Into the Wild | Jon Krakauer | KING OF THE ROAD...

Into the Wild | Jon Krakauer | "A Story That Touches One's Soul"

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Into the Wild

	Into the Wild Jon Krakauer Villard Books, 1996 average customer review:based on 5 reviews
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highly recommended

KING OF THE ROAD...

This is a poignant, compelling narrative of an intelligent, intense, and idealistic young man, Chris McCandless, who cut off all ties to his upper, middle class family, and reinvented himself as Alexander Supertramp, a drifter living out of a backpack, eking out a marginal existence as he wandered throughout the United States. A modern day King of the Road, McCandless ended his journey in 1992 in Alaska, when he walked alone into the wilderness north of Denali. He never returned.

Krakauer investigates this young man's short life in an attempt to explain why someone who has everything going for him would have chosen this lifestyle, only to end up dead in one of the most remote, rugged areas of the Alaskan wilderness. Whether one views McCandless as a fool or as a modern day Thoreau is a question ripe for discussion. It is clear, however, from Krakauer's writing that his investigation led him to feel a strong, spiritual kinship with McCandless. It is this kindred spirit approach to his understanding of this young man that makes Krakauer's writing so absorbing and moving.

Krakauer retraces McCandless' journey, interviewing many of those with whom he came into contact. What develops is a haunting, riveting account of McCandless' travels and travails, and the impact he had on those with whom he came into contact. Krakauer followed McCandless' last steps into the Alaskan wilderness, so that he could see for himself how McCandless had lived, and how he had died. This book is his epitaph.

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"A Story That Touches One's Soul"

This slim account of the quixotic life and tragic death of Chris McCandless is a remarkable book. I was transfixed by this story, one that chronicled the wanderings and explorations of a young man across the American West and into the wild of the Alaskan interior.

I found the book moved me in ways I hardly expected. This is surely a testament to the skilled and sensitive writing of Krakauer. He was able to transport me into the beauty and terror of this man's trek through desert, mountains, and taiga. I am an urban creature, who only on occasion has traveled the guided trail in a state park. Yet, I was swept along in the wake of McCandless's more exotic and often times harrowing trails through places like Detrital Wash, Arizona, Carthage, South Dakota and Stampede Trail, Alaska. As detailed an eye Krakauer has in making the flora and fauna of the West come alive for the reader, it is the human story of yearning and loss that made this much more than a tale of man alone in the wilderness.

Krakauer could have sold many copies of this story without probing the depths and mysteries of Chris McCandless's life. Instead, the author served up a complex potrtrait of a young man in his 20s estranged from his parents and hell bent on his search for truth and an unfettered life free from his suburban Washington D.C. upbringing and the rules and regulations of modern society. This story easily could have lapsed into a cliched tale of another On the Road Kerouac figure or a latter day Thoreau seeking self-discovery. While there are elements of these types in the character of McCandless, Krakauer draws a much more complex and compelling person for us to ponder.

At times I wanted to shake McCandless and tell him what the hell was he doing abrubtly leaving his family and cutting off all ties with former friends as he sought a purer, freer life. How self-absorbed and typically adolescent of him to be so wrapped up in his own angst to ignore the friends and family he left behind. Yet, as Krakauer deftly demonstrates McCandless was capabale of great compassion and a sense of responsibility when he met up with a variety of characters along the way.
I was especially moved by the tender and caring relationship fostered between him and an 80 year old man in the desert of the Southwest. McCandeless engendered affection, concern, and endearment in a lonely soul still grieving for his own son killed in an automobile accident. The fact that McCandless has to move on and leave behind the offers of emotional and financial assistance evokes more pathos than anger in the reader. Time and time again McCandless has a beguiling charm on the people he meets and the caring relationships he makes in the borderlands of the West. At these moments I wanted to hug McCandless and be a brother to him, affriming his need to explore and search while also reminding him that people need him and he needs the human community despite all of its shortcomings.

Yet, McCandless seems destined to go his own way, ignoring both the advice of seasoned travellers he meets along the way as well as the admomishments of the readers of this story such as myself who begin to deeply care for this person. It is heart wrenching to read about McCandless's final days in the Alaskan wilderness, holed up in an abandoned school bus with his copy of Tolstoy by his side as he slowly starves to death. By this point I could no longer be frustrated with all of McCandless's mistakes and shortcomings. Rather, I was left with a profound sense of loss for a gifted and troubled soul, who with a little bit of luck, could have make it back to the human society he so needed to escape. The tragic irony is that McCandless seemed to have wanted to make that return journey, but the natural wild he had so embraced would not let him go.

In the end this story's power lies in its ability to force each of us to reflect upon the paths we have taken in life, especially those of us who have done our own share of self- righteous rebellion against parents and society. While McCandless was his own person and surely belied easy pop psychology labels, his tragic death and the nuanced story Krakauer tells makes one pause and take stock of the choices each of us have made in our life.

Alan Stoskopf Brookline, Ma.

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This could have been me

I remember when I first read this novel nearly ten years ago, I felt really in touch with the lead character. I read part of it in Outdoor magazine and when the novel came out I snapped it up and devoured it. To me, Chris McCandless is the Holden Caufield of my generation. A young man completely alienated by society and searching to find himself outside of societal norms-a psychological wilderness. When I read this book I was reminded of Jack London, Jack Kerouac, and Leo Tolstoy almost simultaneously. But there is also a certain folly and misguided aspect to the odyssey of Chris McCandless. I was left with the impression that this young man also had instincts that were perhaps suicidal, that his willingness to give up his privileged life and a small fortune and roam the highways was a mask for some mental disturbance, perhaps a mental illness.

I relate to this character deeply. I spent a lot of my twenties moving from town to town, living in the back of my truck. I have done long solo outings in the woods, I've lived like a hobo. I myself grew up in an upper middle class, intellectual family. Krakauer obviously identifies with the character and his deep alienation, his personal rift from the mainstream ideals. He also does a good job pointing out the folly and the lost cause of McCandless's final foray into the Alaskan wilderness. Inadequately prepared with little experience or exposure to the specialized knowledge and discipline that it takes to solo in the harsh unforgiving wilderness, McCandlesses sojourn becomes a very sad and tragic one indeed. The undertone here again points to a self-destructive personality disorder. This type of escapism can't last forever or one becomes completely anti-social. At some point all of us alienated lost souls need to snap out of it to some degree-I definitely identified with the struggles this man had going on in his head.

Now that this is a movie I can't wait to see it. I believe in time this novel will become an important part of modern American literature and a pathway towards discovering and understanding some of the alienation that was common for Gen X'ers like myself.

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Nature Mystic

The other three reviewers pretty much nailed it, so I won't say much except that the book left me with a feeling of awe and deep sadness. . . and a secret desire to do something like McCandless did (but more prudently).

It is, so far, one of two books that I started reading again immediately after I read it the first time.

McCandless sought transformation, healing for the cancer that was eating his soul, with an incredible will-power and charisma. He sought to get down to the basics-- a mystical communion with, and rugged survival in, nature. He was no New England-style Transcendentalist, though; although sensitive and intelligent (and highly moral), he was also as tough as the leather belt he beautifully crafted, and killed his own food.

He went forward to what he knew could very likely prove fatal.

Krakauer writes solidly, brilliantly, and as a defender of those who dislike the plastic fascism of modern life, and "are compelled to look over the edge."

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Completely and unfailingly touching...

When I skimmed over my summer reading list for school this year, I sighed. All of the titles seemed so boring, but I knew that just with covers, one shouldn't judge a book by it's name. So I highlighted a few random novels on the list and searched them up on Google, and what the summary I found for "Into the Wild" was less than thrilling. However, I gave it a shot. It seemed different from the other books, and it didn't sound like the typical monotony that non-fiction books provide me. (Only my opinion... lol, I usually quite selective with my reading-- I know what this mind of mine enjoys and what it doesn't.)
I also found out that there was a movie, which happens to be strikingly true to the book AND to "what really happened." The story of Chris, or, as he later titles himself, Alex Supertramp, knocked me dead off my feet and swept me off to a place in my soul I had never thought existed! It was so utterly touching and striking and HUMAN--
Chris is a very well-off man who, after graduating college-- and having a pretty good prospect of a future going for him-- leaves society and heads to the Alaskan bush, where one can be free and uninhibited. He burns all of his money and sells all of his possessions, his backpack his only companion. Jon Krakauer, the skilled journalist who wrote this novel, examines so meticulously the possible incentives that a single human being might have to do such a crazy thing that he touches all of the recesses of the human spirit, the human heart, and the human mind. Although this work is posthumous--for Krakauer was assigned to report the incident of Chris's death in the first place-- it would seem that Krakauer had known the adventurer personally and for a rather long time-- you see, the author did EXTENSIVE research. The readers get a clear look at Chris's past, his relationship with his father that was a big part responsible for his venturing out into the wild, and how, in fact, he was not crazy in doing what he did.
Krakauer sounds strangely fond of Chris in his writing, and one cannot blame him. Although people may deem Chris as a "kook" and "mentally insane" (which they did when the story went out in the press ten years ago), it just goes to prove that they didn't truly understand him.
Chris had a lot of reasons-- and pretty good ones, too-- to leave society. Though he took it to a level I'd hesitate to reach, he was a smart, admirable, and not to mention INTREPID for doing what he did. He died doing it, but, as reported ten years ago, when a group of moose hunters found him deceased in an abandoned bus, he had been smiling as his soul left his body.
Jon Krakauer tells a worthwhile story of young Chris's journey--from his childhood to his early death--, of ambition and dreams, and of everything that is human. It shouldn't be missed, and if anyone after having read "Into the Wild" castigates it in any aspect, I'd call THEM a "kook." ;)

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