Slanted Truths in the “Oblique Light” of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild

Abstract

This article analyzes Jon Krakauer’s inclusion of a revised version of his autobiographical essay “The Devils Thumb” in Into the Wild, his 1996 biography of Christopher McCandless.

Keywords:

• Krakauer
• McCandless
• family
• trauma

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 10, 12.

2 Krakauer, Into the Wild, “Author’s Note.”

3 Krakauer, Into the Wild, “Author’s Note.”

4 Cole, “Krakauer Offers New Theory.”

5 Medred, “Fiction.” Medred identifies four significant points of discrepancy between Krakauer’s account and the available facts: a source who claims he did not state what was attributed to him in Krakauer’s book; a source who claims that Krakauer ignored what he was told about McCandless’s reading material; photographic evidence that appears to contradict claims made in Into the Wild; and “[c]laims attributed to McCandless’s journal” that “differ from what is in the journal itself.” According to Medred, Anchorage Daily News made “no attempt to fact check the sections of ‘Into the Wild’ dealing with McCandless’s life … before his death in Alaska.”

6 McCord, “‘Specter,’” 219, 221.

7 Middlebrook, “Role of the Narrator,” 5.

8 Middlebrook, “Role of the Narrator,” 14.

9 Krakauer, “Wild Light of Day.”

10 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 155.

11 Kam, “Forests of the Self,” 355.

12 Kam, “Forests of the Self,” 355.

13 Kam, “Forests of the Self,” 357.

14 Kam, “Forest of the Self,” 357; Beaumont, “In Alaska’s Wilds.” Saverin’s “The Chris McCandless Obsession Problem” describes this cultural phenomenon in detail, noting how it became even more pronounced after Into the Wild was made into a major motion picture, providing further fuel for objections to Krakauer’s romanticized—and largely speculative—depiction of McCandless’s final weeks. In “The Wild, Wild North,” Kollin invokes Krakauer’s Into the Wild as a starting point for her analysis of the ways in which Alaska has been positioned “as a unique terrain in the popular American imagination” and a kind of “mythic frontier,” despite the fact that “most studies of American literary history also consign the state to their margins, if they include it at all” (42, 43).

15 Eakin, How Our Lives, 45–46.

16 Eakin, How Our Lives, 53.

17 Eakin, How Our Lives, 57.

18 Eakin, How Our Lives, 57, 87.

19 Eakin, How Our Lives, 58. Couser adopts the term “auto/biography” to refer to “memoirs of proximate others, such as close relatives or partners, which are collaborative in some sense or degree” (40), explicitly highlighting the inherent narrative permeability of relational life stories.

20 McCord, “‘Specter,’” 221.

21 Eakin, How Our Lives, 86.

22 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 67.

23 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 59, 58.

24 Eakin, How Our Lives, 58.

25 Krakauer, Into the Wild, “Author’s Note.”

26 Eakin, How Our Lives, 87.

27 Krakauer, Into the Wild, “Author’s Note.”

28 McCandless, The Wild Truth, 1.

29 McCandless, The Wild Truth, 12.

30 McCandless, The Wild Truth, 12–13.

31 McCandless, The Wild Truth, 12.

32 As Krakauer acknowledges in “Into the Wild Light of Day,” “it had been obvious … that she [Carine] understood Chris better than anyone, perhaps even better than Chris had understood himself.” Similarly, in The Wild Truth, McCandless herself claims that “having [her] trust was Jon’s key to truly understanding what had made Chris tick” (142). As Gilmore notes in The Limits of Autobiography, in the autobiographical revelation of traumatic family secrets, “[p]ublic and private life are interwoven in such a way that either legitimation or shaming is always possible” (4)—a tension that is clearly present in McCandless’s memoir. As The Wild Truth reveals, it exerted significant pressure on her collaborative relationship with Krakauer during the writing of Into the Wild as well.

33 McCandless, The Wild Truth, 141.

34 McCandless, The Wild Truth, 141.

35 McCandless, The Wild Truth, 142.

36 Gilmore, The Limits of Autobiography, 80.

37 Gilmore, The Limits of Autobiography, 3.

38 For example, when D’Agata “respectfully” argues that Fingal is “worrying about very stupid shit,” the latter replies, “Unfortunately, I don’t get to decide which facts are stupid; I have to check all of them” (23).

39 D’Agata and Fingal, Lifespan of a Fact, 93.

40 D’Agata and Fingal, Lifespan of a Fact, 22.

41 Gilmore, The Limits of Autobiography, 71.

42 McCandless, The Wild Truth, 141. In his foreword to The Wild Truth, Krakauer acknowledges that when he wrote his initial query letter to the McCandless family attorney in 1996, “Important aspects of the mystery remained unresolved, including the cause of Chris’s death, and his reasons for so assiduously avoiding contact with his family after he departed Atlanta in the summer of 1990.” In The Wild Truth, Carine McCandless describes how, while reading her brother’s letters, Krakauer’s “mood became anxious”: “His eyes darted across Chris’s impassioned handwriting, then back to his notepad” (142). When the author of Into the Wild finds himself unexpectedly bound by a journalist’s professional promise, he returns to the explanatory framework first offered by his own personal experience; as Mcalpin notes in “Behind the Famous Story,” “even though it compromised his book, Krakauer honored Carine’s restrictions.”

43 Krakauer, “Wild Light of Day.”

44 Krakauer, “Wild Light of Day.” In “Into the Wild Light of Day,” Krakauer nevertheless defends his earlier decision, noting that “[i]t’s not uncommon for sources to ask journalists to keep certain pieces of information confidential or ‘off the record.’” Ultimately, Krakauer acknowledges, “I thought … that I could convey what I’d learned … obliquely, between the lines, without violating Carine’s trust”: “I was confident I could provide enough indirect clues … that … Chris’s seemingly inexplicable behavior during the final years of his life was in fact explained by the volatile dynamics of the McCandless family while he was growing up.”

45 Krakauer, “Wild Light of Day.”

46 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 132.

47 As Krakauer later admits in “Into the Wild Light of Day,” portions of McCandless’s letters to his sister that were omitted from Into the Wild “left little doubt about what drove him to sever his ties with his family.” As Carine McCandless notes in The Wild Truth, in these letters, Chris insists that Walt and Billie McCandless “aren’t ever going to change” their abusive behavior “because they’ll never be able to admit that they’re the problem” (100).

48 Krakauer, “The Devils Thumb,” Eiger Dreams, 188.

49 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 155.

50 Krakauer, “Author’s Note,” Eiger Dreams, xiii.

51 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 85.

52 Dickinson, “Tell all the Truth,” 248.

53 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 121.

54 In The Wild Truth, Carine McCandless details the complex history of her family: “Marcia gave birth to another son, Shannon, just three months before Billie gave birth to … Chris, in February 1968” (21). In letters written to his younger sister, Chris revealed that “[h]e had asked what the neighbors knew about our family, comparing what Walt and Billie had told them, with what our parents had told us. For the first time, Chris had learned the extent of our parents’ deception … Walt had still been married to Marcia when Chris and I were born. We were illegitimate” (93). The as-yet-unmarried Billie, however, “scheduled a portrait sitting for her and Walt and sent the picture” to her hometown newspaper in Iron Mountain, Michigan, complete with a fabricated post-wedding announcement (21); throughout Chris and Carine’s childhood, this picture was prominently displayed on the dresser in their parents’ bedroom.

55 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 121, 122–123.

56 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 123.

57 McCandless, The Wild Truth, 96.

58 McCandless, The Wild Truth, 96–97.

59 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 3.

60 In The Wild Truth, McCandless is stunned to witness Westerberg’s alcoholism and abuse of his wife: “I was horrified, and devastated by the thought of Chris escaping our home only to see this … I couldn’t understand why he would have felt so connected to Wayne. Perhaps … it was the same thing that kept me connected to my parents” (155, 156).

61 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 147.

62 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 148.

63 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 148–149.

64 Krakauer, “The Devils Thumb,” Eiger Dreams, 181.

65 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 147, 148.

66 Krakauer, “The Devils Thumb,” Eiger Dreams, 165–166.

67 Krakauer, “The Devils Thumb,” Eiger Dreams, 165–166.

68 Krakauer, “The Devils Thumb,” Eiger Dreams, 168.

69 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 134.

70 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 134–135.

71 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 138.

72 Krakauer, “The Devils Thumb,” Eiger Dreams, 171.

73 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 138.

74 Krakauer, “The Devils Thumb,” Eiger Dreams, 171.

75 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 139.

76 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 137.

77 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 65–66.

78 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 66.

79 Krakauer, “The Devils Thumb,” Eiger Dreams, 174.

80 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 155, 156.

81 Krakauer, “The Devils Thumb,” Eiger Dreams, 168.

82 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 138.

83 Krakauer, Into the Wild, 155.

84 Gilmore, The Limits of Autobiography, 19.

85 Gilmore, The Limits of Autobiography, 72.

86 Gilmore, The Limits of Autobiography, 72.

87 McCandless, The Wild Truth, 200.

88 Couser, Vulnerable Subjects, 10.

89 Couser, Vulnerable Subjects, 198.