Like Thoreau, who spent two years pursuing a “simple” life in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts, McCandless sets out alone into the Alaskan bush to live off the land and create a new identity. Krakauer’s book and McCandless’s odyssey is situated within a literary legacy that stretches from the transcendentalism of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden to the naturalism of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. Interestingly, if it were not for this great deal of media attention, McCandless could have easily become just another idealistic young man who walked into the woods never to be heard from again.
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Because McCandless became infamous posthumously for his bizarre death, McCandless’s rise to fame reflects the popularization of reality TV, which came into vogue in 1992 with the MTV series The Real World. While propagating McCandless’s image, these communications also debated the merits of McCandless’s elevation to celebrity status. Ironically, the discovery of McCandless’s body in September 1992 set off a media firestorm that circulated McCandless’s story in almost every medium from print to film. McCandless disappeared at the cusp of the digital age, only a few years before the invention of email, (1993), and the popularization of the cell phone, (1995), two devices that could have hampered his mission to live off the grid. Lastly, McCandless’s story figures prominently in the rise of New Media, or mass and instantaneous communications. McCandless’s rejection of his parents’ values as well as his concern for world hunger and South African apartheid also parallel the development of “alternative” subcultures in the early ‘90s and the decade’s growing awareness of global issues. McCandless’s journey is shaped by American economic, cultural, social, political, and technological trends of the 1990s, primarily represented by his parents, whose affluent lifestyle, careerism, and success in the aerospace industry mirrors the economic prosperity of the period, the elevation of the meritocracy to prominence, and the rise of the information age. He trekked into Denali National Park and lived off the land for 113 days before apparently dying of starvation.
Into the Wild is based on the life and death of Chris McCandless, a young man from a well-to-do family, who gave up all his worldly possessions, and hitchhiked throughout the U.S., to Alaska, between 19. A fearless and adventurous reporter, Krakauer has continued to push boundaries through his writings in publications such as Outside, GQ, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Architectural Digest, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Smithsonian, and, where he currently contributes. Krakauer’s most recent book Three Cups of Deceit, published in 2011, investigates alleged fabrications and fraud surrounding Nobel Prize nominee Greg Mortensen.
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Under the Banner of Heaven, a study of religious fundamentalism in the American West, and Where Men Win Glory, a profile of professional football player, turned army-combatant, Pat Tillman, followed in 20, respectively. In 1999, the Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Krakauer an Academy Award in Literature to honor his exceptional writing and investigative journalism.
Meanwhile, his 1996 book, Into the Wild, remained on the New York Times bestseller list for more than two years. The incident inspired his 1997 book Into Thin Air, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Everest, becoming the only climber on his team of five to survive their descent from the summit, after a fatal storm struck. His father introduced him to mountaineering at age eight and after graduating from Hampshire College in 1976, Krakauer spent the next two decades climbing mountains all over the world. Jon Krakauer is an American writer, award-winning journalist, humanitarian, and mountaineer, known for his writings about the outdoors and his mastery of reportorial narrative.
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