Book Report: 'Into the Wild'

 

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Like the film it inspired and the confounding life of the man it chronicles, Jon Krakauer's book is loaded with desolate, tantalizing mystery. His chronicle of Chris McCandless, a college graduate who gave up all his worldly possessions to embark on a doomed nation-crossing odyssey, is worth savoring, studying, analyzing and revisiting.

It was an elegant and appropriate touch of the author to insert parallels of his own youthful joruneys and juxtapose them with those of his subject. The upshot is for Krakauer to remind those who have foolishly risked their own lives to take pause before condemning McCandless as a careless moron.

Krakauer's text challenges conventional wisdom about McCandless's plight and choices, some of which spanwed from Krakauer's own initial reporting. Placing humility and the quest to unravel the truth over his own journalistic integrity was a bold and inspired choice.

Short, bittersweet and agonizingly contradictory, "Into the Wild" is thoroughly thirst quenching for those who were drawn to it by the haunting film. Krakauer helps paint his subject as a self-destructive hero whose uncompromising qualities reach through the cracks in the shell of society most others work to construct. McCandless gave his life to tear them apart.

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