Into the Wild

by Jon Krakauer

"Terrifying... Eloquent... A heart-rending drama of human yearning." --New York Times

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 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 stoytelling blaze through every page.

• ISBN10: 078388334X
• ISBN13: 9780783883342
• Publish Date: 1 December 1997 (first published 23 January 1996)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 1 July 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Thorndike Press
• Edition: Large type / large print edition
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 319
• Language: English

Reviews

[Whitney @ First Impressions Reviews]

Reviews Done Quick

I picked up Into The Wild while at my family's cabin in Northern Wisconsin. From a landscape perspective it seemed like a perfect match. All I can say is thank goodness it is short. As usual, Jon Krakauer's writing was spot on, it was his subject matter that was the problem, Christopher Johnson McCandless AKA Alexander Supertramp. In my opinion, Chris McCandless came off as a self-centered brat who fell into the category of "I don't care about money" because he had it. Chris meets numerous people during his travels who want to help him and each time he brushed them off I rolled my eyes. His inability to listen to those more experienced, coupled with his disregard for common-sense (who doesn't bring a map to Alaska?) had me groaning throughout the novel. I think that Into the Wild is a love it or hate it book that will evoke strong emotions for each reader.   My opinion however, was not "super".

This review was originally posted on First Impressions Reviews

[Linda]

Into the Wild is a very interesting narrative - sold as non-fiction, that is definitely debatable - I read this to be able to grade oral exams for our last year students in English. They had some very interesting opinions about this, and I always love it when students help me take a step back and think of something I read a little differently.

[Liz (Bent Bookworm)]

~*Full review on The Bent Bookworm!*~

“He read a lot. Used a lot of big words. I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often…he always had to know the absolute right answer before he could go on to the next thing.” – Wayne Westerberg, referring to Chris (Alex) McCandless

First of all, this is not just a biography of Chris McCandless. Yes, it tells his story, but then it goes off on several trails of OTHER wilderness-loving solitaries (some of which survived, and some didn’t).

More people have seen the movie than read the book, and from what I can tell the movie is more streamlined. My DH really enjoyed it and has been asking me to watch it with him for at least a couple of years, but I’m very resistant to watching a movie before the book that inspired it. (Don’t even get me started on how I felt about going to see Fantastic Beasts in theatre.) When a friend mentioned he had a copy just lying around, I jumped on the chance. Surprised by how it small it was, I sat down and devoured it…in about 4 hours. Quite a long time for my usual reading speed.

The first couple of chapters are a brief narrative of the events leading up to Chris’ journey “into the wild,” and then the events surrounding the discovery of his body. I was really shocked that part was over so quickly! I was expecting more of a lead-up. But as soon as all the bare facts are out (maybe the result of the Outside article that originally ran on McCandless?), Krakauer goes back in time to dig through McCandless’ early life, then his hobo life after college. I was eerily struck by how similar some of the descriptions of his known thoughts and behaviors were to my own. An introvert, a reader, a thinker – someone who lived inside his own head for long stretches of time – these were all things with which I can easily identify. It was creepy.

McCandless was either a visionary or a reckless idiot. It’s obvious that Krakauer feels he was the former, but I think the judgment could go either way. For someone SO intelligent, McCandless’ intentional self-sabatoge (throwing away the maps, refusing to take advice from seasoned hunters and hikers) is just ABSURD. No matter how pretty his prose, there is no way to explain that part of his adventure away. On the other hand, he made it 113 days, and from the photos and journal he left behind, he was actually doing pretty well until some infected berries made his body turn on itself.

Maybe he was both. The most intelligent people are often noted for their decided lack of common sense. He formed his views on wilderness at least partially from fiction – an extremely dangerous concept.

McCandless read and reread [b:The Call of the Wild|1852|The Call of the Wild|Jack London|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1452291694s/1852.jpg|3252320] and [b:White Fang|43035|White Fang|Jack London|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1475878443s/43035.jpg|2949952]. He was so enthralled by these tales that he seemed to forget they were works of fiction, constructions of the imagination that had more to do with London’s romantic sensibilities than with the actualities of life in the subartic wilderness.

The middle portion of the book delves a lot into other wilderness personalities. I found them interesting, but while in some ways similar to McCandless they are all different enough to warrant their own tales. They feel a bit like filler. Interesting filler, but filler nonetheless.

McCandless’ backstory is filled with drama between himself and his family. He seemed to be more than capable of making friends, yet has a nonexistent relationship with his parents. While purportedly close to one sister…he leaves her without any sort of goodbye. Loner, indeed. Again, I can relate…but cutting off one’s family entirely is almost never a good thing (cases of abuse and intolerance exempted of course). Like Ken Sleight, the biographer of another wilderness disappearing act, Everett Ruess, says:

“Everett was a loner; but he liked people too damn much to stay down there and live in secret the rest of his life. A lot of us are like that…we like companionship, see, but we can’t stand to be around people for very long. So we get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again.”

Again, that quandary is one I feel and have felt very often. Unlike McCandless, I’ve never felt strongly enough about any of it to just chuck my entire life and go off into the woods. Perhaps that’s a lack of backbone on my part. Or perhaps it just shows that I have one.

One of McCandless’ last journal entries:

I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one’s neighbor – such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps – what more can the heart of a man desire?

Still a bit on the melodramatic side. What, exactly, had he lived through? A spoiled white child from doting parents that GAVE AWAY his livelihood to wander like an outcast? At the same time…it rings a note of truth there that makes my heart ache. He seems to echo Oscar Wilde:

With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?

I’m giving 5/5 stars, based solely on how I felt immediately after finishing the book. Looking at it now I would probably say 4 because of all the extraneous information and meandering.

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[brokentune]

"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 than in most others. Danger has 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."

Inspired and motivated by Lillelara's review, I found Into the Wild on my library's OverDrive as an audiobook - I had heard that the book The Golden Spruce, which I recently read, was often compared to Into the Wild and really wanted to find out what led to the comparison.

Having read the book, I can't say I see many similarities at all. The Golden Spruce is about an ex-logger turned environmental activist in British Columbia who commits an act of eco terrorism.
Into the Wild is the story of Chris J. McCandless who who at 24 decides to step out of society and live alone in the wilderness of Alaska.
Both men suffer the consequences of their decisions but this is where the similarities end. Certainly, there were no similarities in their background or motivations.

Before I go off on a rant about Into the Wild, I would like to make clear that my issues with the book are with the writing and the author. The story of Chris McCandless is certainly worth telling and worth thinking about - after all it is quite extraordinary that anyone would choose to go out into the wild and be completely cut off from all human contact. While I'm not sympathetic to McCandless or feel any particular like or dislike towards him for abandoning his family and friends, I respect his attempt (for whatever reason) to live in a way that seemed right to him. Whether he did it out of youthful hubris, out of a peculiar mental disposition, or because he was suffering from some romantic illusion instilled by his love of Thoreau and Tolstoy. At the end of the day, he knew the risks of living in the wild.

My rating of this book is not a reflection of my respect for McCandless' story. The issues I have with the book are with the overindulgent writing and an author who tries to give meaning to McCandless' actions but will over and over try to push his own interpretation of events.
Sure, Krakauer makes a great effort in interviewing a lot of people who may have known McCandless, but instead of presenting the opinions of the people who knew that young man first hand, Krakauer interprets the interviews himself. It may be that he tries to fill pages or it may be that he felt he could add some needed context, but the first time his style of revealing the story really grated on me was when he presented an interview with McCandless' father and then proceeded to dismiss McCandless Snr.'s notions in favour of Krakauer's own ideas of why Chris had chosen to seek seclusion.

Given the choice between a parent's take on the story and Krakauer's - what would make you think Krakauer was in a better position to judge?

This was not the only time that I got to doubt the sincerity of the author. In fact, there were numerous moments throughout the book when I wanted to ring the BS bell.

At one point, Krakauer dismisses several psychological theories that sought to explain McCandless' behaviour. I admit that the theories he mentions sounded far-fetched and seemed to be based on long-disproved Freudian models, but for Krakauer to follow this up with a theory of his own was just extraordinarily arrogant. The aspect of Krakauer's theory that I found particularly vexing was that he tried to sell it on the premise that he, Krakauer, had a deeper understanding of McCandless' frame of mind because he was a mountaineer who could relate to the excitement of facing physical challenges and the mental struggle of keeping it together under harsh conditions. Blah, blah, blah.

What Krakauer does achieve is to conveniently slip in some stories of his own exploits - which have nothing to do with McCandless' story. If ever there was an inappropriate time for self-promotion, this was it.

There was also a point where Krakauer implied that the author of a book on ethnobotany found in McCandless' possession was to blame for his death because she failed to point out in the book that certain seeds were poisonous.

And if this example was not enough, he managed to top this by constantly comparing McCandless' story to that of other adventurers who met with rather sticky ends. Most of these stories were, again, rather unrelated to McCandless. I'm still puzzled why Krakauer thought it would be appropriate to compare McCandless' story to that of the Franklin expedition and go off on a tangent about how Franklin condemned his men to death because of his (Franklin's) stupidity and lack of respect of nature - which is also much unsubstantiated conjecture on Krakauer's part. But who will argue with a self-appointed expert who does not need to cite sources?

In the end, I got the feeling that Krakauer had an agenda in writing this book that tried to make more of McCandless' story than there really was.
In my mind, McCandless was young guy who made a choice and - tragically and fatally for him - it didn't work out. However, there was no conspiracy. There was no one to blame. There also was no dramatic heroism other than that of a guy trying to live as he saw fit. Other than that, we will never know, but this also seemed to have been part of McCandless' plan.

"In 1992, however, there were no more blank spots on the map - not in Alaska, not anywhere. But Chris, with his idiosyncratic logic, came up with an elegant solution to this dilemma: He simply got rid of the map. In his own mind, if nowhere else, the terra would thereby remain incognita." .

Edit - 28.10.15: I corrected some typos.

[pamela]

A well written book about a selfish, arrogant boy who wanders in to the wild on his own and meets an early end.

I hate this book, not because it's a poorly written book, but because a man like Christopher McCandless deserves none of the hero worship and praise he has achieved because of the infamy of his death. To me, he is the victim of the very things he seems to despise. His death could have been completely avoided had he not been so woefully unprepared and arrogant. A sad story, yes; but one that I hope we can learn how not to behave from.