Into the Wild (4)

Title: Into the Wild
Author: Jon Krakauer
Genre: Non-Fiction

I came to this book because of the Sean Penn directed film that came out last year. Not that I've seen the film mind you. Allow me a slight digression. There seems to be a trend about running advertisements and trailers for films long, long before their wide release. When I first saw advertisements for the film version of Into the Wild I couldn't wait to see it. Well, I did wait and wait and wait and wait. When the film finally made it to Louisville I decided that I was so perturbed by having seen advertisements for it for so longer because I could actually see the film that I'd just wait a bit longer and see it when it came on HBO. Onward.

I very much enjoyed this book. I enjoyed the overall story, the detailed research, the narrative and Krakauer's writing style. The story is that of a young man compelled to live a very different kind of life than is expected for a college educated person of means. He has a very different path in mind for himself than his parents had planned for him. The path he has chosen is a very difficult one and ultimately leads to his very untimely death. While his death is tragic and sad it's the journey and experiences in the two years leading up to his death, his wandering years that are fascinating and deeply touching to me.

It's a bit cliche I know to speak of being drawn to a different kind of life than is standard in our modern society. Even more cliche when I'm living a life that's very much a part of that modern society but I'm trying to make my own path and live my own life in small ways. Those small ways are what I can manage so I deeply, deeply respect people who can move beyond the small ways of creating their own lives, people who in fact create their own lives in the largest, grandest and most fundamental of ways, like the protagonist in Into the Wild, even if those lives are tragically short ones.