Point of no return
Written: Oct 01 '00 (Updated Nov 20 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Investigative journalism at its best!
Cons: Perhaps too many details which could have been omitted
The Bottom Line: Very good adventure reading
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| AlexG's Full Review: Jon Krakauer - Into the Wild |
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. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. 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…
If this opening paragraph, inscribed on the cover page, doesn’t appeal to you—read no further, this book isn’t for you. However, I found it quite intriguing, and after reading Krakauer’s other best-selling book, Into Thin Air, and knowing Krakauer’s superb writing skills, I wanted to solve the mystery of Into The Wild for myself.
I call it a mystery because the very first questions that popped up in my head after reading the cover page were, “How is it possible to know what McCandless did during his four-month stay in the middle of nowhere if no one was around him to witness his experience and, if somehow answered, how is it possible to have enough information to write a 200-page book about his wanders?”
These questions were only partially answered in the book because Into The Wild is not primarily about McCandless’ Alaska adventure, but about what led him there. Why did a 22-year old Emory University graduate with honors cut off all ties to his family? Why did he abandon almost all of his possessions? Why did he change his name to Alexander Supertramp? Why did he choose to become a vagabond with no stable place of living? And ultimately, what is it that drives people into the wild?
Into The Wild is an investigative journalism at its best! Krakauer spent more than a year chasing down the details of McCandless adventure. His research took him across North America to many places that one can describe as the “ragged margin of our society,” where Chris McCandless (a.k.a. Alex Supertramp) searched for “raw, transcendent experience.”
Chris McCandless traveled from Atlanta to U.S. Southwest, Northwest, West, and Midwest, to Mexico and Gulf of California. Finally, crossing Canada, he walked into the wild in Alaska. Researching McCandless’s story Krakauer followed Chris’s footsteps and talked to many people who had met him along the way. By the time of his death, Chris McCandless had been on the road for more than two years. All this time, his parents had no clue about his whereabouts.
The cover page of Into The Wild is somewhat misleading. The lower half is this review’s opening paragraph. The upper half is a photograph of an old bus buried in knee-deep snow in the woods. The snow dust around the bus and the surroundings create the atmosphere of windy, cold, and lonely place. After looking at the cover I was under impression that the whole book is about McCandless’s life in this environment. Not so. Less than half of the book is about McCandless’s Alaska adventure.
Into The Wild spotlights many philosophical questions. Sex and desire to be liked by others are the ultimate drives in one’s life, according to Freud. Yet, these goals were far from important to Chris McCandless. Can one be struggling to survive and enjoying the experience at the same time? Can one be happy always being alone? Can one be happy without the intimacy of another human being? Is happiness only real when shared?
Getting back to the epistemology question, “How do we know what we know about Chris McCandless,” in my opinion, it’s best to leave it the readers to discover the answer for themselves.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
AlexG
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Location: New York, NY
Reviews written: 130
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About Me:
Alex has a voracious appetite for travel. Travel hasn't satisfied an appetite. It's created one.
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