Into the Wild
by Jon Krakauer
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jon KrakauerBrand: Random
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1997-02-01
ISBN: 0385486804
Number of pages: 207
Publisher: Anchor
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780385486804
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Into the Wild
Book Review: Into The Wild: Jon Krakauer "Walks Back The Cat"
Summary: 5 Stars
On June 1, 2005 my wife and I went into the Sierra Nevada after having sold, stored, or given away all we owned, that we were not using in the mountains. I saw "Into The Wild" at about that time, considered it, and passed--I had, in part, judged a book by its cover and that is something I rarely if ever do. I saw self destruction in the cover blurb, suicide possibly, and that was not what we were doing. I couldn't relate it seemed and so I passed. We did over 100 days in the Sierra Nevada and then went into the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, near Tucson. Our journey continued there. Inside of this, and what's coming next, I bought "Into the Wild" yesterday and began reading it at 5:00 p.m. I couldn't put it down until I finished it at 1:00 a.m. Ever buy a book that you read in one sitting? Here's one and there aren't many out there.
In the intelligence world I am told they use a term--"walking back the cat"--and this is truly what Jon Krakauer has done with this superbly conceived and well written story about the life and death of Chris McCandless. His responses to ongoing anger against Chris, interestingly and often conspicuously by Alaskans, are telling--he suggests he has failed because they, as of yet, do not understand. (Jon--these never will and that, too, is not your fault!)
Upon reading it and doing cursory internet research, moreover, I discover how many have traveled to the Stampede Trail site and Fairbanks bus #142. Some from as far away as New York--in pilgrimages of sorts. These people are looking for what Chris was looking for and were hoping to find it there--vicariously--seemingly without having to pay the ultimate price for it as Chris McCandless accidently did. Yet none of them went to (among other places) the canals in Mexico, where Chris wound up on his trip down the Colorado, equally at a dead end and his goal--that which he sought--still outside of his grasp. These people seek "understanding" but to 'stand under' this epic tragedy and gain by it requires the seeker to look ever so carefully at primarily him/herself. One can travel there, pass by the river and the beaver ponds, sit in the bus, thumb through the suitcase Chris' family left on their visit to that place, and contemplate his life. Yet it is largely meaningless loss unless and until one contemplates his or her own life, there, anywhere, in a variety of possible nowhere's, that--as Chris discovered--beauty in life is meaningless unless it is shared. Once he found it he tried to share it and he (quite possibly) believed he may have have failed at sharing it. He went to great lengths to convey light in the presence of great darkness and this was, I am convinced, more than his being increasingly thought-full towards those he loved--although it was certainly that. In the end Chris has shared what he himself never fully understood and did not know how to share--not exactly but only vaguely.
People will wrestle with Chris McCandless for quite some time and a renewed interest will surface, no doubt, following release of the movie. I am hopeful Director Sean Penn can capture some of what Chris sought and that which eluded him and that which he found but that which eluded him still--even to the end. In our own 100 days in the wilds we have come to understand a great deal about those things and they are, truly, priceless.
Jon Krakauer wrote a compelling story about this epic tragedy and he doesn't jump at the convenient to fill space--he walks back the cat and cats don't readily agree to walk back on a leash with just anyone. He found it among Moose remains, a seat on a cable over a river, in the details of a field book and the chemistry of specific alkaloids and nature's efforts to protect the seeds of new growth--the very "stuff" that Chris McCandless fed upon in more ways than he himself probably understood, except, perhaps, towards the end. He found it in the eyes and in the heart of an old man near the Salton Sea. He found it in a grain elevator in the Dakotas. One has to seek and knock to find and have it opened to him. This is not something just anyone can do and is willing to do.
I still have my reservations of the "Thin Air" disputes--disputes that seemingly find amplification in the 2006 Everest "season"--but respect Jon Krakauer's efforts to deal with the points raised in "The Climb" and remain true to what he believes. I have never doubted his sincerity as an explorer and as a writer. I know something about what that looks like and how to spot it when authentic and Jon is authentic. So I went ahead and bought "Into the Wild" and read it like it happened yesterday.
Jon Krakauer wrote a very good book, among his other good books, and it is called "Into the Wild." It is a deeply moving story and it is, all of it, intimately true. It leaves unresolved all issues pertaining to faith and for all those whose faith was (or remains) shattered, the hope that builds into new faith can (if you look carefully so as to understand with your heart) be found in the very bag of seeds for new growth one can see plainly enough in this book, and in the hands of Chris McCandless, as something more than seasonal poison to an innocent soul. Isaiah the great prophet asked God, "are you a deceiving brook," and it remains the dread of humanity that we think ourselves even remotely capable of knowing good from evil on our own. Go back to Genesis and start over if this is still you for you skipped Lesson 1, on knowing the difference between good and evil, way too fast and are thereby in far and away more danger than Chris McCandless.
All that Chris found out there on the Stampede Trail, in and about Fiarbanks bus #142, in 1992, remains to be found by each of us. Because he died, unnecessarily looking backwards, does not mean he didn't truly find it (ask Elijah) and because we as of yet don't see it plainly doesn't mean it isn't right in front of us (ask Elisha). Jon Krakauer has written a superbly relevant book for us all and this is because he looked at himself, at among other things the Devil's Thumb climb, and what his own life, in certain respects, means not only to him but to others. Inside this, then, Jon Krakauer follows the trail blazed by Chris McCandless (as far as he could) so that he could blaze his own, as each of us, in turn, must of we are to understand those lives ours meets. It is where all trails end that, looking back, where we are now, and looking ahead, all true meaning is found at or near where all those trails go next together and what in terms of meaning remains along the way and not discarded by all who came.
BUY THIS BOOK and then find your own way "Into the Wilds" if you truly want to be able to say, as Chris did, "I have lived a happy life and I thank the Lord." For those who are content with their lives, with urban sprawl, money, belongings, status, prestige, physical and economic security, pride, vanity, avarice, lust, and other flaws, this book offers a glimpse of something too terrifying for you to look into--yourself and what that means to you and to any other. You as of yet do not understand, among others, the teaching of truth, one must hate his own life if he is to become a Disciple. You believe still that you are the exception--not Chris McCandless. You are too busy saving yours and, in the end, it is your life that is lost not that of Chris McCandless. It isn't easy to understand Chris McCandless and his epic story is tragic and it is inspiring.
Jon Krakauer looks deeply into the void and found something--someone--looking back. So did Chris!
Chris McCandless had a stack of books beside him went he slipped away. This one, about that, "Into the Wild", is a real keeper and is worthy of being near you "when you go." BUY AND READ THIS BOOK!
Stellar work, Jon!! Wow!
Summary of Into the Wild
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. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. 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 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.
"God, he was a smart kid..." So why did Christopher McCandless trade a bright future--a college education, material comfort, uncommon ability and charm--for death by starvation in an abandoned bus in the woods of Alaska? This is the question that Jon Krakauer's book tries to answer. While it doesn't?cannot?answer the question with certainty, Into the Wild does shed considerable light along the way. Not only about McCandless's "Alaskan odyssey," but also the forces that drive people to drop out of society and test themselves in other ways. Krakauer quotes Wallace Stegner's writing on a young man who similarly disappeared in the Utah desert in the 1930s: "At 18, in a dream, he saw himself ... wandering through the romantic waste places of the world. No man with any of the juices of boyhood in him has forgotten those dreams." Into the Wild shows that McCandless, while extreme, was hardly unique; the author makes the hermit into one of us, something McCandless himself could never pull off. By book's end, McCandless isn't merely a newspaper clipping, but a sympathetic, oddly magnetic personality. Whether he was "a courageous idealist, or a reckless idiot," you won't soon forget Christopher McCandless.
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