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Into the wild by Jon Krakauer
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Into the wild (original 1996; edition 1997)

by Jon Krakauer

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
17,887445276 (3.88)1 / 398
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild. Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild. Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interst that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless. When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding--and not an ounce of sentimentality. Mesmerizing, heartbreaking, Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page.… (more)
Member:Lcwilson45
Title:Into the wild
Authors:Jon Krakauer
Info:New York: Anchor Books, 1997.
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:memoir

Work Information

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (1996)

  1. 70
    Walden by Henry David Thoreau (arztriper)
  2. 51
    Walden / Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau (thiagobomfim)
    thiagobomfim: That is a history of a boy inspired by Thoreau and his masterpiece: Wladen.
  3. 20
    The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell's Fatal Obsession with Alaskan Bears by Nick Jans (stephmo)
    stephmo: Both books deal with idealists and end in Alaska. Both stories present a certain mythology available only from the Alaskan wilderness.
  4. 31
    Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer (sturlington)
  5. 20
    Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed (sturlington)
  6. 31
    Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains by Jon Krakauer (Ronoc)
  7. 10
    The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed by John Vaillant (Anonymous user)
  8. 10
    Sukkwan Island by David Vann (raton-liseur)
    raton-liseur: Il peut paraître étrange de rapprocher ces deux livres. Pourtant ils sont entrés en résonance lorsque je les ai lus à un an d’intervalle. Tous les deux sont sombres puisqu’il y est question de mort, et tous les deux ont pour fond la beauté rude des paysages glacials de l’Alaska. C’est cette confrontation fatale entre le blanc de la neige et le noir de la mort qui m’a saisie dans ces deux livres, même si les raisons qui sous-tendent ces deux quêtes vers les paysages du Grand Nord sont (à première vue) sans point commun.… (more)
  9. 10
    Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer by David Roberts (amyblue, bluepiano)
    amyblue: Both books attempt to solve the mystery of how a young man disappeared in the wilderness on a quest for beauty and an authentic life.
    bluepiano: Another young Yank who died in the wilderness whilst on a impassioned private quest.
  10. 10
    The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by W. H. Davies (Polaris-)
  11. 55
    On the Road by Jack Kerouac (thiagobomfim)
  12. 00
    American Nomads: Travels with Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers, and Bullriders by Richard Grant (cwflatt)
  13. 11
    Hunger by Knut Hamsun (nilsr)
  14. 00
    Scenes in America Deserta by Reyner Banham (nilsr)
  15. 00
    Cold Burial: A True Story of Endurance and Disaster by Clive Powell-Williams (bluetongue)
  16. 00
    Drop City by T.C. Boyle (suniru)
  17. 01
    Arctic Daughter: A Wilderness Journey by Jean Aspen (suniru)
  18. 01
    Off the Map by Hib (Anonymous user)
  19. 24
    The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (Graphirus)
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» See also 398 mentions

English (415)  Spanish (8)  Italian (6)  German (4)  Dutch (3)  French (3)  Catalan (2)  Portuguese (Portugal) (2)  Swedish (1)  Finnish (1)  All languages (445)
Showing 1-5 of 415 (next | show all)
Read this book with my ninth-grade literature class. My students were initially intrigued, often times baffled by the character of Chris McCandless and his story. Jon Krakauer goes into painstaking detail, and the book catalogs the effort to find that painstaking detail. But this is largely where to book goes wrong. It doesn't feel cohesive and it often lost us as readers. McCandless' story can be inspiring but bogged down by pages of minuscule detail, loose conjecture, and stories of different adventurers that don't relate to McCandless' own, the power of witnessing McCandless' short but passionate life is all but snuffed out. You can tell that the book is not Krakauer's preferred form. As one of my students said, "this is why no one reads magazines anymore." ( )
  Aidan767 | Feb 1, 2024 |
Fell in from beginning. Anxiety producing style in sections. Loved it. ( )
  mamabooks49 | Jan 28, 2024 |
An account of what may have happened to a young man who ended up starving to death in the Alaskan wilderness. Very well written.
  bentstoker | Jan 26, 2024 |
The basic elements of Krakauer's tale about the life and premature death of Chris McCandless are well known. In April 1992, McCandless, at 24, headed out into the Alaska wilderness in an attempt to get back to nature, or find some sort of authentic life.

As talented and resourceful as McCandless was, something overwhelmed him toward the end of his experiment. He died from a combination of starvation and ingesting poisonous seeds, or something we still don't know about.

McCandless' addiction to William Henry Thoreau, Tolstoy, Pasternak and other somewhat mystical writers gave him a grand canvas on which to paint his dangerous mission. The backwoods of Alaska may be mapped, but living there is another matter. As a lover of fine literature, I feel for McCandless. If you cannot find inspiration from the great writers, where can you?

In spite of Krakauer's finding to the contrary, I find it impossible to leave this story without a feeling that McCandless also suffered a form of megalomania, a mental illness. He was so special and so talented, but so odd. He was creative, entrepreneurial, musical, but was totally uncontrollable. He took direction from only a voice inside of him.

The book also made me reflect back on an earlier book I read this year: Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Rain Forest, by Mark J. Plotkin. Instead of assuming his knowledge of the wild, Dr. Plotkin asks and learns from aboriginals from their knowledge of generations of living with the natural and super-natural elements of the backwoods.

We are still only barely learning what nature and evolution has wrought even as pollution and climate change are taking the diversity of life away from us.

I think also of strides science is making in understanding the microbiome and the trillions of microbes inside our gut, prompting unpleasant questions about who we really are if we are such hosts to the thousands of years of evolution inside our own bodies. How much of us is host to more sturdy life forms, and how much is unique and necessary the continuance of life on this planet.

In some ways, even grass is a more successful species than we have proven to be. We spoil the landscape. Is this what evolution wants to accomplish?

Nature fights back, sometimes in unpleasant ways. The universe fights back and takes us into uncharted waters.

To put the story into something of a personal perspective, Krakauer interrupts the story to talk about his pursuit of a more authentic life through one of his main hobbies, mountain-climbing. He is such a good writer that I had to put the book down feeling vertigo at his description on climbing enormous peaks with little equipment and terrible risks for failure at these heights and really unpredictable weather. The book is well worth reading if only for these passages, but I would refer you to his adventure masterpiece, Into Thin Air, to get the full effect. ( )
  MylesKesten | Jan 23, 2024 |
I feel bad for giving this just two stars. After all, Krakauer obviously did a lot of research, a lot of thinking - both about the subject and himself, and he writes very well. However, the book just doesn't have enough meat, enough meaning and yet Krakauer treated the subject as if it did. He kept trying to explain the protagonists motivation and beliefs. It was too much. Similarly, Krakauer relates his own stories and those of others - even going so far as to talk about one of his guides to the bus in the last chapter. Oh cmon. Enough already. So Krakauer makes it fascinating but also makes it overblown and mostly driven by anecdote that, while interesting on their own, just don't come together to form something that good. ( )
  donwon | Jan 22, 2024 |
Showing 1-5 of 415 (next | show all)
Christopher McCandless's life and his death may have been meaningless, absurd, even reprehensible, but by the end of "Into the Wild," you care for him deeply.
 
Mr. Krakauer has taken the tale of a kook who went into the woods, and made of it a heart-rending drama of human yearning.
 

» Add other authors (24 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Krakauer, Jonprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Ferrari, LauraTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Franklin, PhilipNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Mijn, Aad van derTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Molinier, ChristianTraductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Palma, Maria HelenaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Soares, Pedro MaiaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Zung, SabrinaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Jim Gallien had driven four miles out of Fairbanks when he spotted the hitchhiker standing in the snow beside the road, thumb raised high, shivering in the gray Alaska dawn.
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The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
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In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild. Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild. Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interst that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless. When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding--and not an ounce of sentimentality. Mesmerizing, heartbreaking, Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page.

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