penn. I found it poetic and inspiring. In contrast to the book, the movie spends a lot of time focusing on Chris's effect on the various people he meets on his journeys. In a way, Chris becomes some kind of wondering apostle, healing and helping those he meets along his path, before he dies a martyrs death in Alaska, a vision from a Don Maclean song ("the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you..."). The book does a better job of explaining Chris, warts and all. Krakauer dismisses those who wish to dismiss Chris as suffering from some kind of mental disorder.

He was simply one of those rare people who wanted to know the world intimately, and in the process of discovering those secrets, was killed by that same world. ...less

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Erie rated it:

(review of isbn 0330351699)

05/04/08

bookshelves: book-to-movies, nonfiksi

Into the Wild

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