Into the Wild | Jon Krakauer | It makes you look inside yourself

Into the Wild | Jon Krakauer | Excellent story with one irritating quirk.

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Into the Wild

	Into the Wild Jon Krakauer Anchor, 2007 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 1206 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

It makes you look inside yourself

I first picked up this book because of all the hype around the movie. I had not seen the movie and decided that I really wanted to check out the book before hand. All I needed to do was read the author's notes in the front to know that I had to read it.

Jon Krakauer's words stopped me from putting it down until the book was finished. I enjoyed how the book was woven together for good and bad on Chris Mc Candless's relationships. It made me appreciate my own experiences with people and helped me to understand how our approach to life has influences on those around us. Even when relationships are brief the outcome can be life altering.

Into the Wild is a great read. I could not put it down and I was happy that I read the book before seeing the movie.

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Excellent story with one irritating quirk.

I loved this story, and finished it in one sitting. How many of us ever dream of just dropping everything and going off, exploring nature and taking in the landscape around us, instead of the steady day to day rat race of life? I grew up into the area that Chris did, and can understand the pressures of competition, the hassle, and the need to just crawl inside yourself for awhile and be alone.
My only irritation with this story was the fact that the author cut in with his own. I see the author trying to compare his experiences in understanding Chris's thought process, but it was a deviation most distracting. It made things feel out of order and even took some of the punch out of the ending. I didn't feel the need of the authors interruptions and musings.

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The New Naive Hero

It seems to me that many have missed the point of this book by Krakauer, which is a journalistic assessment of a young man, not unlike many in today's up and coming generation, who views the world as a sort of extended Disneyland. McCandless' adventures are tainted by his own egocentric methods of refusing to listen to good advice, to learn anything useful about what he is planning to do (for many have done it before), and to literally avoid information that might help him prepare, all in an effort to naively increase "the adventure." It may be a sign of an ever-shrinking world, when those looking for the next adventures must heighten the effect of it by being intentionally naive about what they are doing, and by avoiding all guidance or knowledge. Those that cite McCandless as intelligent may be missing the point about intelligence. Intelligence is not something you gain in college, or that you are naturally gifted with from birth; it is a factor in how you deal with your own experience of the world. Intelligence is exactly what McCandless was lacking. He survives longer than he probably would have with even a slightly different turn of events. It is not too far to go to say that he had a latent suicidal tendency, a deathwish (his eating habits alone suggest this), and fulfilled it slowly over the course of a few years. What is dangerous in our attempts to make heroes of such young men, of such actions, is that in Romanticizing the death of these individuals we fail to see the difference when someone actually does perform beyond their capabilities to achieve selfless ends. Krakauer's book is a must read, but we must also read what its author is saying about the society that produces such new adventurers. This kind of faulty idealism should not be deified but examined for the uncanny sense of disaster it presages in a self-satisfied society.

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Interesting, but...

I read this book to my husband and while we finished it in about 4 nights, I can't say that I loved it. The author took too many opportunities to give mini biographies about other people, including himself, which I found irritating. Also, the author seemed to scour his dictionary for obscure words that the average college graduate and avid reader would not recognize. I ended up keeping a list of words I had never heard before and looked them up on [...]. And lastly, the kid was self absorbed and a real jerk to his family. Interesting because it is a true story, but...

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A good story but not a book

I give Krakauer credit for not musing more then he did and sticking to the facts he was able to uncover. It was an interesting and sad story. I think McCandless was presented in a reasonably honest manner but did not understand his character so could sympathize with the parents. At some point you let go and hope. In this case McCandless was interesting, intelligent, charming but not world wise practical. There just wasn't enough here for an entire book, albeit short. The story was longer then a magazine article but to write a book meant including details in greater length then I thought necessary to appreciate the story. I would have enjoyed the book more if the author has filled the pages with some detail of Alaska and the trouble others encounter and how Alaskans deal with the wild.

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