I love this book so much that I have not yet been able to write a traditional review. The story of Chris McCandless resonated deeply with me, and Jon Krakauer's writing gave me insight into loved ones who reminded me of Chris.

I have reread "Into the Wild" many times over the years, and each time I have found something new to appreciate. My paperback copy is heavily marked and underlined, and it is so dear to me that I never plan on giving it up. One of these days I hope I can bring myself to write more about this amazing work.

Highly recommended for anyone who loves the great outdoors, or for those who know what it is like to search for something deeper than yourself.

Favorite Quotes:

"I have always been unsatisfied with my life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly."

"Children can be harsh judges when it comes to their parents, disinclined to grant clemency, and this was especially true in Chris's case. More even than most teens, he tended to see things in black and white. He measured himself and those around him by an impossibly rigorous moral code."

"As a youth, I am told, I was willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless, moody. I disappointed my father in the usual ways. Like McCandless, figures of male authority aroused in me a confusing medley of corked fury and hunger to please. If something captured my undisciplined imagination, I pursued it with a zeal bordering on obsession."

"My father was a volatile, extremely complicated person, possessed of a brash demeanor that masked deep insecurities. If he ever in his entire life admitted to being wrong, I wasn't there to witness it."

"I had been granted unusual freedom and responsibility at an early age, for which I should have been grateful in the extreme, but I wasn't. Instead, I felt oppressed by the old man's expectations. It was drilled into me that anything less than winning was failure. In the impressionable way of sons, I did not consider this rhetorically; I took him at his word. And that's why later, when long-held family secrets came to light, when I noticed that this deity who asked only for perfection was himself less than perfect, that he was in fact not a deity at all — well, I wasn't able to shrug it off. I was consumed by a blinding rage. The revelation that he was merely human, and frightfully so, was beyond my power to forgive."

"[O]ne of McCandless's friends had mused that Chris 'was born into the wrong century. He was looking for more adventure and freedom than today's society gives people.' In coming to Alaska, McCandless yearned to wander uncharted country, to find a blank spot on the map. 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."

"An extended stay in the wilderness inevitably directs one's attention outward as much as inward, and it is impossible to live off the land without developing both a subtle understanding of, and a strong emotional bond with, that land and all it holds."

"It would be easy to stereotype Christopher McCandless as another boy who felt too much, a loopy young man who read too many books and lacked even a modicum of common sense. But the stereotype isn't a good fit. McCandless wasn't some feckless slacker, adrift and confused, racked by existential despair. To the contrary: His life hummed with meaning and purpose. But the meaning he wrested from existence lay beyond the comfortable path: McCandless distrusted the value of things that came easily. He demanded much of himself — more, in the end, than he could deliver."

On the Road meets Walden (the Civil Disobedience edition), but for Generation X, and with a tragic ending. Which makes this a hard book to rate because, objectively and overall, it’s well composed and an interesting read. Jon Krakauer did a lot of research and really delved into Christopher McCandless’ past to show what led him to abandon his life for the wilderness of Alaska.

But I find the writing to be overindulgent at times, and so ultimately this book just isn't for me.

More on that at https://covers2covers.wordpress.com/2...

Intelligent, athletic, intense, congenial, amiable, ethical, wild-hearted, reliable, friendly, polite, independent, outgoing, personable, moral, determined.
Stubborn, reckless, idiotic, narcissistic, arrogant, stupid, moody, vagabond, high-strung, ill-prepared, kook, half-baked, puzzling, overconfident.
These are some of the contradictory words used to describe Christopher McCandless aka Alexander Supertramp by those who knew him.
This book retraces the fateful travels of McCandless throughout the North American continent after his graduation from college. Drawn from interviews with family, acquaintances and entries in his diary and photos he took, the story is a tragic one.
Stories of others who tried similar adventures and the author's trek to Alaska for research are interspersed throughout the book.

*May Contain Spoilers*

I really loved this one and I admire Jon Krakauer for going as far as he did to give us this amount of insight into Chris' journey. He speaks with family, friends, and people who only knew Chris for a few hours. On top of that, he makes the journey out to the Bus himself to see where Chris lived and died. The amount of work he put in for a 200 page book is incredible.

I wasn't aware of this prior to reading the book, but a very, very popular opinion of Chris is that he was stupid, arrogant, and deserved everything that came to him. This is almost always the top comment or highest rated review on every "into the wild" thread I can find. I have to go against the grain on this one because I thought Chris, while maybe not praiseworthy, was as interesting as they come. There's something inspiring about his story to me and I think the path he chose, while it undoubtedly hurt his family and friends, gave himself a purpose and meaning. I can absolutely understand being sick of a sedentary life and wanting to throw everything away to experience something new. Reading this book was almost like a serotonin boost of that feeling and I respect Chris for having the confidence to just do it. Another thing that I don't see mentioned too often is that almost everyone Chris encountered remembers him in extreme detail and they all had positive things to say about him. Even people who only knew him for an evening were taken by him and loved who he was. There was an older man he befriended and the man was so fascinated by Chris that he actually sold his home, bought a trailer, and decided to go explore life for all it has to offer because Chris inspired him to do so. A person that can leave that strong an impression on people in such a short amount of time is reason enough to be fascinated with Chris. For those reasons, I don't really understand the hate that he gets and I don't think I ever will. Anyways, really great book - I'll definitely re-read it at some point. Highly Recommend!

Oh my God took me two years to read it but I've finally read it!
I'm not much of a non-fiction reader, I mean I try to read it every now and then but you know. Anyway, this was good but for some reason I liked the movie way better lol

krakauer is a good writer, but the constant time jumping was annoying

"I now walk into the wild."
- Christopher McCandless (1968-1992)

I live a life, I suspect, that is much like yours. Wake up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to bed. At the end of this weekly desert, there might be a drink or ten to celebrate the victory over another five days of soul-crushing drudgery.

I am a desk jockey. A paper pusher. I mean that literally; I sit in my office, and when people peer inside, they will see me moving a sheet of paper from one side to the other. It looks, to the untrained eye, like valuable labor.

When I get the chance, though, I head to the mountains, to the wild. I love the away-ness of these trips. At the risk of sounding absurdly curmudgeonly, I like getting away from the crush of humanity (and I'm sure the crush of humanity appreciates my temporary absence).

There was at time when my friends and I would head out west every summer. We picked a destination (isolated, challenging), packed the car, and plunged into the wilderness. We undertook silly risks, because we were younger and we laughed at consequences, or at the possibility that there were consequences. Once, a little later on, we gathered around a campfire, four of us, and swore - like characters from a young adult novel - that we'd always do this: that we'd always head out to the mountains together.

Then we got older. My friends married, they started having kids, and the mountains became a memory, a slideshow of pictures that showed up on the screen savers of our computers. Friends with whom I'd jumped off cliffs, slid down glaciers, and climbed rocks matured overnight into sober professionals, husbands, and fathers. It was remarkable how age engendered caution, and squelched the desire for adventure.

That was my mindset when I picked up Into the Wild.

Jon Krakauer's classic is, to put it mildly, a polarizing book. Based on the people I've surveyed, I've found that you either love it or you hate it, and whether you love it or hate it will be determined by what you think about Christopher McCandless, the young man at the center of Into the Wild. You will be taken in by Chris's literate, philosophical, iconoclastic, boundary-pushing vagabondism. Or you will be sickened by his selfishness, his self-pity, and the way he left a shattered family in his wake.

Either way, you will have a vivid response.

Upon graduating from Emory University, and instead of going on to law school (which was my choice), McCandless gave away $25,000 to charity and began his life as a tramp (or hobo, as they sometimes like to be called). I was in sixth grade when McCandless walked into the Alaskan wilderness and never returned. He was 24.

The power of Into the Wild is directly attributable to Krakauer's empathy for his subject. Krakauer is a solid adventure writer, but he's not a prose stylist. Rather, he uses his own life experiences to connect with Chris on a very intimate, personal level. He does not attempt any faux objectivity that is often the hallmark of "serious" serious journalism. Instead, Krakauer admits, straight up, that he saw his younger self in Chris, with the exception that Krakauer survived his youth, while Chris did not. For instance, there is an autobiographical section in Into the Wild where Krakauer tells his story about climbing the Devil's Thumb. This could easily have been a self-serving digression, but Krakauer uses that experience, and the vividness of his memory, to explore the the compulsions that drove Chris McCandless to follow his unique path to his destiny.

I think Chris, in his own way, was a towering figure; he was the person I would like to be, if I had more guts and less excuses. He was a smart kid, a college grad, who came from money. His parents were messed up, but really, whose parents aren't? After college, instead of going to law school (don't go to law school, by the way), he gave away $25,000, burned his credit cards, and set out to see the west.

Whatever else you call him, you can't call him a poser. Like everyone, he had his share of dreams and demons, and he set out to follow his dreams and fight his demons. There's something to be said for what he put his parent through. Still, the world forces us to be our own person. He went forward the best way he knew how, defining himself along the way. The tragedy, of course, is that the lessons he learned - about the value of friends and family - he learned too late.

I don't really need to defend Chris. Krakauer does that. He is unabashedly in his corner, defending his choices, his skills, his desire to go alone to the far places, like John Muir before him. Chris McCandless was himself, fully and completely, which is saying a lot, in this day and age. Or any day and age. He was part adventurer, part philosopher, and part monk (the monk part fascinates Krakauer, who spends a lot of time wondering whether Chris died a virgin).

I suppose a brief note on the movie, directed by Sean Penn, is in order. While I found it poetic and inspiring, the movie focuses too much on Chris's effect on the various people he meets on his journeys. In a way, Chris becomes some kind of wandering apostle, healing and helping those he meets along his path, before he dies a martyr's death in Alaska, a vision from a Don Maclean song ("the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you..."). The book, on the other hand, keeps Chris firmly grounded as a human being. Krakauer admires Chris, to be sure, but he does not neglect the warts. (However, Krakauer sharply dismisses those armchair psychiatrists who want to diagnose Chris with a mental disorder. I'm glad he does. I think it's saying soemething about the conformity of our society that anyone who bucks the trend (he gave up law school!?) is called mad).

In the end, Chris was one of those rare people who wanted to know the world intimately, and in the process of discovering those secrets, was killed by that same world. Maybe there was something quixotic or foolish in his quest; maybe he should have taken a job, taken a wife, found a safe desk behind which to grow old. Or maybe there is something foolish in us, to believe that we can outlive the world with our caution.

Addendum 11/10/14

Chris's sister has written a memoir that details some of the home conditions that Krakauer could only hint at (per her request) and that she suggests were partially responsible for his quest. See http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-...

Krakauer, who has become quite well-known for his man-against-nature reporting has written a fascinating report of Alex/Chris McCandless's hubristic attempt to out-Thoreau Thoreau. Apparently a very likeable and intelligent young man, McCandless not only revered Thoreau's back-to-nature writings - and civil disobedience, but more about that later - he also admired and had read Jack London, John Muir and Tolstoy. Unfortunately for him, he made a series of very simple mistakes, overestimating himself and underestimating nature. He ignored advice from many more experienced and concerned people who could see that he was going to get himself in over his head. (Even Thoreau could stand Walden Pond for only 18 months and he was within an easy stroll of town.)

Born Chris McCandless, he changed his name to Alexander Supertramp when he began wandering around the country, usually with no money - especially after he abandoned his car when it was caught in a flash flood and he ran the battery down before the engine had dried out. Rangers later found the car and used it for many years in drug stings - it ran beautifully. He, in true Thoreauian fashion as interpreted by Chris from Thoreau's book On Civil Disobedience, didn't think it was necessary to get his car registered or to renew his license, so when the car's battery ran down, he couldn't very well ask for official assistance given all the registration issues that would present themselves. It was then that he took completely to foot, and he burned (literally) the $120 he had left. During the trek through the Southwest, he was helped by many people, who picked him up as he hitchhiked. On his way through South Dakota he was befriended by a rancher who took him in rather than turn him back out to thumb a ride in the rain, and Chris worked for him off and on, periodically leaving to go on another trek. It was his decision to test himself in Alaska that was to prove his downfall.

He explained his rootlessness to a friend on one occasion as a disinclination for monotony, but his gift of a $40,000 trust fund bequest to OXFAM, suggested a more substantial rejection of society. Alaska was much less forgiving than the Southwest, with fewer roads, fewer people to bail him out, and wildlife unlike what he was used to. All he had to go on was a 10 lb. bag of rice, a .22 caliber rifle (not a large enough bore to hunt for food successfully), insubstantial boots, and thin clothes.

Ultimately, Chris lacked the skills to survive and at the end realized it. He left a note desperately pleading for help on the abandoned bus in which his body was found just two weeks after his death. McCandless represents irrationality born of a uniquely American nostalgia for wilderness and the ever-receding frontier, combined with our incessant interest in high-risk activities.

Last month I craved an adventure so I picked up Wild by Cheryl Strayed and loved it, it made me realize that I haven't read a lot of books about real adventure and people's experiences in the wild, so here I am again with a book to feed my wanderlust: Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer.

The book is an expansion of a 9.000-word article by Krakauer on Christopher Johnson McCandless titled "The Death of an Innocent", which appeared in a issue of Outside magazine, in 1993. Krakauer did pieced together Chris's story, thanks to the object and dairy the boy left behind and the people he meet during his vagabond years.
In April 1992 Christopher McCandless hitchhiked alone to Alaska into the wilderness of Mt.Mckinley, four months later his decomposed body was found by a party of moose hunters in an abandoned bus in the forest, the same one we see on the cover of the book. How a young man from a well-to-do family came to die in the desolate wilderness of alaska is the story Krakauer tries to portray in Into the Wild.

The book shows very well how Chris wasn't a naive middle class boy who went into the wild unprepared, but how even thought the boy wasn't an expected of survival, he had managed to live homeless and penniless for more than two years and if it wasn't for some unlucky circumstances it would have been easily able to come back alive from Alaska to.



(Christopher McCandless in front of the bus in which he was found dead.)

"Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon."

Reading about this clever young man who had such high ideals, was quite inspiring. His way of living life was totally off-beat, he was a romantic, overconfident, an idealist but never naive.
Krakauer writing style is a reporter's one, simple, direct, with interviews and document posting, it felt original and real, I was really impressed with it and came to like it quickly.

I liked this document book quite a lot and I will see the movie as soon as possible.

4.25/5 STARS

BLOG REVIEW+MOVIE TRAILER

http://bookscrumbles.blogspot.it/2016...

Коли я працювала журналістом і приїздила у відрядження в інше місто, особливо в холодну пору року, мене завжди накривало одне відчуття. Що мені немає тут куди піти. Є тисячі вікон з теплим світлом за ними, але жодне з них - не моє.

Я дуже прив'язана до дому, до свого місця. Тому мені до кінця не зрозуміти героя цієї книжки, Кріса Мак-Кендлеса, який вибрав собі шлях суперволоцюги і життя у дорозі. Хоч, водночас, він був закоханий у природу - а я без природи теж не можу. Колись навіть уявляла собі будиночок на карпатській горі, куди хотіла б втекти жити - але соціофобія моя з того часу значно полагіднішала. І тепер я уявляю будиночок десь на львівських пагорбах, куди хочеться втекти

Being a man who has always lived very close to the sea I have always admired and loved it but I am also very conscious that i have a very healthy sense of its danger and power and uncontrollable force. This book is the extraordinary account of one who loved Nature but who did not appear to have gained that equally important respect. A young man, wanders into the wilds of Alaska so as to commune with nature and 'discover' himself, a few months later his desperately emaciated corpse is found rotting in an old bus which served as a hut for hunters and travellers through the widerness.

The narrative is written, very sympathetically, by a journalist/adventurer who tries to come to a genuine understanding of what Chris McCandless, the lad in question, was trying to achieve. McCandless, though already dead from the beginning of the narrative, is a fascinatingly alive character. As I read his story I was attracted and infuriated in fairly equal measure. He is self-absorbed and opinionated to an astonishing degree; one example being how he lectures a man in his late eighties to go off and get rid of his possessions and explore in the time left to him. The truly extraordinary thing is, the bloke goes ahead and does it. McCandless was certainly supremely confident and rather arrogant in his own self-posession but there quite evidently was something startingly powerful about the lad.

It is particularly noticeable how all but one of the people interviewed for the book who had actually met Chris spoke incredibly movingly about his gentlessness, his goodness, his attractiveness; the fact that they truly loved him and they felt the world had lost a great soul. This was from people who sometimes had had quite short experiences and yet had been wowed by his personality. Those who only knew of him through his death dismiss him as one ill-prepared and ridiculously naive or arrogant and self-aggrandizing. This speaks volumes about the simple wisdom of not making judgements until you actually encounter the person about whom you are holding forth.

Having said all that however, and in danger of totally undermining my last point, I would say that McCandless appeared to rampantly over-estimate his abilities whilst underestimating nature's power. He took with him no map or compass and therefore was unaware that had he walked just five or six miles from the place where his dead body was eventually found he may well have found a place to cross the swollen river which appeared to imprison him in the wilderness and indeed slightly further on again, by the help of a simple map, he would have found greater opportunities to be rescued.

It is an incredibly enthralling account of one man's attempt to live at one with Nature. McCandless is not one who sought to disregard or dismiss Nature but indeed hoped to embrace and luxuriate in it. The tragedy is that in wanting to strip himself of all 20th Century accoutrements he perhaps muisunderstood that the very accoutrements he cast aside were the substitutes for a knowledge and expertise that 20th Century men have lost sight of. His limited and rather amateurish preparations, though they might appear irresponsible and stupid, seem more to have been the result of an over-reliance on the romanticism of Jack London's journey and love affair with the Wild. You know the Jack London who, as Krakauer points out, died obese and drunk in his home far from that wilderness that he himself had only visited once.

This is powerful, moving, well written but ultimately frustrating because it would never be able, owing to the death of McCandless and his privacy before this, to truly understand or fathom his mindset. The real tragedy is that i couldn't help but think, encountering as we do the profound effect he had for the good on the vast majority of people with whom he came into contact, what might he have achieved in his own life and in those around him had he got back from what could have been life changing but ultimately was this life destroying adventure.

Un articolo lungo su una singolare vicenda, tornata alla ribalta grazie al film. Non mi ha proprio emozionata, ma bisogna riconoscere che il personaggio offre numerosi spunti di riflessione circa il vuoto che ha prodotto il consumismo nella cosiddetta cultura occidentale e circa il bisogno di tornare ad un più stretto contatto con la natura.