Review: Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer

My first book of 2017 was Jon Krakauer’s harrowing account of his ascent of Mt. Everest in May 1996. There are several accounts of the disaster surrounding the May 10, 1996 Everest expeditions, but Krakauer’s Into Thin Air is arguably the most famous.

Krakauer climbed Everest at the behest of Outside magazine, mainly to cover the guided expeditions that were gaining popularity at that time. These expeditions were controversial because many in the climbing community felt that inexperienced and possibly unfit people were attempting the dangerous climb and putting their lives (and those of their guides and sherpas) in jeopardy. In addition, concerns had been raised about the commercialization of Everest. For instance, the mountain became littered with the debris of climbers, from discarded oxygen canisters to other belongings, and frankly, even the bodies of those who did not make it back. It’s an absolutely riveting book about the dangers of hubris in the face of what is still one of the most dangerous places in the world. Krakauer describes the events leading up to a storm that approached as the expedition teams led by Scott Fischer and Rob Hall summited the mountain, and before all the members of the expeditions were able to descend, they were embroiled in a dangerous blizzard and a fight for their lives.

Krakauer has been criticized for parts of his account, and he has included a postscript to address some of this criticism. I found he was remarkably fair, though I freely admit this is the only account I’ve read. The reason I think he is fair is that he admits he feels partly responsible for the deaths of two the members of his team, Adventure Consultants, which was led by Rob Hall. He is fairly open and critical of his own lapses in judgment. He might even be hard on himself, given he was suffering from the effects of the altitude and the storm. He states he wishes he had never climbed Everest, but he admits in his introduction that “attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act—a triumph of desire over sensibility. Any person who would seriously consider it is almost by definition beyond the sway of reasoned argument” (xvii). He wrote the book in part to attempt to deal with the post-traumatic stress disorder and depression that resulted from his experience on the mountain. Whatever culpability he ultimately has (which is debatable), it’s clear he has examined the events from as many angles as he could, including interviewing other survivors about their memories. He has done as good a job as it is probably possible to do, given the way the altitude, which made clear thinking virtually impossible, as well as the trauma of the event. Establishing the truth was difficult.

If I had the slightest notion I ever wanted to try anything like climb Mount Everest (and I assure you I didn’t—I am nowhere near fit enough to try climbing any mountain, let alone that one), this book would have cured me of the desire. Once the mountain had been conquered in the 1950’s, perhaps it was easy to forget the dangers it still held. Over 280 people have died trying to climb the mountain. In fact, 1996 was not even the deadliest year. English Mountaineer George Mallory has famously been quoted as saying, after being asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, “Because it’s there.” He perished in his attempt in 1924. His remains were found about three years after Jon Krakauer’s ill-fated summit of Everest.

This book has been on TBR list for a while. I actually accidentally bought two copies of it in my zeal to make sure I read it. I thought it was even better than Into the Wild, perhaps because of the personal nature of the story and very real anguish that Krakauer clearly feels. This book is personal. Krakauer is an excellent writer of narrative nonfiction.

Rating: ★★★★★

The Backlist Reader Challenge 2017This book is my first selection for the Backlist Reader Challenge 2017. I can’t recall how long I’ve wanted to read it, but I put it on my Goodreads to-read list on December 14; I’m pretty sure I bought both copies I own before then (I am sending one back!). I know I had plans to read it sometime last year after a conversation with a fellow teacher who had read it, but I was being lazy about adding more books to Goodreads for a while. It was originally published in 1997.

Review: Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer

Into the Wild

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Henry David Thoreau

My sister gave me a copy of Jon Krakauer’s book Into the Wild for Christmas so many years ago now that I can’t remember, and I’m a little embarrassed that it has taken me so long to finally read it. I think what finally convinced me to read it at last was the recent publication of Carine McCandless’s own memoir, The Wild Truth. I had previously read Jon Krakauer’s article, “How Chris McCandless Died” in The New Yorker.

I am a funny reader. I don’t highlight or underline much in paper books, unless they are professional reading or books I’m teaching in my English classes. I didn’t make any marks in my paper copy of Into the Wild until I was more than a third, perhaps even close to halfway through the book, and I realized I needed to mark it up. I went back and found passages I liked in the parts I read before I had picked up my pencil.

For those (like me) who may not have read the book yet, it is the story of Christopher McCandless, who graduated from Emory University and disappeared on a quest to find himself in the wild. A devotee of Jack London, John Muir, and Henry David Thoreau, McCandless was drawn eventually to Alaska, where, it was supposed, he died of starvation. Jon Krakauer was asked to write about the tragedy for Outside magazine. However, Krakauer appears to have been unable to leave the story alone after the article, and this book is the result. In fact, as evidenced by the fact that Krakauer wrote the foreword to Carine McCandless’s book and is still contributing to discussion of Chris McCandless’s death, it seems plausible that he is still unable to let the story go. Once I started reading it, I also had a hard time putting the story down.

I was speaking with colleagues about the importance of narrative non-fiction. One important thing I have come to believe this year is that all of us, each and every one of us, has a story. In fact, many important stories. McCandless didn’t live to tell his story, in a sense, but in another sense, he actually did live to tell his story. Or perhaps, more accurately, he lived his story and Krakauer told it. Who was Chris McCandless, really? Just an arrogant, woefully unprepared, thoughtless slacker, as some people believe? The second coming of Thoreau? On the one hand, I understand those who are frustrated by the veneration of someone they see as foolhardy, and McCandless devotees have caused some real problems when they’ve tried to retrace his steps and find for themselves the old Fairbanks City Transit bus where he died. On the other hand, what I love about this book is that Krakauer elevated McCandless, a man who might otherwise have been forgotten by all but his family and friends, simply by telling his story, and by telling it so well.

I was particularly moved by McCandless’s friendship with and impact on a man Krakauer calls Ron Franz. I almost hesitate to share a quote here because part of me wants anyone reading this review to discover the book as I did, without having read a single line from it anywhere. On the other hand, anyone reading this review is likely not too worried about exposure, or they wouldn’t read a review (I know I avoid reviews of books I haven’t read unless I don’t mind some spoilers). So all that being said, this is the first part of the book that moved me:

“When Alex [McCandless’s pseudonym] left for Alaska,” Franz remembers, “I prayed. I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one; I told him that boy was special. But he let Alex die. So on December 26, when I learned what happened, I renounced the Lord. I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist. I decided I couldn’t believe in a God who would let something that terrible happen to a boy like Alex.” (60)

Some criticism I’ve read of the book faults Krakauer for inserting himself a bit too much into the narrative, but I actually liked it that he became close to the story. I think sometimes in telling a story about someone else, you need to identify how it’s also about you, and it is clear that Krakauer saw himself in McCandless and even indicates all that really separates the two of them is luck.

Even Ralph Waldo Emerson, in many ways the father of Transcendentalism in America, criticized his friend Thoreau, whom he felt frittered away his life: “I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition… Instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry party.”

Of course Thoreau was more than the captain of a huckleberry party. In fact, I’d argue he actually did engineer for all America. Emerson just didn’t realize it because so much of the change in thinking that Thoreau put in motion didn’t bear fruit until a century and more after Thoreau’s death.

I can easily see how one might criticize McCandless for making the mistakes he did, but as Krakauer points out,

McCandless wasn’t some feckless slacker, adrift and confused, racked by existential despair. To the contrary: His life hummed with meaning and purpose. But the meaning he wrested from existence lay beyond the comfortable path: McCandless distrusted the value of things that came easily. He demanded much of himself—more, in the end, than he could deliver. (184)

Am I arguing that Chris McCandless may one day have the impact that Thoreau has had? Maybe. I don’t know. But I do know his story is not only gripping and beautiful, in its way, but it is also important because he was one of us, and that alone makes it worthy to be told.

No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, it is more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality… The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as in intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

Henry David Thoreau

Rating: ★★★★★