Act NaturallyEscaping from civilization is a time-honored fantasy most of us manage to shake off somewhere between the television set and the refrigerator. But for some, the fantasy of chucking it all and living on one's own terms in the Great Outdoors dies harder than for others.
In the case of Christopher McCandless, subject of Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild, it was to prove fatal.
McCandless, the son of a prominent aerospace engineer, seemed to have a bright future before him when he graduated from Emory University with honors. Just two years later, he was dead, a victim of starvation whose corpse weighed only 66 pounds when it was pulled out of an abandoned bus parked in view of Alaska's Mount McKinley. An adventurer with an abiding contempt for civilization's ways, McCandless wanted to make a clean break from society, but was he the victim of a death wish or just rotten luck?
Krakauer takes more of the latter view, to the detriment of his book. Based on an article he wrote for Outside magazine in the months after McCandless's body was found, Krakauer argues for his subject as a worthy exemplar of a noble ideal, taken a bit too far. To this end, he examines the trail McCandless left behind, including journal entries, postcards, and the memories of friends and family.
"McCandless wasn't some feckless slacker adrift and confused, racked by existential despair," Krakauer writes. "To the contrary: His life hummed with meaning and purpose."
But was he worthy of emulation? Krakauer doesn't come out and say so, but it's clear he was miffed by the reactions of many of his fellow outdoors-people when his initial article was published. When McCandless ventured eagerly to Alaska's Stampede Trail in the spring of 1992, he had made a point of cutting himself off completely from society. He carried no compass or heavy rifle, no major provisions other than a bag of rice and a couple of sandwiches forced upon him by a concerned driver with whom McCandless had hitch-hiked.
Calling himself "Alexander Supertramp," he had told the driver he was positive he could look after himself, even though he had earlier sent a postcard to another friend saying he wanted to express his gratitude "if this adventure proves fatal." Eventually, it did.
Krakauer's book is strongest when it deals most directly with the mystery of McCandless, who he was and why he did what he did. To this end, Krakauer interviewed a number of people whose paths crossed that of "Alexander Supertramp," revealing him to be a solitary-minded but hardly asocial character who wanted to live only on his own terms. One elderly man became so taken by Alex he asked to adopt him, and fell apart when learning of his sorry end.
Others discuss Alex's surprising musical gifts and literary-minded discussions. An avid reader of Tolstoy and Jack London, he was happy to share his ideas with anyone who would listen.
"McCandless made an indelible impression on a number of people during the course of his hegira, most of whom spent only a few days in his company, a week or two at most," Krakauer writes.
While fascinating when it sticks to the story, Into The Wild suffers from the fact it's a sketchy story. We don't know more about what drove McCandless than what he told others and what he put down in his journal. Krakauer pads Into The Wild with stories of others who took similarly fatal journeys as well as his own experience as a young man, climbing an icy precipice in Alaska called the Devil's Thumb. This particular experience alone covers two chapters.
"It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it," Krakauer writes.
The parallel between Krakauer's experience and McCandless's seems dubious, and not only because the one survived to tell his tale and the other didn't. Krakauer's journey had with it a specific mission, to climb a mountain, and to that end he brought with him proper equipment. McCandless was clearly just winging it, either because he was too stupid to know better or else didn't want to give himself the chance of surviving his mission. This is a conclusion Krakauer would undoubtedly dispute, but it seems fair to me.
The image on the book cover features a snowbound bus, suggesting a wintry demise, but it was a summer thaw that sealed McCandless's fatal end. The isolated stretch of taiga where he made his camp became separated from the rest of civilization by a river made uncrossable by heavy currents of melting snow and ice. There were other means of returning to civilization which Krakauer suggests McCandless was not aware of or able to use; he suggests McCandless might have been poisoned by consuming potato seeds with toxic qualities. This theory, like a lot of Krakauer's commentary regarding this story, has come under heavy fire since the book was first published.
Ultimately Into The Wild comes off to me as a sadly beguiling yet dangerously myopic love letter to a suicide, i. e. Sylvia Plath in a sleeping bag. It seems unlikely, if McCandless had somehow lucked into making it out of Alaska alive that summer, that he'd still be with us today. Simply put, he wouldn't have wanted it. However engaging his portrait of his subject, Krakauer seems unwilling or unable to come to grips with that simple fact.
McCandless, the son of a prominent aerospace engineer, seemed to have a bright future before him when he graduated from Emory University with honors. Just two years later, he was dead, a victim of starvation whose corpse weighed only 66 pounds when it was pulled out of an abandoned bus parked in view of Alaska's Mount McKinley. An adventurer with an abiding contempt for civilization's ways, McCandless wanted to make a clean break from society, but was he the victim of a death wish or just rotten luck?
Krakauer takes more of the latter view, to the detriment of his book. Based on an article he wrote for Outside magazine in the months after McCandless's body was found, Krakauer argues for his subject as a worthy exemplar of a noble ideal, taken a bit too far. To this end, he examines the trail McCandless left behind, including journal entries, postcards, and the memories of friends and family.
"McCandless wasn't some feckless slacker adrift and confused, racked by existential despair," Krakauer writes. "To the contrary: His life hummed with meaning and purpose."
But was he worthy of emulation? Krakauer doesn't come out and say so, but it's clear he was miffed by the reactions of many of his fellow outdoors-people when his initial article was published. When McCandless ventured eagerly to Alaska's Stampede Trail in the spring of 1992, he had made a point of cutting himself off completely from society. He carried no compass or heavy rifle, no major provisions other than a bag of rice and a couple of sandwiches forced upon him by a concerned driver with whom McCandless had hitch-hiked.
Calling himself "Alexander Supertramp," he had told the driver he was positive he could look after himself, even though he had earlier sent a postcard to another friend saying he wanted to express his gratitude "if this adventure proves fatal." Eventually, it did.
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| In a self-portrait, Chris McCandless sits beside the bus where his body would be found several weeks later. Image from Wikipedia.org. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless] |
Others discuss Alex's surprising musical gifts and literary-minded discussions. An avid reader of Tolstoy and Jack London, he was happy to share his ideas with anyone who would listen.
"McCandless made an indelible impression on a number of people during the course of his hegira, most of whom spent only a few days in his company, a week or two at most," Krakauer writes.
While fascinating when it sticks to the story, Into The Wild suffers from the fact it's a sketchy story. We don't know more about what drove McCandless than what he told others and what he put down in his journal. Krakauer pads Into The Wild with stories of others who took similarly fatal journeys as well as his own experience as a young man, climbing an icy precipice in Alaska called the Devil's Thumb. This particular experience alone covers two chapters.
"It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it," Krakauer writes.
The parallel between Krakauer's experience and McCandless's seems dubious, and not only because the one survived to tell his tale and the other didn't. Krakauer's journey had with it a specific mission, to climb a mountain, and to that end he brought with him proper equipment. McCandless was clearly just winging it, either because he was too stupid to know better or else didn't want to give himself the chance of surviving his mission. This is a conclusion Krakauer would undoubtedly dispute, but it seems fair to me.
The image on the book cover features a snowbound bus, suggesting a wintry demise, but it was a summer thaw that sealed McCandless's fatal end. The isolated stretch of taiga where he made his camp became separated from the rest of civilization by a river made uncrossable by heavy currents of melting snow and ice. There were other means of returning to civilization which Krakauer suggests McCandless was not aware of or able to use; he suggests McCandless might have been poisoned by consuming potato seeds with toxic qualities. This theory, like a lot of Krakauer's commentary regarding this story, has come under heavy fire since the book was first published.
Ultimately Into The Wild comes off to me as a sadly beguiling yet dangerously myopic love letter to a suicide, i. e. Sylvia Plath in a sleeping bag. It seems unlikely, if McCandless had somehow lucked into making it out of Alaska alive that summer, that he'd still be with us today. Simply put, he wouldn't have wanted it. However engaging his portrait of his subject, Krakauer seems unwilling or unable to come to grips with that simple fact.
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