mk
Trail Wise!
North Texas
Posts: 1,217
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Post by mk on May 10, 2016 6:01:52 GMT -8
My take on "Into Thin Air" is that everyone has a different perspective on events. And that oxygen-deprived air just makes good decision-making difficult and event recall suspect. I liked the book for those reasons -- all those personalities with different goals and agendas and stories. And it is the book that introduced me to the curiosity (to me, anyway) that is mountain climbing. I've also read some of the other accounts of the tragedy, and I enjoyed those, as well. Different perspectives -- although I believe that none of us will actually ever know definitively what happened and why. I still find the story compelling.
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mk
Trail Wise!
North Texas
Posts: 1,217
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Post by mk on May 10, 2016 6:02:58 GMT -8
P.S. I didn't make it through the book, but I fell asleep during the movie "Into the Wild."
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Post by mtngrl on May 16, 2016 12:32:49 GMT -8
Aaaack, RangerSven, NO, you are sick, sick, sick. Into Thin Air, was too many falsehoods. Into the Wild, more factual, but agree with EcoCentric, about sad so many want McCandless to be a hero. Krakauer went on about how he identified with McCandless, and now McCandless' sisters are coming out with some unfortunate family history. What a circus. Its' is sad so many read Into the Wild and catch the "go to Alaska bug", when there are some great readings on the "smart/real" way to go about it. Aaaaack, RangerSven, you are making me crazy with this stuff! "Eiger Dreams" was my favorite of Krakauer's books.
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amaruq
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Call me Little Spoon
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Post by amaruq on May 16, 2016 13:13:44 GMT -8
Its' is sad so many read Into the Wild and catch the "go to Alaska bug" Well dang, I've caught it and haven't even read the book. I'm a lost cause.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 16, 2016 13:24:40 GMT -8
now McCandless' sisters are coming out with some unfortunate family history. What a circus. Yeah, a more suitable title might be "Away from Parents" at the cost of being reduced to a 67-pound skeleton of his former self in a mere 4 months of actually trying to survive in Alaska.
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Post by Sleeping Bag Man! on May 16, 2016 13:29:36 GMT -8
If you read Into the Wild and think McCandless is a role model/hero, you have misread the book. If you read Into the Wild and want to go to Alaska alone to live in a bus in the woods, you have misread the book.
At the same time...
If you read Into the Wild and your only takeaway is to critique McCandless' wilderness survival strategies, you have misread the book. If you read Into the Wild only to become resentful and judgmental of McCandless, you have misread the book.
WTF do you people want to do - dig up his grave and piss on his corpse? He died for his mistakes. I guess not a single one of us ever made a mistake during our outdoor adventures that could've cost our lives. And none of us ever struggled to cope with family issues during our early adulthood.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 16, 2016 13:41:13 GMT -8
WTF do you people want to do - dig up his grave and piss on his corpse? He died for his mistakes. I guess not a single one of us ever made a mistake during our outdoor adventures that could've cost our lives. And none of us ever struggled to cope with family issues during our early adulthood. I don't dislike McCandless at all. I did something quite similar at about the same age. If wilderness survival were all that interested me, I would have abandoned the effort when I saw it was doomed. And I did. If a family situation motivated me, I might have pursued it to the same bitter end. As the sisters point out, there is more to the story worth hearing.
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RumiDude
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Marmota olympus
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Post by RumiDude on May 16, 2016 14:59:45 GMT -8
WTF do you people want to do - dig up his grave and piss on his corpse? People like to judge if it is a "real" person. If it is a fictional character they can sit back and enjoy the story. I found the same kind of judgement leveled against Grant Hadwin in the book The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant. Think of all the tragedies of Shakespeare or the ancient Greek tragedies, those characters also do "stupid" things. Yet we allow these often clumsy plots or character flaws to pass without judgement as we enjoy and learn of the story. Rumi
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amaruq
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Call me Little Spoon
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Post by amaruq on May 17, 2016 4:04:54 GMT -8
Think of all the tragedies of Shakespeare or the ancient Greek tragedies I don't know, I wrote a pretty scathing essay on Romeo & Juliet back in high school...
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rebeccad
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Writing like a maniac
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Post by rebeccad on May 17, 2016 8:31:01 GMT -8
Think of all the tragedies of Shakespeare or the ancient Greek tragedies, those characters also do "stupid" things. Yet we allow these often clumsy plots or character flaws to pass without judgement as we enjoy and learn of the story. I spent many years in grad school critiquing the heck out of those characters! I would have said the problem runs the other way--we are used to looking for the "tragic flaw" in the character, and reducing them to themes and motifs, rather than human beings.
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BigLoad
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Post by BigLoad on May 17, 2016 9:42:08 GMT -8
I totally agree. I'd be surprised if Shakespeare thought of tragic flaws as being unique to individuals. If that were the case, there wouldn't be such a strong argument for the universality of his plays. It might be better to interpret them as showing how circumstances interact with a collection of weaknesses and behavioral and emotional tendencies common to all in varying degrees.
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geosp
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Post by geosp on May 17, 2016 14:25:00 GMT -8
Read both. Watched the movies. Enjoyed all. Probably 'Into the Wild' getting the edge. Likely because as a young man I could have had similar notions of 'living off the land'. Something I now realise with having a few more miles under my feet, is not as romantically easy as it sounds. Certainly not without considered preparation. What intrigues me about McCandless's demise (and maybe someone here who knows the area has an answer) was that there were apparently two easy solutions to his 'stranding'. Just a quarter of a mile downstream from where he had tried to cross the river there was a hand operated metal basket suspended from a cable that would have got him across the Teklanika river no problem. Even with the amount of time he had spent in the area and his need to find a crossing point he had not discovered it. (Terrain problems?) Also 6 miles due south of the bus and apparently an easy walk, there was a National Park Service cabin stocked with food, bedding etc. (Excellent argument for carrying a map)
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RumiDude
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Post by RumiDude on May 18, 2016 9:59:55 GMT -8
Think of all the tragedies of Shakespeare or the ancient Greek tragedies, those characters also do "stupid" things. Yet we allow these often clumsy plots or character flaws to pass without judgement as we enjoy and learn of the story. I spent many years in grad school critiquing the heck out of those characters! I would have said the problem runs the other way--we are used to looking for the "tragic flaw" in the character, and reducing them to themes and motifs, rather than human beings. And did critiquing these characters stop you from reading the story? Did you get angry with Titus Andronicus, Othello, Lear, etc and refuse to continue with the play because "the whole premise sounded like a kid with issues and too self-centered to deal with them" or similar character flaw? I would hazard you didn't get angry at the characters, even Iago, because they weren't "real". Aftrer all it would be silly to get angry about a fictional character. But someone like Chris Mccandless of Into The Wild, Grant Hadwin of The Golden Spruce, Cheryl Strayed of Wild, and other "real" people often get "really" judged as opposed to fictional characters. I have seen this over and over in discussions of these books of "real" people and events. The irony of this is that many fictional characters are based on real people and the events of their lives. Rumi
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rebeccad
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Post by rebeccad on May 18, 2016 10:35:00 GMT -8
Maybe. Does McCandless's problem arise to the level of a "tragic flaw"? Maybe that's what's needed. I have certainly ditched a number of fiction works because the characters are simply icky, not flawed in real and interesting ways. My point was that we judge those literary characters, all right. But you're right, we judge their books separately. Iago: thorough scaly character, part of a great story. Romeo and Juliet...well, maybe I'll leave them out. Idiot kids
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