Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer.
I'm not prone to saying things like this, so enjoy it while it lasts:
I learned something about myself by reading this book.
First you need to know what the book is about. If you haven't heard the story already, it's about a guy my age [24] named Chris McCandless who dies of starvation alone in the wilderness in Alaska two years after converting to asceticism and disowning materialistic life. But it's not really that simple. The guy was not nutty, and he was not stupid. He was irrepressibly idealistic and passionately morality-minded. Being a real person, it's foolish to try to attribute his actions to any single factor.
Read this if you want to know more of the story and about Chris [this is the article that the book was derived from]. It's very good reading.
Chris reminded me in many many ways of myself. I hesitate to explain how, but it was uncanny. Reading the book was like reading a story of me in a parallel universe but with these differences:
∙ I'm married to the same woman I dated when I was 16 [this is actually crucial]
∙ Religion
That's it. As far as I can tell all the other differences are superficial. Sure we had different parents and were raised in different homes, but we both showed such a convergent evolution of philosophy and traits that I can't imagine that differences in environment can explain much.
Being married has been a tremendous moderating force in my life. I've flirted here and there with radicalism but the practicalities of marriage and parenthood as well as the personal influence of my wife has smoothed over my most extreme views and tendencies. I discovered how much of a blessing this is through reading Krakauer's book.
Chris's views were not fundamentally wrong or bad. And his ideals didn't kill him. What killed him was his immoderation and, frankly, some pretty bad luck. He was somewhat reckless, but not suicidal.
So reading the book was a great education for me. It taught me that people like me exist elsewhere in the world, it taught me the dangers of taking my idealism too far, and most of all it showed me how lucky I am to be married to a stabilizing woman.
It also forced me to imagine what my life would look like posthumously through the lens of a nature/adventure writer in mainstream culture. I imagine a lot of armchair psychologists saying "obviously suffering from X" or "clearly his behavior was caused by Y" which seems so foreign seeming when it's referring to me. I'm me, I decide what I do, I decide how I am, and I'm neither insane nor stupid. So I don't believe that Chris McCandless was stupid, repressed, off-kilter, insane, arrogant, heroic, brave, naive or even labelable at all. He was just a guy with no moderation who felt strongly and acted on his feelings. A weird duck, no doubt, but a duck nonetheless.
[I feel like I'm rambling. I listened to some of my old music today and it had this same structure: clumps of connected material haphazardly strung together with no driving purpose, no direction, and no correlation. Whoops.]
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3 comments:
Three Dog Night?
Just goes to show that even people with no shared experiences whatsoever can still be similar. No one's studied that yet, I don't believe. Oooh.
I've wanted to read this book, but I tend to just read books I already own, over and over again. Very unfortunate.
Reminds me a bit of Hugh Nibley kicking it to Oregon for the summer, living in the wild and being lucky to have survived. Thought he was reliving Walden, but didn't realize that Thoreau went into Concord every day to get something hot to drink and to do grocery shopping.
Well, I read the link to the article. It's a long but well written piece. I must say that I read it to see if it reminded me of me. It did not. So it's really interesting to think that you feel some deep kinship with this guy. I feel none at all. I mean, other than love of nature, love of independence and happiness I felt during my teen years in being alone. The rest--nope.
When I was 13, my dream was to be a hermit in a cabin in the woods of Massachusetts. I wanted a sturdy axe, food to eat, a cot and lots and lots of trees. But that dream was long gone by the time I was 24 and no way relates to this guy and his needs and determination.
As I've browsed around this evening learning about this guy, it is apparent that he resonates in people and is a kind of prophet to the lost. I find that interesting, if not at all connected to what I wrote above.
On my quick re-read, I hope none of that sounds disparaging to you! Sorry if it sounded that way.
I would be interested to hear HOW this guy reminds you of you. What is obviously obvious to you is not so obvious to me.
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