Into the Wild

by Jon Krakauer

Paperback, 1997

Status

Available

Call number

FIC J Kra

Publication

Anchor Books (Random House)

Pages

207

Description

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)

Description

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 has 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 has reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short
life. Admitting an interest that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the dries and desires that propelled McCandless. Digging deeply, he takes an inherently compelling mystery and unravels the larger riddles it holds: the profound pull of the American wilderness on our imagination; the allure of high-risk activities to young men of a certain cast of mind; the complex, charged bond between fathers and sons.
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 storytelling blaze through every page.

Tags

NONFICTION, Biography and Autobiography, Survival Stories, Memoirs

Collection

Nonfiction

Barcode

3940

Language

English

Original language

English

Original publication date

1996 (1e édition originale américaine)

Physical description

207 p.; 8 inches

ISBN

9780385486804

Similar in this library

Media reviews

The New York Times Book Review
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.
— 1 more
The New York Times
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.

Lexile

1270L

User reviews

LibraryThing member Daedalus18
Having loved the movie, and long put off reading the book (whose cover blurb sold me on it long before I knew of how well Krakauer wrote), I finally have read Into The Wild.

It is a life changing book, for me - a brilliant piece of work almost impossible to quantify for others, but I'll take a shot,
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 briefly.

There are a lot of people (Alaskans, in particular) who resent the attention paid to Chris McCandless. He is considered by some to be an arrogant, and ill-prepared elite who had no sense at all to attempt what he accomplished. At the end of his great adventure he died, after all. As if that fact invalidates the nature and heart of what McCandless accomplished on his personal journey. The book spends a great deal of time addressing this attitude directly, and while everyone is all too aware of the errors and faults (some of which can be interpreted as arrogance, not using a map for instance), the author's impressions, research and conclusions tell a very different story.

This isn't about Alaska, or dying in Alaska. It is about our culture's detachment from honest, obvious and impacting rights of passage and how this natural need is bound to cost us the lives of some of our young - the ones daring enough to try to live life according to their own beliefs, passions and need for honest, truthful self discovery.

I shouldn't say what it is about, really. I've read many reviews and opinions wherein the writer gives their interpretation of 'what it is about' and accuse others of 'not getting it'. That is one of the beauties of this book - it is necessarily going to carry a different message to many different people.

Parents may face the cold reality that they do not ultimately control their children when they mature - and that the grey line between childhood and adulthood necessitates some dangerous transitions, if it is to benefit the adult in the making.

Mortality isn't something many in the West are comfortable with - to have died (whatever quality of life proceeds it) is the ultimate failure to many people. That this attitude prescribes a life of fear and limitation seems to escape most. Chris lived more life than many such people, and did so in 1/4 the time.

I'm predictably rambling and being less coherent than I'd like, so I'll start to close with a quote from the book:

"It is hardly unusual for a young man to be drawn to a pursuit considered reckless by his elders; engaging in risky behavior is a rite of passage in our culture no less that in most others. Danger always held a certain allure. That , in large part, is why so many teenagers drive too fast and drink too much and take too many drugs, why it has always been so easy for nations to recruit young men to go to war. It can be argued that youthful derring-do is in fact evolutionarily adaptive, a behavior encoded in our genes. McCandless, in his fashion, merely took risk-taking to its logical extreme."

I feel that McCandless ultimately gave us a worthy example mixed perfectly with a cautionary tale, and the jewels he unearthed through hard work most of us would never dream of attempting. After all was said and done, he concluded "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED", an intensely powerful conclusion for someone to attain after leaving everyone else behind.
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LibraryThing member poetontheone
A well written and thoughtfully crafted biographical sketch of Christopher McCandless, who abandoned the comforts of modern living to trek across the country into nature in order to find meaning. Initially, I thought McCandless' tale was that of a foolish adventurer and I was curious about his
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 circumstances. I found that McCandless and I both love Literature. We both seek to penetrate our existence. I, unlike McCandless, am not athletic or adventurous. This book has made me want to be more outgoing. I won't live in the wilderness, but I do need to start experiencing the world around me and break from the lull of daily life.

This is one of the most compelling tales I have ever read and my favorite non-fiction book I have read thus far.
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LibraryThing member paulafonseca530B
Audience: Grade 9 and up

Chris McCandless had what many consider a good life. His parents, who worked hard to rise from poverty, were proud to provide the family with a comfortable life in Annadale, Virginia. McCandless was smart, driven, and talented. He excelled in school, and when it was time to
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 attend college, he went to the prestigious Emory University. He was an athlete as well as an artist. People found him interesting and charismatic. Every challenge McCandless undertook, he succeeded. Until he decided to embark on the journey of a lifetime, McCandless had encountered no obstacles that he could not overcome. It all changed when the dream of an Alaskan adventure came true. It is unclear why McCandless, an upper-middle class young man who had everything going for him, abandoned his apartment, left his family, and tracked the country in search of an ideal of life without constraints or authority. McCandless changed his name and forsook his past to take on a two-year adventure that led him across the country to a lonely death inside of a bus in wild Alaska.

Into the Wild is Jon Krakauer’s attempt to answer the many questions arising from Chris McCandless’ unusual life and death. There are few answers in the account of the young man who abandoned a seemingly happy and comfortable life to distance himself from his family and society at large. Was it the influence of the literature of Jack London, Thoreau and Tolstoy? Was it the revelation of his father’s bigamy? Was it nature or nurture that led the young man to his tragic end in a bus in the middle of Alaska? Krakauer shies away from conclusions; instead, he retraces McCandless’ steps and interviews those who came in contact with him to provide enough information and leaves it to the reader to make up his or her own mind about McCandless. Readers are left with a picture of a conflicted young man whose personality swayed from friendly, generous, gregarious, and caring to self-righteous, impatient, intolerant, and self-absorbed. The reader is left to ponder if McCandless’ main motive, and the cause of his death, was hubris or innocence.

In Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer does an outstanding job of researching Chris McCandless’ life and death. It is not hard to see that Krakauer’s fascination with McCandless stems from his identification with the young man. Instead of threatening the journalistic objectivity readers are used to in documentary pieces, this personal connection makes of the book an arresting piece of non-fiction. The mystery here is not how the book will end but why anyone would choose the path taken by McCandless. Readers are caught between the romantic notion that one can leave behind society and its evils for a life of community with the purity of nature and the reality that in pursuing such endeavor, one leaves behind broken pieces for others to pick up. Young adults might be particularly interested in the story since it focuses on someone who dared face social expectations and carve his own way in life, and great discussions can ensue from McCandless’ ambiguous nature. If one cannot mourn the man and his idiosyncrasies, it is hard not to sympathize with his desire for freedom and the courage (or hubris or selfishness) to leave everything behind for the sake of a dream.
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LibraryThing member aimless22
Eddie Vedder's inspiring yet sad soundtrack to the Sean Penn movie has cemented Christopher McClandless in my mind for the past two months. I had to read Chris's story.
An interesting young man to say the least.
Adventure may be considered, culturally, a male need, but I found myself wishing for
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 some time alone in the woods or at a canyon or alongside a river. The idea of being solitary with nature in this forever-speeding up world is becoming an odd desire - but necessary.
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LibraryThing member itsjackie
The unnecessary sojourns and interjection of the author's own experiences were redeemed only by the fact that the actual story of Christopher McCandless is a good one. Admittedly, the book would have been much shorter if Krakauer had focused only on McCandless, but it may have been richer for it.
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 The other stories, albeit mildly interesting, were not very relevant, nor were the comparisons between McCandless and his predecessors really necessary.
McCandless' story needs no more elaboration or analysis provided by an additional reporter -- it is fascinating and lingers in the readers' minds even without the brooding commentary of an obviously narcissistic author.

The book gets 3 and a half stars from me, but only out of respect for the story hidden between the lines of what seems to be a nightmarishly long and terribly edited high school paper.
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LibraryThing member sturlington
After seeing the movie version of this true story, I was intrigued by the character of Chris McCandless and the mystery, and apparent senselessness, of his death. Why would a young man venture into the Alaskan wilderness with so few provisions, and what circumstances led to his starvation?

Clearly,
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 these questions obsessed Krakauer, driving him to write this highly readable account of McCandless’s final two years. I think he may have sometimes stretched too much trying to get inside Chris’s head, although his unraveling of the incidents that ultimately brought Chris down are fascinating, and do a lot to refute the assumption that he was a stupid, arrogant kid who had no clue what he was doing out there. The material may still have been somewhat thin to stretch out into a full-length book, and Krakauer pads the text with his own personal experiences.

For me, the most memorable chapters weren’t about Chris at all. Rather, they recounted a perilous, almost fatal effort by Krakauer to climb the unclimbable Alaskan peak called the Devil’s Thumb. In that harrowing recounting, Krakauer attempts to understand Chris by delving into why he himself had dome something just as rash, the only difference being that he survived.

The final two chapters of the book, when Krakauer first visits the bus where Chris died, then returns with Chris’s parents, were also extremely moving. No matter what opinion you may hold of Chris’s actions, this story of the failed prophet who doesn’t return from the wilderness is a powerful one.
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LibraryThing member bothhands
Though I don't buy into the hype of McCandless as some sort of demi-god for going out into the forest, not heeding anyone's advice and dying because of it - this was a good read.
LibraryThing member shawnd
Great and potentially necessary for adventurers. The concept of the book is to trail the steps of this young man who renounces money and materialism to have adventures through the US and ultimately Alaska. The core story taught me that even in the most mystical and outside the norm people have at
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 their root basic family issues driving them. Which was the case here. I thought the book was well written, although the author seems to try to grasp at anything to expand the length of the book, since he has so little data to work with since a good part of the climax is undocumented and unwitnessed. So the author adds some of his own adventures which I found presumptuous. Even so, it paints a picture of the man/boy and is a telling story of what it really means to go and bushwack and try to survive in the wild.
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LibraryThing member jgoitein
What started out as an article for Outside magazine on the puzzling death of Chris McCandless, in the Alaskan wilderness, grew to a highly acclaimed book and feature film
based on this young man's odyssey through the Southwest and Alaska. With access to McCandless' journals, pictorial records,
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 postcards, and interviews with people who befriended and worked with Chris during his two year sojourn until his tragic death in the summer of 1992, the author, Jon K rakauer brilliantly weaves a story of this young man's experiences and philosophical stance that informed much of his determination and actions to pursue an adventurer's life.

Each chapter begins with either a map, or passage, some underlined from one of McCandless' many books found at his campsite, or telling of the mind set of an adventurer. The passages are from authors as varied as Thoreau, Mark Twain, Jack London, Boris Pasternak or naturalists and adventurers who scaled mountains and forged trails through the wilderness. . Each passage and the book it is from gives an insight into the thought process of Chris and helps explain why he might have chosen the path for himself: London's Call of the Wild and White Fang, Thoreau's Walden, or Life in the Woods, Roderick Nash's Wilderness and the American Mind.

Krakauer , an outdoorman himself, does not so much judge Chris as try to explain the cultural rite of passage which McCandless engaged in: risky behavior which pits a young man against nature among its harshest elements. While this is a biography, McCandless as an adventurer, makes for a thrilling read for high school students, especially boys, who admire a free spirt, an altruistic fellow ready to follow his passions yet fullfill his parents concerns for a college education.
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LibraryThing member schatzi
"Into the Wild" is the somewhat rambling biography of Christopher McCandless, a young man from a well-to-do family who decided to virtually drop out of society. Eventually, he decided to "rough it" in rural Alaska, which ended up costing Christopher his life.

The book really would have benefited
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 from better editing. Although I understand why Krakauer included snippets about others who perished in the Alaskan wilderness, the entire chapter dedicated to some guy who disappeared in the west (Utah?) in the 1930s was unnecessary, as was the entire chapter detailing Krakauer's own brush with death when he was a naive (or stupid) young man with a chip on his shoulder.

And I think that is the biggest problem with this book: Krakauer sees himself in Christopher McCandless, and that clouds his judgment. The author states at the beginning that he is biased, and boy does that bias rear its ugly head in practically every chapter. Krakauer does his best to canonize McCandless as some folk hero.

As another reviewer stated, Krakauer spends a lot of time declaring that Christopher McCandless was not mentally ill. And yet Krakauer had never met the young man who irrationally hated his parents, who renamed himself Alexander Supertramp, who burned money he might later need, who wandered the western United States alone for years, who was homeless, who wrote about himself in the third person, and who ultimately went to Alaska and starved to death. Those who had met Christopher called him charming and intelligent, but just as likely to call him odd, strange, and downright weird. I'm not saying that Christopher was mentally ill - it's impossible for me to know one way or another - but it's equally impossible for Krakauer to say that he wasn't.

Ultimately, McCandless died because he had a great love for nature, but no fear of it. While he read romantic accounts of Alaska, he didn't take into account that much of it was fiction, and even the non-fiction writers had a different set of skills. Even the Inuit can starve in Alaska, and their ancestors have been there for thousands of years. But armed with only a book about Alaskan plant life, ignoring the warnings that he received from several people, McCandless bumbled into death. Was he suicidal? Probably not. But he was definitely reckless. He is not someone who should be deified or, god forbid, emulated.

However, in spite of the book's flaws, it is very readable.
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LibraryThing member mikemillertime
The book is an interesting exploration of man's need to journey into nature, particularly at the extreme end of those who would completely abandon civilization to make these life-threatening adventures of survivalism. While the book mostly concerns itself with the tale of Christopher McCandless
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 venture into the Alaskan outback, it often diverges into tales of his personal life and similar case studies of others who tested their mettle against the wild. The book's breezy narrative takes a sharp turn when the writer suddenly interjects his own tale of survival and then a recreation of McCandless' adventure - and both of those tales almost seem to to mock the defeats of the many others the author tells you about who didn't make it out alive. So save for that strange, self-serving finale to glorify the writer's own exploits, I enjoyed the book's simple ruminations on the timeless man vs. nature idea.
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LibraryThing member pheelowesq
I couldn't put this book down. I admit, much of that was because of the macabre story of slow death, alone in the woods. Yet, another part of me recognizes that I see my self in Alex. I harbored dreams of walking into the woods and living off the land for most of high school and college. I never
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 did because I was scared I would die. I'm sure I was right. In any case, I see myself in Alex's story. Not because I identify with him so much as I identify with his desires: to get away, to be free of modernity. No doubt, the impact of this book is due to Jon's storytelling. He's in a unique position to display Alex's life to us, as he identifies with McCandless on a level I don't understand.
The book lacks little; if nothing else, I wish it were longer.
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LibraryThing member soylentgreen23
At first, I wasn't sure if there was a whole book to be made out of the adventure of Christopher McCandless's life. Originally, Krakauer had written an article in a magazine about how McCandless had given up his privileged existence in upper-middleclass suburbia and trekked out to Alaska to live,
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 and die, on the land. In the hands of many lesser writers, that would have been enough - the novelisation would have expanded on the original without adding anything, and would have been written in big type. I've seen it happen.

However, I was pleasantly surprised. Krakauer goes a lot further, examining the roots of McCandless's wanderlust, his complicated relationship with his father and family, his desire for space and freedom. He traces the route taken by McCandless across America, and interviews many of those who knew him.

McCandless remains something of an enigma. Consumed by the passionate fires of youth, McCandless was intelligent but hardly a poet - had he lived beyond his experiences, it's very possible that he could have become a 20th-century Thoreau or Tolstoy, but he never had the chance. In fact, at times, the stories of the broken-down people McCandless met along the way comes across as more absorbing and more captivating than his own travails.

The reactions to McCandless's death are particularly interesting to observe. So too are the digressions that Krakauer takes to explore other men like McCandless, and the author's own obsession with space and wanderlust, and how he grew beyond it, to incorporate the wandering spirit into his own life.

I wonder if there are any traces of my own personality in this tale - the book was given to me as a gift, by a friend who knows me better than myself. Could it then be that she saw something that she thought this book could save me from?
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LibraryThing member piemouth
I expected to feel nothing but contempt for the guy this book is about. He went to Alaska to "get away from civilization" without proper preparation for the conditions, and he ended up dying because he underestimated what he'd need and didn't understand which plants were safe to eat. Apparently he
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 was a charismatic and compelling person - people he worked with while he was planning his trip were drawn to him and concerned about what was going to happen to him.
I ended just baffled by what makes somebody set out on a quest like this, and sad for his family and the people who cared about him.
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LibraryThing member co_coyote
first read this book back in the early 1990s and I remember being impressed with it, but I couldn't remember all the details. But this weekend I went to see the movie of the same name, directed by Sean Penn, and I was absolutely blown away by it. I think it may have been the best movie I have ever
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 seen. Certainly I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since I saw it. I came home from the movie and immediately dug out my copy of this book and read it front to back. The movie version is an amazingly faithful adaptation of the book. And although I have never said this before in my life, the movie may be even better than the book. My hat is off to both Jon Krakauer (who, in addition to this book, has written other excellent books I highly recommend) and Sean Penn who captures, I think, the essence of Chris McCandless in this movie adaptation. Breathtaking.
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LibraryThing member The_Hibernator
Into the Wild is a narrative biography of a young man who, after drifting around America for a few years, decides to go into the Alaskan wilderness for an adventure. There, he dies out of utter stupidity and conceit. Granted, Krakauer does not think the guy’s stupid or conceited, that’s my
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 personal opinion. The reason I liked the book so much is because of Krakauer’s engaging narrative. Interspersed within the story of the main character, Krakauer inserted interesting little snippits about other conceited idiots who’ve died in the wilderness. It’s sad, yet somehow fascinating. Like checking out the aftermath of a natural disaster. Can people really be so pig-headed and naïve? On the other hand, I agree with several of the other reviewers. Why should we care about this one guy? He’s not the only idiot who walked into the Alaskan wilderness with nothing but a bottle of water and a copy of Walden—my exaggeration—never to be seen again. But, whatev. I still found the book interesting.
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LibraryThing member bcquinnsmom
Simply stellar. I listened to this on CD (unabridged) and half the time I was so involved in the story that I didn't know how I made it to where I was going. To say it's engrossing is putting it mildly. I can VERY HIGHLY recommend this one to anyone.

Jon Krakauer has done it again with another true
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 account -- this time of a young man, Chris McCandless, who lived his vision of chucking it all and going out on the road. The story originally appeared as a magazine piece for Outside Magazine. As he notes in the book, his story captured the attention of several people who had encountered McCandless on his travels, and after piecing together accounts from several of these peopke, along with Chris's journal and others who came forward to talk about this young man, he expanded the story into a book. Plus, as he notes in the book, Krakauer found a bit of common ground with McCandless, which he poignantly shares with the reader.

After graduating from college, Chris donated his entire savings to charity, loaded his old Datsun B-210 and just vanished. Although his parents hired a private investigator, they would not hear about their son again until news of the discovery of his body in an old shell of a bus reached them some 2 years later. His travels took him not only throughout the lower 48, but down into Mexico and up into Alaska, his final goal. McCandless had mentors in Thoreau, Jack London, Tolstoy and other writers and decided to take their advice and do some real living for himself, often in situations in which you wouldn't expect someone of his background to find himself. Krakauer takes us through the events of McCandless's travels, as best as he can put them together. His writing is amazing; his storytelling abilities are incredible.

I absolutely loved this book, although as a parent, it was in parts a bit difficult to read, but only due to the emotional content of the "what -ifs" through which I put myself at times. Very highly recommended, with absolutely no reservations.
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LibraryThing member karriethelibrarian
This is a sad story about a young man who decides to leave home and go to Alaska to find himself. The whole time I read this book I felt like I couldn't get a grip on who this guy was or why he seemed so disgruntled with the world. One moment I thought he was just a spoiled Holden Caulfield-type
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 person, and then the next moment I thought he was mentally ill and incredibly sad. Whoever he was, he obviously wasn't equipped to go into the wilderness of Alaska and survive it. In fact, he underestimates the challenges he finds in Alaska and doesn't survive. His death is sad and puzzling; Krakauer does a terrific job of describing this young man's life and his tragic death.
I look forward to seeing the movie.
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LibraryThing member Norinja
This book changed my life. There is no other way to describe it. Read it.
LibraryThing member justine28
I didn’t really know what to expect of this book, especially with all the hype around it and around its main character and subject - Chris McCandless. I sort of didn’t like him and didn’t approve of his actions from the very beginning. Krakauer however gave him justice I believe and
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 introduced McCandless to the reader as much as he was able to without actually speaking to the young man. The book is written as a documentary or journalist’s investigation and reads very well. Each chapter is preceded by quotations from McCandless favourite books or those he was reading during his Alaskan trip and starred and commented on in the margins, giving a bit more insight into his thoughts. Krakauer goes even further and in one of the chapters tells his own story of climbing Alaska’s Devil Thumb, comparing himself and his own choice of lifestyle to McCandless’. All in all I really enjoyed the book and would recommend it to others.
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LibraryThing member emcnellis16
I have been fascinated with the story of Christopher McCandless ever since I first heard of him – a young man who walked off into the Alaskan wilderness to live off the land. When I visited Alaska in 2005, I found myself dreaming of backpacking the Yukon Trail and getting lost in the wilderness.
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 For me, of course, it was just a pipe dream and I kissed it goodbye when I boarded the cruise ship that would take me home. McCandless, on the other hand, made his dream a reality. Unfortunately, his story does not have a happy ending.

Jon Krakauer did a fantastic job of bringing the story of Chris McCandless to life. Krakauer, who also traveled to Alaska at the age of 23, gives the reader rare insight into McCandless’ mindset. Using McCandless’ letters, quotes from his favorite authors, and passages from books in his possession at the time of his death, Krakauer pieces together a portrait of a determined young man, a “leather tramp”, and a decent and caring friend.

Krakauer also manages to make the reader feel that he knows the answer to the big question: “Why would someone leave civilization behind and try to survive in the wilds f Alaska?”

According the McCandless himself:

“It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of
living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God
it’s great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you.”

Journal Entry dated 2/27/90

I thoroughly enjoyed this biography and would recommend it to anyone who has ever felt the pull of nature or the call of a simpler existence.
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LibraryThing member itfc_rob
This is what happens when an ill-equipped, unprepared cowboy goes to Alaska with no preparation. Hint: it does not end with the kid not dying. Jon Krakauer's writing makes for an entertaining and thought-provoking read though.
LibraryThing member yeremenko
I look on this book with skepticism. Krakauer has made a name for himself writing the postmortem of tragic events. In other cases (Into thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven) he has been criticized for inaccuracy and altering facts to fit his narrative. In this book he goes too far. He does explain
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 from the outset that he is biased, and identified with his subject, perhaps too much. But his need to canonize this foolish young man is hard to stomach.

The book follows a familiar but effective pattern, used in Krakauer's other books. He chronologically reconstructs events using interviews and the writings of the protagonist. He uses a technique that is quickly annoying my in today's nonfiction. He does a sentence or two of description of the interviewee creating a caricature rather than a character, then tells us what they said. It reads like a movie treatment.

Krakauer gives Chris McCandless the biggest, and least deserved posthumous reach around in literary history. It is amazing that Krakauer can diagnose the young man's mental health without meeting the living person. But he makes a point of saying McCandless was not insane, mentally ill, crazy several times. How does he do it? Well, this lad that chose the name "Alexander Supertramp." ignored warnings of numerous people, wrote about himself in third person, and was described as strange, odd, weird, by pretty much everyone that met him was kinda like a young Krakauer.

What Chris McCandless did was stupid, selfish, crazy, immature despite him being charismatic and friendly. There is only so much lipstick you can put on a crazy, spoiled dumbass pig that kills itself.
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LibraryThing member cestovatela
Interesting premise, ho-hum book. Shortly after graduating from college, Chris McCandless began a two-year trip around the United States, forsaking money and living as simply as possible. His adventure culminated in Alaska, where he lived off the land in an abandoned bus. His emaciated body was
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 found 4 months after he arrived in Alaska. John Krakauer sets out ot investigate what would compel an ordinary young man to take such an extreme adventure, but it turns out the reason was pretty mundane: poor relationship with father, too much time reading Henry David Thoreau. The only record Chris left behind was a tersely written journal, so it's tough for Krakauer to fill 200 pages with relevant material. Two chapters are devoted to other explorers who lost their lives in Alaska. Two more are devoted to Krakauer's early climbing career and his own troubled relationship with his father. His attempt to climb a jagged Alaskan mountain was probably my favorite thing about the book, but it still felt like a self-indulgent detour. If you're interested in tales of men against nature, you're better off with Krakauer's Into Thin Air.
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LibraryThing member JBreedlove
My first Krakauer read. a good account of a lost American boy trying to find his way on the road. Unfortunately it ended in an abandoned schholbus in Alaska. Also a good account of the disparate characters he met along the way.

Rating

½ (5251 ratings; 3.9)

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FIC J Kra

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