Moxie's review
Moxie's review
Into the Wild
by Jon Krakauer
Moxie's review
rating:
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...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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