The Literary Impulse in Into the Wild Re-Making Chris McCandless: Can(?) the Real Chris McCandless please step forward?

Re-presenting Chris McCandless In the absence of knowing who CM was and why he did what he did, we rely on others’ stories. The one on the left is from the movie based on Krakauer’s book; the one on the right is a self-portrait shortly before CM died of starvation. Notice how each image projects a slightly different claim about who he was and what he believed in.

Re-presenting Chris McCandless Since Krakauer’s book, many have co-opted CM to produce new works of art. From left to right: CM’s sister’s book; a PBS retrospective of CM; and some T-shirt art that illustrates the commodifying of CM into a slogan that’s bought, sold, and “enjoyed”.

Is Into the Wild Literature? LOC bibliography page—no mention of “literature” or fiction. And yet, there are so many traits about the book that suggests we’re in the world of make-believe (literature) as much as fact: The book’s rhetorical situation (i-ii): The “Author’s Note” and JK’s blunt exposure of his authorial presence: fact, fiction and bias; why’s JK coming clean about the license he’s taken with CM’s story? What point is he making about the purpose of the book and the “version” of CM we’re about to get? Intertextuality: What data does JK mine to tell this story about someone he never met? CM’s postcards & letters Interviews with contacts (and others’ memories) Diary (13) and “113 terse enigmatic entries” Books What CM highlighted in those books SOS note (12) Graffiti (9) Photos

Into the Wild as Literature? JK’s artistic license with data (esp. the interviews) fictionalizing dialogue (3-4; 6); notice how JK recreates specific quotes CM supposedly said from the interviews he conducts “latte-colored” (11)? What kind of writer would use “latte” to describe the color of a ranging river? Sequencing for chapter themes: There are TWO stories here, the CM story and the JK story. For example: “Stikine Ice Cap” (14, 15): Focus is on JK autobio. Why—and why there? Epigraphs: common literary trait; a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a chapter or section. Often forecast’s the chapter’s theme but also may serve as a preface, a summary, or as a counter-example to another work of literature to invite comparison, enlist a conventional context, or associate with its ethos. Chapter titles (repetition, etc): “Alaska Interior” (1, 16); “Carthage” (7, 15); “Stikine Ice Cap” (14, 15); “Stampede Trail” (17, 18)

For next time Explain the correspondence between epigraph and the chapter theme Find examples of the blur between CM’s story and JK’s: Who or what is the book about? Walden as blueprint for CM’s story: What aspects of Thoreau’s “call” in 1852 drive CM’s compulsion in 1992? “The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I propose to describe more at length. . . . As I have said, I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up” (“Where I Lived,” 79). “Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness . . . . At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and inexorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurvey and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of Nature” (“Spring” 297). “In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, near weakness weakness. If you build castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them “ (“Conclusion” 303). “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves” (“Conclusion” 302).