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Loading... Into the Wild (original 1996; edition 2007)by Jon Krakauer
Work InformationInto the Wild by Jon Krakauer (1996)
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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." ( ) 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. 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.
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. Belongs to Publisher SeriesSerie Piper (2708 / 5067) Is contained inHas the adaptationIs an expanded version ofHas as a studyHas as a supplementHas as a student's study guideAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
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. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)917.98045History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography of and travel in North America West Coast U.S. AlaskaLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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