By Thanh Le
In the birth of the novel was a desire to illuminate the universal truth inherent in all of humanity. Instead of looking to the fantastical, as was the custom, the novel looked at the mundane, the everyday for revelations of the human condition. The logical evolution in this pursuit for universality would inevitably take narrative from the realm of fantasy, through the everyday novel, to the factuality of real-life.
Reporting has always been cursed with the expectation of dry delivery, newspeak that stresses objectivity and informative fluency over the narrative and thematic possibilities of fact, but the pioneering works of Defoe and Crane challenged that notion. From the primordial soup of narrative was born a new creature, an amalgamation of truth and fantasy that began to blur the lines between factual reporting and literary writing. John Krakauer’s Into the Wild stands as the ultimate culmination of this creature, evolved from the single-celled works of Orwell and London, taking narrative from fiction into real life. Such a transition was not without its pratfalls and conundrums however. The allure of these stories was their purported basis in reality, but just how far can readers go in trusting what the author has made? How can we tell that the author has addressed the concerns of accuracy, veracity, and that every attempt was made to ensure the truth and integrity of the story?
The early works of Crane and Dafoe were experiments in fiction and reporting. They were an attempt to infuse reality with the meaning of the novel. The idea that reality could carry across themes and universal qualities that came about from carefully constructed narratives seemed quite ridiculous, but there was something quite compelling about real life. Although reality had a quality that defied meaning, as if it was simply a world where random circumstance and coincidence collided, nonetheless, these writers saw something in these collisions of chance. They wanted to turn reporting into something “literary.” They wanted to turn reality into something universally significant and relevant.
John Hersey’s Hiroshima was a compelling story, drawing on the real drama of disaster, on the harrowing experience that followed in the devastation but the necessity for factual reporting did much to mute the scenic quality of the book. Scenes had characters speak only in curt and short workman-like phrases, but despite these setbacks, the work used its claim to accuracy to immerse the reader. Capote tried to usher in a new genre of the non-fiction novel by taking everything that made the novel, and replace it with real-life content but fact and novelistic narrative did not comply, forcing Capote to fabricate the final words of Perry, and to fictionalize an ending to provide a coherence that he was unable to find in reality. Novels and reality, despite his best efforts, were unable to reconcile.
At the end of this long line of works stands Krakauer’s Into the Wild, the ultimate result of a century’s worth of natural selection. Redundant appendages have been cut off, faux organs removed, and extraneous senses consolidated, what remains is a very different beast than Hersey’s Hiroshima or Capote’s In Cold Blood. Krakauer never set out to shoehorn a real-life narrative into the structured coherence and elegance of a novel, instead, he set out to explore and understand a young man who lost his life in a seemingly needless endeavor into nature. This is not a non-fiction novel, but literary journalism. A narrative that relies on true events and the people involved. All the stories mentioned had an echo of the human condition, a universality to be revealed, but the access to this truth was compromised, either by stylistic limitation or by fabrication.
Into the Wild is part of a category of literary journalism that has always been intrinsically suspect: the reconstruction. It is not the first nor will it be the last in a category that presumes to recreate events and present it in a manner that does not merely recall the recorded facts, but fashion them into a narrative—a story. Krakauer draws from previous models of reconstruction, using the works that have come before, standing on their shoulders, to create a work that manages to deal with all the issues and problems with reconstruction. Into the Wild is a story about a young man’s final journey into the Alaskan wilderness and the circumstances that surround his mysterious death.
The issues that plague reconstruction are quite simple; it’s a matter of trust. For events as calamitous as a nuclear explosion or as isolated as a secluded murder, we can only trust the words of those who emerged from the chaos. Readers must trust that the author had done all he can to deduce the truth from the people who experienced the very event the writer wishes to recreate. Into the Wild is a unique case, however, because there are no survivors (quite the contrary) and there are no perpetrators to speak to. The very subject of the story has already passed away.
Chris McCandless may be dead in reality, but he is very much alive in Into the Wild. Krakauer is able to revive him from the imprints he left behind in the real world. The McCandless in the story was formed from the impressions, the chance encounters, and the fleeting relationships he held with people all over the country during the course of his journey. The journey was not a lonely one, but one periodically marked with human contact. This contact is crucial in reconstructing the path that McCandless undertook. Krakauer, from extensive interviewing, should’ve be able to construct a timeline derived from all his meetings, and by cross-referencing their stories on top of each other, a clearer picture of the journey should form.
It is here that Krakauer takes a cue from his predecessors. Hiroshima’s intersecting narrative between its six central characters was a kind of built-in check to ensure accuracy. The legitimacy of a story increases in proportion to the number of people who verify it. The cross-referencing of separate story lines that intersect at key moments was done to great effect by Hersey. This was also done in the recreation of the Clutter’s last day in Capote’s tale of cold-blooded murder. Using the eyewitness testimony of the people who were last with them, he reconstructed their last moments in startling detail. The story of one man alone does not mean that much, but the stories of many can give that one story authenticity and legitimacy. Following the journey of McCandless meant following in his wake of chance encounters, and seeing just how profound his influence and impact was on the people who remember him. The list of people he involved was comprehensive: Gallien, Westerberg, Burres, Carine, and among others.
Fortunately, reporting doesn’t always rely on something as dodgy as memories. Intersecting and corroborating stories are great but aren’t always foolproof. For everything else, there’s physical evidence—records: in the form of journals, photographs, videos, and audio recordings. All of these things provide invaluable fundamental building blocks from which the author can use to lay down a foundation of truth. Into the Wild makes constant reference McCandless’ journal. Statements prefaced with “From his journal we know…” let us know that these do not arise from idle speculation, but from what was written and recorded.
Driven by the works of Jack London and Henry David Thoreau, McCandless’ journey into the wilderness was more than just some wild adventure, but a spiritual quest. Krakauer was given access by the family to take a look at all of McCandless’ possessions. He was able to get his hands on McCandless’ journal, his collection of books, and important items like the guitar. By following McCandless’ trail, he came across the abandoned Datsun, the belt that was made with Ron Franz, the video that Franz made, and read over all the letters McCandless sent to people such as Westerberg and Burres. Hard physical evidence is the currency of accuracy in reporting journalism.
Capote also had a great deal of physical evidence at his disposal. The box of Perry’s relics stashed in some motel is a reporter’s treasure trove. Capote reportedly had a whole room full with piles of court documents, notes, and such records all related to the story. What separates Krakauer from Capote is that he doesn’t hide this room in the background, but constantly asks readers to revisit this room and make sure that there is no wool pulled over our eyes. We have direct access to words McCandless wrote as “Alexander.” It’s the case of transparency versus form. Capote does reference his sources in his writing, but his aspiration for a novelistic style tended to minimize the attribution to its most invisible point. Krakauer does the opposite, putting the spotlight on the reference, and never hesitates to bring readers into his evidence locker. Such transparency is not a weakness, but an acknowledgment of the difficulty of forcing non-fiction into a novelistic format.
Take Capote’s retracing of Dick and Perry’s journey across the country into Mexico and back. Capote traveled the same path to ensure that his recreation of their travels was as accurate as possible, alluding to landmark signs and details to round out the environment but he never says he followed their path, unlike Krakauer, who details in his book his visit to the very place McCandless met his demise. As a character in the story, Krakauer shows readers what he himself observed in the bus. He remarks on the trinkets left behind by McCandless and reads the inscriptions scribbled on the interior walls. Where Capote tries to guide us invisibly with his authorial silence, Krakauer takes us with him in the story itself.
Into the Wild’s transparency and upfront nature gives us the truth in the purest form yet, with no compromise and no obstruction. The author’s note in the beginning and the acknowledgments at the end reveal a laundry list of names that have all contributed to the work. There is no attempt to hide or disguise his sources. It’s a welcome transparency that has come about from a need to combat the complex ethical issues that have plagued the genre.
On a more base level, how can a journalist claim to understand his subject? Staunch critics have leveled heavy criticism on the back of this very tenet, claiming that the reporter can never truly understand a subject and illuminate them in the same way that a character in a novel can be “known.” This issue gets even stickier since McCandless is dead. Krakauer offers to understand, but never claims to absolutism. He first starts out the book with McCandless’ death, with that sordid issue out of the way, Krakauer proceeds to build a character from his real life remnants. Yet, stories from the people who met him and journal entries can only go so far.
To get into McCandless’ head, Krakauer’s employs his most effective weapon: the analogy. Using the examples of people who have lost their lives in the wilderness before, a comparison is drawn between McCandless and the explorers before him. By showing the parallels, we can better understand the sheer negativity that surrounds the young man’s death, and we can understand why native Alaskans despised him and took issue with Krakauer’s mythical rendition of the boy. At the same time, the differences are drawn and we learn that McCandless didn’t die due to some folly such as arrogance against nature, but through the unlucky growth of molds that couldn’t have been anticipated.
His death was not driven by a suicide impulse as some may have suspected. Krakauer attempts to explicate the reasons for such a quest into the wild using his own excursion to Devil’s Thumb to call attention to a shared ideal. A dissatisfaction with society expressed through an embrace of natural landscapes and subsistence living. The author’s intrusion into the story isn’t an intrusion since the author’s word warns us of his entrance, but it serves a piece that parallels McCandless’ journey. The purpose of the selection may seem like a shameless piece of self-promotion, but it is riveting on its own, and more than that, it offers insight into the motivations behind McCandless. The circumstances between Krakauer’s own adventure and McCandless are similar enough that the only difference between the two of them is as Krakauer says, “The fact that I survived my Alaska adventure and McCandless did not survive his was largely a matter of chance.”
It’s a not a novelistic style of characterization but such a style would not work and would be ethically and needlessly complex. Krakauer uses his own experience, and the accounts of explorers before him to delve deep into the young man’s heart. McCandless still has a voice though. He speaks through the passages of the books he highlights, he speaks through the letters he wrote, and he speaks through the memories of the people he met. We can never meet Chris in real life, but through Krakauer’s hard work, we can still get to know him.
What is it to be “literary?” Is it a form or style? The “literary” can’t be defined by the form, but by the content. To be “literary” is an aspiration, a claim to the universal. It was long thought that for reporting to be literary, it must be done so under the guise of the novel. But literary and novelistic doesn’t always come hand in hand. While the allure of fiction comes precisely from the very structure an author can freely impose, the allure of fact comes from its basis in reality. Meaning can’t be freely imposed, it must be constructed according to the ability of the writer. From the early stages of literary journalism, writer’s have been attempting to dress truth in the gaudy clothing of novels to appeal to the people, but with the advent of Into the Wild, the truth needs no such clothes because after all this time, it was already beautiful.
