Goodbye stranger; it's been nice

You know what book I finished recently and wrote an essay on that I just handed in today? Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Good God. What a smfff book. It was alright... it had important points... and I could have killed myself while reading it. It's just one of those. So I won't be going through it. I know, you're saying, "Shankespeare, you are being a wiener right now. It doesn't matter if you didn't enjoy it! Press on, brave soldier of fortune!" I'm not sure exactly what you're quoting right now (if you're quoting something--which it certainly sounds like) but I just wrote a TWELVE-PAGE PAPER ON THIS BOOK I HATE. The only part I really liked was when this drunk guy plows into the main character and starts saying weird things like "I'mtheseventhsonofaseventhson" and that he was born with a caul and was raised on cat's milk and stuff. For you normal folks, being a seventh son of a seventh son means you're a werewolf (or being born on Christmas day. I have written a whole theory as to why Jesus was a werewolf and why exactly it makes sense). Being born with a caul makes you a vampire. Or being bitten, or if a vampire stares at a pregnant mother (the child is born a vampire) or if you're womb-cursed. Or excommunicated, supposedly, but I think that automatically makes every Episcopalian a vampire, and so far, I've been sorely disappointed.



Also, he refers to a black-and-white silent film (Birth of a Nation) which was pretty cool... I mean, not the fact that it's an incredibly racist film. Just the fact that he referred to it, you know? Old black and white films you know? Though when the book was written it probably wasn't that old... FINE. When I write my book, I'm just going to rip jokes off from Marx Brothers movies and no-one will know because they're 80 years old now. And if someone happens to call me on it? Homaaaaaaaaage.




So! What I will be writing about is a book I actually enjoyed (enjoyeds?). It is Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. The book is written about a true chain of events--A young man named Christopher Johnson McCandless (alias Alexander Supertramp) left school, left his family, and took basically nothing with him into the Alaskan wilderness. I enjoyed the story itself--not so much how it was written--and even the movie. What I mean about not really liking how it was written is that Krakauer started or still does, write in a style... uh, of journalists. It's kind of hard to explain... but you can tell. Or, maybe just I can tell, because I took a journalism class last year. Eugh. Anyway, spoiler alert: Christopher dies. Don't get mad at me--Krakauer reveals this on the second sentence eight pages in. Sooo. Yeah. Now that I've depressed you, read on!:





"I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life." This is from Tolstoy's Family Happiness, which I have not read, but it was found highlighted in one of the books that were found with Christopher's body.

"No longer would he answer to Chris McCandless; he was now Alexander Supertramp, master of his own destiny" (23).

It's thought that McCandless's infatuation with Jack London is what led partially to his walking into the Alaskan bush. Apparently, they were very romantic views of the wild--and by 'apparently' I mean they definitely are. According to Krakauer, Jack London spent "just a single winter in the North" and went on to become an obese drunk who killed himself in his CA estate. Yikes. Kind of ruins my image of Jack London, that's for sure. I'm not going to agree with Krakauer and say that McCandless "conveniently overlooked" these facts; I'm going to say he just didn't know. They would have broken his heart if he did.

A man named Ronald Franz took McCandless in for a short time. He was a leather... tanner? Leather smith? He made leather belts and stuff, that's my point. But he was very inspired by all the the things McCandless talked to him about and told him, to the point of Franz selling his home and moving onto McCandless's campsite, "awaiting his young friend's return" (58). When he discovered McCandless had died: "'When Alex had 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). And, later on: "'...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).

Many Alaskans, after Krakauer wrote an article on McCandless (in 1992, of course) many Alaskans wrote in saying how foolish he was/seemed. And true, McCandless was VERY under prepared. He didn't even have waterproof boots originally, and was carrying something like a 25-pound bag of rice. And books. So... well... he had a very, very, very romanticized view of the Alaskan wilderness. I don't believe he was stupid, just... naive. What he was doing would be okay if he was, say, Jack Kerouac. Kerouac tramped around Mexico and California. Obviously, those places aren't anything like Alaska.



"'I have known too much of the depths of life already, and I would prefer anything to an anticlimax'" (87). Everett Ruess wrote that to his brother before he disappeared into the wilderness--in his case, the desert. In Utah, apparently, near Davis Gulch.



"Everything had changed suddenly--the tone, the moral climate; you didn't know what to think, whom to listen to. As if all your life you had been led by the hand like a small child and suddenly you were on your own, you had to learn to walk by yourself." Remember when I read Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and I couldn't find the quote I loved in it that was in Into the Wild and was ultimately the key factor in why I decided to read Doctor Zhivago in the first place? Yup. That's the one! It's about growing up, obviously. How you're suddenly an adult and on your own... something I'm not exactly clamoring for.

"For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy"--GK Chesterton

"The father is taken aback. What he usually says, in such a confrontation, is 'I changed your diapers for you, you little snot.' First, this is not true... and second, it instantly reminds Sam II of what he is mad about. He is mad about being small when you were big, but no, that's not it, he is mad about being helpless when you were powerful, but no, not that either, he is mad about being contingent when you were necessary, not quite it, he is insane because when he loved you, you didn't notice"--Donald Barthelme

"HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED"--written by Christopher Johnson McCandless in his copy of Doctor Zhivago, found with his corpse

"I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOOD BYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!"--written by Christopher Johnson McCandless shortly before death



Well, there you have it. The unspoken question--one that becomes more apparent after seeing the film--is if he really shortened his life, or in those few short months he lived more than most do. I'd like to say he lived more than most. Quality over quantity.

Curiously, this struck an interesting chord with me: shortly before reading this book for the first time, I heard about how my grandfather (my mother's father, Charles) went into the woods himself. He apparently hated my great-grandmother, as he was stubborn and unyielding and she was controlling and nasty. Before he left, he said he'd come back in two years--and he did come back, exactly two years later, on the same day and everything. Of course, Connecticut is a lot different from Alaska. It's not the same hardly, but he did live in the woods and scrounge and steal food and live off his wits. In fact, so the story goes, after not getting adequate food for a week he finally managed to steal a chicken. He had taken his dog with him, and the dog was hungry as well (you'd think the dog would have been eating bunnies or something, but no) and it stole the chicken. He took a shovel to the dog's back... well. It didn't have much to do with anything, but it's one of my mom's favorite anecdotes about her father. I wish I had met him.


(I've been really busy this month! You'll probably get maybe two more updates this month, but seriously, it took me NINE days to write this all!)