Into The Wild: interview with Carine McCandless, sister of Christopher
November 17, 2014 5:37 PM Subscribe
Carine McCandless's memoir tells the story of a childhood marred by domestic violence - and ended by her brother’s tragic death in the Alaskan wilderness. Q&A: The True Strife Behind 'Into the Wild'.
I found the linked article on the current controversy around the trail to the bus interesting, if tangential to the subject of this post.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:08 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:08 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
I really hope this quiets that ugly internet faction who seem to really enjoy succumbing to the just world fallacy and casting Christopher McCandless as some starry-eyed dumbass who deserved to die.
posted by invitapriore at 6:12 PM on November 17, 2014 [5 favorites]
posted by invitapriore at 6:12 PM on November 17, 2014 [5 favorites]
I never quite understood people who found a need to romanticise his death. It was a terrible tragedy about a young man. Into the Wild was hard to put down, but it was also hard to turn the pages.
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posted by Fizz at 6:19 PM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
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posted by Fizz at 6:19 PM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
If you're interested in visiting the bus but want to avoid the unpleasant and potentially life-threatening hike in (crossing the river killed a tourist a couple of years ago), there's a very nice brew pub (49th State Brewing company) in Healy (~10 miles north of the entrance to Denali State Park) who bought the prop bus from the movie and put it outside their restaurant. So you can get your pictures taken with a replica and have some good food and beer, instead of being eaten alive by mosquitoes and possibly drowning.
posted by leahwrenn at 6:19 PM on November 17, 2014 [8 favorites]
posted by leahwrenn at 6:19 PM on November 17, 2014 [8 favorites]
casting Christopher McCandless as some starry-eyed dumbass who deserved to die.
I don't think almost anyone deserves to die, but he definitely had some dumbass moments.
I had picked up from somewhere that their childhood wasn't great, maybe from one of the articles in the last FPP about this, but though this interview leaves out any details this sounds worse than just "not great." I sympathize enormously with them, without quite understanding why so many people find his story so compelling.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:22 PM on November 17, 2014 [5 favorites]
I don't think almost anyone deserves to die, but he definitely had some dumbass moments.
I had picked up from somewhere that their childhood wasn't great, maybe from one of the articles in the last FPP about this, but though this interview leaves out any details this sounds worse than just "not great." I sympathize enormously with them, without quite understanding why so many people find his story so compelling.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:22 PM on November 17, 2014 [5 favorites]
there's a very nice brew pub in Healy who bought the prop bus from the movie and put it outside their restaurant. So you can get your pictures taken with a replica and have some good food and beer, instead of being eaten alive by mosquitoes and possibly drowning.
Good to know that Christopher McCandless didn't die in vain.
posted by Flashman at 7:16 PM on November 17, 2014 [4 favorites]
Good to know that Christopher McCandless didn't die in vain.
posted by Flashman at 7:16 PM on November 17, 2014 [4 favorites]
Dip Flash: " without quite understanding why so many people find his story so compelling."
Well it's a very American form of madness, isn't it? So much so that you almost can't call it madness; you almost have to call it romanticism. The Frontier is the primal myth of American life, and the Closing of the Frontier is the most senior explanation for its modern maladies. A young man from the civilized east who sets out to the untamed west to lose his problems and find himself in the beauty and solitude of nature? That is pretty much 50% of American literature, and that's a powerful pull on the American imagination. That it all goes horribly wrong only makes it more compelling -- Nature won't be tamed and is lurking at the edges of suburbia waiting to attack? He brought the corruption of civilization with him? We've lost our frontier past completely because we're too domesticated? Self-reliance is a fraud? So many themes to pick from.
Also Krakauer's a good writer.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:44 PM on November 17, 2014 [22 favorites]
Well it's a very American form of madness, isn't it? So much so that you almost can't call it madness; you almost have to call it romanticism. The Frontier is the primal myth of American life, and the Closing of the Frontier is the most senior explanation for its modern maladies. A young man from the civilized east who sets out to the untamed west to lose his problems and find himself in the beauty and solitude of nature? That is pretty much 50% of American literature, and that's a powerful pull on the American imagination. That it all goes horribly wrong only makes it more compelling -- Nature won't be tamed and is lurking at the edges of suburbia waiting to attack? He brought the corruption of civilization with him? We've lost our frontier past completely because we're too domesticated? Self-reliance is a fraud? So many themes to pick from.
Also Krakauer's a good writer.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:44 PM on November 17, 2014 [22 favorites]
The movie "Into the Wild" either never made it to my fair city, or I overlooked it until it had departed. But it was still playing in a city 100 miles away. A young guy that I had hired (and who was the son of an old family friend) that summer got to talking about it with me, and we decided to go see it. So we drove up there, and I sat next to a guy about Christopher's age at the time of Christopher's death, who was so brilliant he's kind of scary*, liked to hike (had hiked a good stretch of the Appalachian trial solo) and was a little bit of a hippy, while I watched this movie...
That memory aside, and having also read the book, I wish I could say that I suspected there was more to the story than his parents just being kind of materialistic and harsh, but I don't think I did.
*he's a PhD now, which doesn't make it any less scary, but does make it official...
posted by randomkeystrike at 8:09 PM on November 17, 2014
That memory aside, and having also read the book, I wish I could say that I suspected there was more to the story than his parents just being kind of materialistic and harsh, but I don't think I did.
*he's a PhD now, which doesn't make it any less scary, but does make it official...
posted by randomkeystrike at 8:09 PM on November 17, 2014
Well it's a very American form of madness, isn't it?
Oh you USAnians, taking all the credit all the time...
Challenging oneself against the wild occurred long before 'America' was a twinkle in a 'mad' explorer's eye.
posted by Kerasia at 8:10 PM on November 17, 2014 [3 favorites]
Oh you USAnians, taking all the credit all the time...
Challenging oneself against the wild occurred long before 'America' was a twinkle in a 'mad' explorer's eye.
posted by Kerasia at 8:10 PM on November 17, 2014 [3 favorites]
Challenging oneself against the wild occurred long before 'America' was a twinkle in a 'mad' explorer's eye.
Gun enthusiasts were around before us too. And yet we've really managed to take both and run with them....
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:22 PM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
Gun enthusiasts were around before us too. And yet we've really managed to take both and run with them....
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:22 PM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
Yes, yes, but you probably have national literature on other topics, whereas ours is 250 years of "Go West, Young Man!" followed by 20 years of "Okay, we ran out of West, but it's cool guys, TO THE MOON!" followed by, "Okay, shit, so, um, I'm a wealthy Baby Boomer male in suburbia and everything is terrible because there are no frontiers left but my own desperate ennui, so, books about that now I guess?"
I joke, but a bright and troubled and eager young man leaving the civilized east for the frontier west really is the UR-story of American literature, history, and myth. George Washington went west. Abe Lincoln went west. They were fired in the crucible of the wilderness and returned to civilization equal to the greatness of their tasks. Part of what's so compelling about McCandless to Americans, I think, is how the familiar, comfortable, inspiring story goes so horribly wrong. This is not what Thoreau promised would happen. This is not how My Side of the Mountain ends. This is not how Huck Finn or Laura Ingalls ends up. I don't even WANT to be interested in this guy's story but I always end up reading to the end because it is this chilling, discordant echo of all the most fundamental stories of How Things Work back to my earliest childhood (with Little House, natch). I have absolutely zero desire to sleep outside or solve my problems in places with mosquitos, but it's still like a fairy tale gone wrong, in a way that makes me very uneasy. It's like Frodo getting to Mt. Doom and finding out, just kidding! These fires can't destroy the Ring either! That's not how the story is supposed to go!
It's American Lit Class, grimdark style.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:05 PM on November 17, 2014 [27 favorites]
I joke, but a bright and troubled and eager young man leaving the civilized east for the frontier west really is the UR-story of American literature, history, and myth. George Washington went west. Abe Lincoln went west. They were fired in the crucible of the wilderness and returned to civilization equal to the greatness of their tasks. Part of what's so compelling about McCandless to Americans, I think, is how the familiar, comfortable, inspiring story goes so horribly wrong. This is not what Thoreau promised would happen. This is not how My Side of the Mountain ends. This is not how Huck Finn or Laura Ingalls ends up. I don't even WANT to be interested in this guy's story but I always end up reading to the end because it is this chilling, discordant echo of all the most fundamental stories of How Things Work back to my earliest childhood (with Little House, natch). I have absolutely zero desire to sleep outside or solve my problems in places with mosquitos, but it's still like a fairy tale gone wrong, in a way that makes me very uneasy. It's like Frodo getting to Mt. Doom and finding out, just kidding! These fires can't destroy the Ring either! That's not how the story is supposed to go!
It's American Lit Class, grimdark style.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:05 PM on November 17, 2014 [27 favorites]
I am very intrigued as to why you think this (extravagant failure of challenge against nature) is a particularly American phenomenon. There are people doing all sorts of weird and wonderful and 'mad' things all over the world. My country's history (colonial, modern, and no-doubt pre-colonial) is full of this kind of malarky.
Granted, Amercian gun enthusiasm is truly exceptional and one-of-a-kind, thankfully.
posted by Kerasia at 9:10 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
Granted, Amercian gun enthusiasm is truly exceptional and one-of-a-kind, thankfully.
posted by Kerasia at 9:10 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure something being part of the quintessential American story would exclude it from being part of other countries stories?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:22 PM on November 17, 2014 [6 favorites]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:22 PM on November 17, 2014 [6 favorites]
Tell Me No Lies: "I'm not sure something being part of the quintessential American story would exclude it from being part of other countries stories?"
Yes, exactly, thank you for putting it so succinctly. I said it was a VERY American madness, not a uniquely American madness.
I don't think it's unconscionable jingoism to locate a story by an American journalist about an American youth within a tradition of American thought and literature, and suggest that is part of why it's a compelling story, especially to its original American audience.
And just to clarify as much as I can, the existence and closing of the American frontier has been literally the dominant organizing idea (not sole, but most dominant) about American history for like 100 years; I am not pulling this out of my ass. If you want to talk about American culture, you have to talk about the frontier, full stop. It casts too large a cultural shadow to ignore.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:38 PM on November 17, 2014 [9 favorites]
Yes, exactly, thank you for putting it so succinctly. I said it was a VERY American madness, not a uniquely American madness.
I don't think it's unconscionable jingoism to locate a story by an American journalist about an American youth within a tradition of American thought and literature, and suggest that is part of why it's a compelling story, especially to its original American audience.
And just to clarify as much as I can, the existence and closing of the American frontier has been literally the dominant organizing idea (not sole, but most dominant) about American history for like 100 years; I am not pulling this out of my ass. If you want to talk about American culture, you have to talk about the frontier, full stop. It casts too large a cultural shadow to ignore.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:38 PM on November 17, 2014 [9 favorites]
Krakauer's a good writer.
He's a good writer, but he either sees things through an odd lens, or he twists them deliberately. I'm not sure which.
In Into the Wild, he's surprised that Chris McCandless was so alienated from his family, after (1) describing the personality clash between free-spirited Chris and his very-authoritarian father, and then (2) telling us that oh, by the way, the authoritarian father was a bigamist who had divorced a first wife, married a second wife (Chris's mom), and then proceeded to continue having kids with both women. Who wouldn't be totally alienated from their family, at least for a while!
And in Into Thin Air, he conflates the two American climbing expeditions and dumps all the blame on a guide named Anatoli Boukreev who (conveniently enough) wasn't one of Krakauer's friends. Boukreev actually went back out into the storm twice to find climbers lost on the south col and bring them back to camp -- the only person from his expedition who died was the head of the expedition, Scott Fischer (an acquaintance of Krakauer's). He won an award from the American Alpine Association for the rescue!
All the other American deaths were on the other expedition (including that expedition's leader Rob Hall and the exhausted client he was trying to drag up to the summit late in the day). Krakauer totally discounts the fact that his friends who were actually in charge of the expeditions didn't see to it that the route was prepared or enforce a turnaround time, and blurs the lines between the two groups of climbers to divert the blame away from his deceased friends and onto some guy who saved several people's lives.
And he's such a good writer that the reader doesn't necessarily realize he's doing it.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 10:36 PM on November 17, 2014 [5 favorites]
He's a good writer, but he either sees things through an odd lens, or he twists them deliberately. I'm not sure which.
In Into the Wild, he's surprised that Chris McCandless was so alienated from his family, after (1) describing the personality clash between free-spirited Chris and his very-authoritarian father, and then (2) telling us that oh, by the way, the authoritarian father was a bigamist who had divorced a first wife, married a second wife (Chris's mom), and then proceeded to continue having kids with both women. Who wouldn't be totally alienated from their family, at least for a while!
And in Into Thin Air, he conflates the two American climbing expeditions and dumps all the blame on a guide named Anatoli Boukreev who (conveniently enough) wasn't one of Krakauer's friends. Boukreev actually went back out into the storm twice to find climbers lost on the south col and bring them back to camp -- the only person from his expedition who died was the head of the expedition, Scott Fischer (an acquaintance of Krakauer's). He won an award from the American Alpine Association for the rescue!
All the other American deaths were on the other expedition (including that expedition's leader Rob Hall and the exhausted client he was trying to drag up to the summit late in the day). Krakauer totally discounts the fact that his friends who were actually in charge of the expeditions didn't see to it that the route was prepared or enforce a turnaround time, and blurs the lines between the two groups of climbers to divert the blame away from his deceased friends and onto some guy who saved several people's lives.
And he's such a good writer that the reader doesn't necessarily realize he's doing it.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 10:36 PM on November 17, 2014 [5 favorites]
> more information on the family background
More in an NPR review of Carine's _The Wild Truth_
posted by morganw at 4:37 AM on November 18, 2014
More in an NPR review of Carine's _The Wild Truth_
posted by morganw at 4:37 AM on November 18, 2014
The book explores the connection to earlier American wilderness pilgrims, iirc.
I went to college with McCandless, but didn't know him. I may have met him at a party, but I am not sure. There were various dudes talking about how they were going to go live off the land after graduation; what distinguished him happened later: he tried it.
posted by thelonius at 5:04 AM on November 18, 2014
I went to college with McCandless, but didn't know him. I may have met him at a party, but I am not sure. There were various dudes talking about how they were going to go live off the land after graduation; what distinguished him happened later: he tried it.
posted by thelonius at 5:04 AM on November 18, 2014
Yes, yes, but you probably have national literature on other topics, whereas ours is 250 years of "Go West, Young Man!"
Don't sell yourself short. The USA also has a fine extensive literature of people washing their family's dirty linen in public.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:10 AM on November 18, 2014
Don't sell yourself short. The USA also has a fine extensive literature of people washing their family's dirty linen in public.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:10 AM on November 18, 2014
The bus lat-lon is (63°52'6"N 149°46'9"W). It's ~ 60 mi. from Fairbanks so you do not need any kind of Everest-trek experience to safely visit it.
posted by bukvich at 6:05 AM on November 18, 2014
posted by bukvich at 6:05 AM on November 18, 2014
It sounds like you do need to be a strong hiker and to know how to cross rivers, though
posted by thelonius at 6:37 AM on November 18, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 6:37 AM on November 18, 2014 [2 favorites]
There was also this book review on NPR a few days ago. One interesting bit that doesn't come out in the Newsweek interview:
Carine, who was a valuable source for both Krakauer's book and Sean Penn's movie adaptation, had shared this dark family history with Krakauer back in the early 1990s, though strictly off the record in order to protect her parents "from full exposure in case they could change for the better." (Not surprisingly, they didn't.) And even though it compromised his book, Krakauer honored Carine's restrictions. Instead, he hinted at the truth with repeated allusions to an "overbearing" father, which some readers caught, though many did not.posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:08 AM on November 18, 2014
Whoops, completely missed that morganw linked to that same review above.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:09 AM on November 18, 2014
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:09 AM on November 18, 2014
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posted by Nevin at 6:03 PM on November 17, 2014