Text and Community 2006: Into the Wild

Into the Wild Resources

"Death of an Innocent: How Christopher McCandless Lost His Way in the Wilds" by Jon Krakauer, Outside January 1993 (this is the original article that became the basis for Into the Wild)
Letters to the editors of Outside magazine (from March 1993 and April 1993) responding to Krakauer's original article (see above)
Krakauer responds to Outside readers (see above)
"I Now Walk into the Wild" by Chip Brown, New Yorker February 8, 1993
"I Want To Ride In The Bus Chris Died In" by Sherry Simpson, Anchorage Press, February 7 - February 13, 2002 / Vol. 11, Ed. 6
"Back to the Wild" by Tonio Verzone, a sophomore at Alaska Pacific University
Chris McCandless from an Alaska Park Ranger's Perspective by Peter Christian
"Alaska wilderness devours the deluded, ignorant and ill" by Craig Medred, Anchorage Daily News, August 21, 2005
"Never Underestimate Flower Power" by Alan Boraas, Anchorage Daily News, April 3, 2002
"McCandless: Hero or Dumb Jerk" by Judith Kleinfeld, Anchorage Daily News, July 20, 2001

"The Wild, Wild North: Nature Writing, Nationalist Ecologies, and Alaska" by Susan Kollin (American Literary History 12, Spring-Summer 2000, pp. 41-78) (on-campus access only)
"Mining a Rough Terrain: Weighing the Implications of Nonfiction" by Daniel Lehman (Narrative 9:3, Oct 2001, pp. 334-42)
"Toward a Theory of Literary Nonfiction" by Eric Heyne (Modern Fiction
Studies 33:3, Autumn 1987, pp. 479-490)
"Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors" by Nina Baym (in American Quarterly 33)
"Say It Ain't So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain's 'Masterpiece'" by Jane Smiley (Harper's, January 1996)
"Critics in the Wilderness: Literary Theory and the Spiritual Roots in of the American Wilderness Tradition" by David R. Williams (Weber Studies 11:3, Fall 1994, pp. 120-129)
Introduction the previous articles by Dr. David Williams

"Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" from Walden, by Henry David Thoreau ("I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life..."
For other Thoreau material see The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau
Jack London's Writings (including "To Build a Fire" -- a recurring intertext)
"The Death of Ivan Ilych" by Leo Tolstoy (one of Chris McCandless's literary heroes)
Mark Twain in His Time (thinking of McCandless as a kind of Huck Finn character)

Coming into the Country by John McPhee ( it's "about Alaska, myth, and reality" notes Ellen Moody)
A Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits, Solitaries, and Recluses by Isabel Colgate (Colegate "goes into the psychology behind retreat and shows that (as in the case of McCandless) for the most part such people end up dead or self-destructing" - Ellen Moody)
The Lonely Other: A Woman Watching American by Diana Hume George (a woman-centered perspective of women "dropping out" of society successfully)