In Search of the Miraculous:
"Is there anybody out there still experiencing anything besides somebody else's book commenting on somebody else's book? Where do we turn to find the experience—preverbal, nonverbal, subverbal, transverbal—on which the books and reports must finally be based?"
Aside from the obvious irony that I'm commenting on Krakauer's book commenting on the above quote, Roszak totally has a point. Though as a literature lover, I have to argue that the experience of reading a great book or a classic has merits -- if I had a choice between traveling the world and reading a library, I'd do both. Do you really need to have been on a whaling ship to understand Moby Dick? No. And even if you had been, the book isn't really about whaling, in the same way that Lord Jim isn't about Indonesia. I guess in answer to Roszak's question, you could turn to find experience anywhere (where is there greed, where is there racism -- with regard to Moby Dick/Lord Jim examples).
Now quoting Krakauer:
"[Chris] was so enthralled by these tales, however, that he seemed to forget they were works of fiction, constructions of the imagination that had more to do with [Jack] London's romantic sensibilities than with the actualities of life in the subarctic wilderness." (44)
Ah! So, he turns to find the experience in the wild, but ... the book's not really based on life in the wild. No matter. The ordeal is an exercise in solitude, based on the latter part of Tolstoy's life (who may I add died alone at a train station -- perhaps not the best role model for hermitage), and a weirdly selfish venture. I had a more visceral "WTF" reaction to McCandless' story when I watched the movie adaptation a few years back, and I think Krakauer's writing was more understanding and empathetic because I found my position softening a little. But only a little. For a guy that was so interested in humanitarian crises and social injustice in the world (e.g. food shortage in Africa), he was remarkably self-absorbed. Like the cliche, "Be the change you wish to see in the world" -- kinda hard if you remove yourself from society and the world.
Krakauer notes that Chris was "relieved that he had again evaded the impending threat of human intimacy, of friendship, and all the messy emotional baggage that comes with it ..." (55). For a student of Tolstoy, he was pretty anti-social -- because really "War & Peace" is an epic generation-long love story. And of all experiences, isn't human intimacy the most difficult?
And then this moment, which just broke my heart:
"When Alex 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 ... [I] bought a bottle of whiskey. And then I went out into the desert and drank it. I wasn't used to drinking, so it made me sick. Hoped it'd kill me, but it didn't. Just made me real, real sick." (60)
"Such bereavement, witnessed at close range, makes even the most eloquent apologia for high-risk activities ring fatuous and hollow." (132)
Bottom Line: I suppose that gets at the heart of why I always find his story so ingratiating and tragic. Like, go travel through Mexico and live off the Alaskan land if that's what it takes to have a revelation about life, but to have impacted others lives so negatively is sad. I love Jack Kerouac because while he zoomed around the continent, he did it with friends and always sent his mom postcards. He also penned several influential books and did not starve to death alone (with the nuance that it was slow alcoholism).
