Into the Wild

    This book is one that I read many years ago, and I place it in a category that I can “read for posterity.” It’s one of those few books that reach the bestseller list in the New York Times, then continues to be read for years afterward. You can go through the bestseller list from 25 years ago and find few that are still read, save for this book, along with A Walk in the Woods and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Maybe they appeal to a unique sense of adventure? Maybe they appeal to the ideal of finding self-respect by conquering the frontier, like in Call of the Wild? All three are about men (or in the latter, a dog) who do the things that most of us aren’t strong enough to try?

    John Krakauer pieces together the life of Chris McCandless (aka Alexander Supertramp), from an unsatisfied teenager to continent-crossing vagabond. I say vagabond and not vagrant, because McCandless did in fact work his way across the country, finding employment in fast food, farms, and when there was no place to work, he foraged for food. He starts by giving away his trust fund, then abandons his old car in the desert, then makes his way to Nevada, the Salton Sea, down the Colorado River into Mexico, and eventually to Alaska.

   A recurring theme or event of Into the Wild is that of living off the land. McCandless carries a book on edible plants, though it may be out of date, and there is a lingering suspicion that it contributed to his death from starvation. When his body is found on the famous old bus in the woods, he’s emaciated and has zero fat on him, and to this day the scientists suspect he ate a wild tuber that blocked the absorption of fat. The author also concludes, tacitly, that McCandless wasn’t really ready for living alone in Alaska. He did just fine in the desert, but the people who knew McCandless, and filled the author in, all say he was unprepared; he had the wrong clothes, the wrong supplies, and was going in there without a weapon. The driver who brought him to the starting point forced him to take a free pair of boots and a rifle, but even that wasn’t enough. The caliber wasn’t much good for killing large elk, only small animals, and the food that he brought was barely adequate. Even the Indians of Alaska would never have ventured into the territory he was heading for. There was no reason for anyone to venture into the middle of nowhere.

    The story of Chris McCandless was first brought to light in Outside Magazine, and it’s just the kind of story that the readers would love.  The part where he acquires an old canoe, lazily floats down the Colorado River, and lives off the fish he catches, would seriously wet the reader’s appetite. But setting aside the adventure in the wild, I’m seeing a connection to another book (also in my “bestseller that’s still read after 15 years” catalogue) titled Nickel and Dimes. The well-known expose by Barbara Ehrenreich, about her adventure through the USA, has some similarities to Into the Wild. She doesn’t live off the land, but she does travel the country without a safety net, without connections, without a useable trade, knowing absolutely nobody, and surviving on her ability to survive, that’s t nothing more. In both books, the authors do not take charity, yet I have to wonder if the middle-aged Ehrenreich would have survived alone as McCandless did? Women have to contend with the danger of being raped, McCandless did not.

    John Krakauer’s books all seem to be about people getting swallowed up by the nature of the continent. I read his book Under the Banner of Heaven, and though it was anti-Mormon, it does show how remoteness can influence anything, even religion. I’m going to say that Into the Wild will become a classis, along with A Walk in the Woods, Born to Run, Nickel and Dimes, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, all of which take the reader into dangerous or exotic worlds. Is there something about the traveler that charms the American reader? Do we envy those that can function without a safety net? Back when I read George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, I saw it as much as an adventure as an expose; the author was living on his wits, with no safety net, but he was also living without any responsibilities.

   A recent book by Chris McCandless’ sister reveals what might have been the protagonist’s motivation. They were the product of an adulterous affair by their father, who was married to someone else when they were born. She describes their father as an abusive alcoholic, and how their mother’s spinelessness enabled him, forming a nasty undercurrent in their upper-middle-class suburban life. In all the photos she provides, Chris is the only one not smiling; on the contrary, his expression comes across as very hostile. She says that she wrote this book to provide a reason why her brother chose to vanish into the wilderness, which Krakauer’s book doesn’t really say. She also says that she told all this to Krakauer when he was writing his story, but that he agreed to leave it out. She just wasn’t ready at the time for the world to know.