Into The Wild

From Publishers Weekly:

After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness. Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary, letters and two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive, apparently stranded by an injury and slowly starving. They also reflect the posturing of a confused young man, raised in affluent Annandale, Va., who self-consciously adopted a Tolstoyan renunciation of wealth and return to nature. Krakauer, a contributing editor to Outside and Men’s Journal, retraces McCandless’s ill-fated antagonism toward his father, Walt, an eminent aerospace engineer. Krakauer also draws parallels to his own reckless youthful exploit in 1977 when he climbed Devils Thumb, a mountain on the Alaska-British Columbia border, partly as a symbolic act of rebellion against his autocratic father. In a moving narrative, Krakauer probes the mystery of McCandless’s death, which he attributes to logistical blunders and to accidental poisoning from eating toxic seed pods.

4 Comments

Michel August 14, 2006

You’re only learning about this now?

Patrick August 14, 2006

Huh no. I read the book now. Hence the little book in the corner.

Michel August 15, 2006

Ah, well, um, carry on.
Actually, I’m starting to think that Krakauer writes books because he totally screws up the information in the original article. So he has to go back and mend (some) fences.

Patrick August 15, 2006

I’m wondering if that’s because he writes too quickly assuming too much or if he’s just the only one who takes time to correct (and admit) his errors but they all make loads of them.

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