Deborah S. (aslo-white) reviewed on 12/24/2013 + 5 more book reviews

I have to give this book five stars, though I "loved it" not because Chris McCandless himself was amazing but because I believe that it brought me (of all people) to some understanding of the guy. That is Krakauer's singular--and yes, "amazing"--accomplishment here. McCandless seems to evoke extreme reactions from many people (as evidenced by the reviews here). On one hand there are those who are starry-eyed with adulation of his stubborn pursuit of "freedom." On the other (and obviously, I was in this camp), there are those of us giving ourselves ocular hernias with our eye-rolling disparagement--even bordering on anger--of his utter stupidity (or more rightly, his insistence on remaining ignorant) of some of the simplest edicts about how to survive in the so-called "wilderness." Turns out, McCandless wasn't in the "wild" at all, but about 30 miles from a town, and about a half-mile walk to a bridge that would have saved his life. But what Krakauer made me see was that McCandless wanted to think that he was out in the wild, and so he eschewed maps, or any knowledge of where he actually was. If he was lost, then he was free. Krakauer points this out toward the end of the book: in this day and age, there are few, if any, places left on the planet that aren't known, that haven't been mapped. So McCandless threw away the map in order to be lost. I don't advise this to anyone who wants to keep on living, but I get it. McCandless lived his philosophy, however half-baked, all the way out to its ultimate conclusion. Who among us does that? I suppose I have to give him credit. And regardless of what you think of Chris McCandless, Jon Krakauer is an amazing writer, and this book is well worth the read.

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