Dear Mr. Krakauer,
As a fifteen-year old guy living in the city, I spend little time alone with my own personal thoughts. However, I recently read Into the Wild and, subsequently, have found myself sitting sometimes for over an hour, and simply pondering this extraordinary tale. I was struck by the unrefined humanity of Chris McCandless and decided to do more reading into the case. I noticed that, as you mentioned in your book, a large amount of criticism towards McCandless was based around his disregard for common sense in the face of death. In my opinion, there is no beauty greater or more alluring than nature at its wildest. Therefore, I can identify with Chris’s desire to experience raw nature and test death. Before reading this book I had, from time to time, wanted to go and spend time in the woods alone. Into The Wild was both an influential and cautionary tale for me. I was deeply inspired to follow my own dreams of going out with little and living off the land. However, the story also made the dangers of such a trip a true reality for me.
I felt that Chris’s trip was almost a religious experience for him. In the story he often refers to it as an “odyssey” or his “great Alaskan adventure. Living in central Virginia, I am very close to the scenic Blue Ridge mountain range, as well as the Appalachian Trail. However, truly wild places are a rarity, and, hiking in the area is periodically interrupted by a road, or a development. This has driven me to desire a more excluded area where I can better enjoy nature. I empathize with McCandless’s yearning for a truly unexplored land.
Throughout your novel I noticed your comparisons between McCandless, other loners/wanderers, and yourself. I too feel that I have an understanding of what Chris truly desired. Though I have never spent time alone in the ice like you, or lost myself in the desert, I still feel that pull towards wild places that I believe we all share. As a believer in certain social freedoms and certain basic obligations of a government towards its people, I feel that I can understand many of Chris’s emotional problems relating to society. Such things as poverty and financially driven evils disgusted him as they disgust me. When I read of all the atrocities people commit these days, I have often wanted to find some place where I can be free of such burdens on my conscience. I found it interesting how some of the basic, almost subconscious thoughts that drove both you and McCandless are mirrored in myself. Both of you were driven by a desire to get away from normality and find yourselves, and this is one of my greatest desires. However, because of your first hand account of how such a trip can be both dangerous and disappointing, I have since decided not to depend on the thought that such a trip would completely fix my life.
Your novel gave me hours of contemplation and, again, I want to thank you for writing such an honest, raw account of what it is to journey through nature. I almost feel as if the book embodies some my own personal desires and dreams. It has inspired me to contemplate my past and my future, and to one day perhaps attempt an odyssey of my own.
Thank you,
Kai Irving
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Monday, December 3, 2007
Wa#4 final draft
“Do you see me?”
Those were the first words he spoke to me. Yes I still believe that he spoke to me, he knew I would understand him, appreciate him, he trusted me
I set eyes on him while leafing through a portfolio of Art by Syd Barrett I had found in the bookstore. He was hiding in the most beautiful work I had ever seen: A sandy roman arena, with huge mouthed lions surrounding a woman and her two children who cower near her. The stands, awash with desert colors, are packed with hundreds of faces, smiling at the victims. Hundreds save one. Understand, please I have no love of violence, but this was such a token of emotion, I needed it.
“Do you see me?”
A single visage in that sea seized my attention. The only one completely devoid of features. Simply a gray slab staring back at me. It moved, I swear, the slate face turned and sightlessly looked at me directly.
“Do you see me Owen?”
“Yes” I murmured it, almost under my breath, only he could hear me, I’m sure of it, no one else could have heard me.
There was no question, even at that time, whether I should answer the faceless voice or not, I simply knew that I must.
“I’d like to have a little chat with you, if you’d be so kind. Please, buy this lovely little painting.”
I bought the book.
Surely, I thought as I drove home through a dreary rain, I had only imagined that voice; it was the art that had drawn me. In the apartment I waded through an ocean of brushes, half finished work, paints and junk food. I ripped down the dry dust crusted sheets I had once called art and tossed them into the trash. I could look at none of them, only the Arena was beautiful, only the Arena had a soul.
“Do you like this painting Owen?”
A deep calming voice wafted from the Arena. I swear, you could have smelled that voice. And, hesitantly I admit, I responded;
“Yes, yes I do like it, in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated any work of art as much as I like this one. But, who am I talking to?”
“Me? I am simply a guide and, I hope a model. I want to make you great Owen, I want to make you famous.”
I wasn’t making much off the meager sketches I’d done before, So I took him up on his offer, I know it sounds crazy, but it just felt right. I painted him for months, and I sold every single one of those paintings. A gray faceless man sitting on a chair, a family at the park, and a faceless father carrying a child. They were kind, peaceful paintings. Please, understand that, the other ones didn’t come until later.
One night I woke up, and found him whispering to me, he sounded weak and sad,
“You must paint what I show you, I will be gone soon”
I was scared, but I did as I was told. I had to. He sounded so desperate. I painted the murder, yes I painted that. He told me to paint his death, and his killer, he showed me and I did as I was told.
After that he was gone.
The next day I saw that horrible forgery being sold on the street, and under my name no less! That painting of him was the most revolting thing I have ever seen. I understood who, no, what had taken him from me. His murderer had sucked him from me with this painting, had crushed his soul and forced it into this horrible square of canvas. I was alone. I was an island in an endless sea. He was gone and I was alone. I went home, and I wept. The meaning of the last painting we had done took a while to set in, but when I understood, I knew I could save him from this hell he was in. I went and found his killer in a mockery of a studio. I did what I had to do. You say I murdered a man, but I simply destroyed a mad beast. And oh only if you could understand the relief we felt when it was done. We went back to my apartment, and painted together for days. A landscape and a lone faceless man, a woman dancing with a gray body, we did not eat we did not sleep, we only painted. we painted until the police came, and we painted as they dragged us away, it is the only thing that matters to us, can you not understand that? I know that you think me crazy, do you think i cannot hear you when you mutter your own answers to each other?
“Skitso”
“Split personality”
I am not a man to you; to you I do not exist.
Can you not understand?
Can you hear me?
Can you see me?
Those were the first words he spoke to me. Yes I still believe that he spoke to me, he knew I would understand him, appreciate him, he trusted me
I set eyes on him while leafing through a portfolio of Art by Syd Barrett I had found in the bookstore. He was hiding in the most beautiful work I had ever seen: A sandy roman arena, with huge mouthed lions surrounding a woman and her two children who cower near her. The stands, awash with desert colors, are packed with hundreds of faces, smiling at the victims. Hundreds save one. Understand, please I have no love of violence, but this was such a token of emotion, I needed it.
“Do you see me?”
A single visage in that sea seized my attention. The only one completely devoid of features. Simply a gray slab staring back at me. It moved, I swear, the slate face turned and sightlessly looked at me directly.
“Do you see me Owen?”
“Yes” I murmured it, almost under my breath, only he could hear me, I’m sure of it, no one else could have heard me.
There was no question, even at that time, whether I should answer the faceless voice or not, I simply knew that I must.
“I’d like to have a little chat with you, if you’d be so kind. Please, buy this lovely little painting.”
I bought the book.
Surely, I thought as I drove home through a dreary rain, I had only imagined that voice; it was the art that had drawn me. In the apartment I waded through an ocean of brushes, half finished work, paints and junk food. I ripped down the dry dust crusted sheets I had once called art and tossed them into the trash. I could look at none of them, only the Arena was beautiful, only the Arena had a soul.
“Do you like this painting Owen?”
A deep calming voice wafted from the Arena. I swear, you could have smelled that voice. And, hesitantly I admit, I responded;
“Yes, yes I do like it, in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated any work of art as much as I like this one. But, who am I talking to?”
“Me? I am simply a guide and, I hope a model. I want to make you great Owen, I want to make you famous.”
I wasn’t making much off the meager sketches I’d done before, So I took him up on his offer, I know it sounds crazy, but it just felt right. I painted him for months, and I sold every single one of those paintings. A gray faceless man sitting on a chair, a family at the park, and a faceless father carrying a child. They were kind, peaceful paintings. Please, understand that, the other ones didn’t come until later.
One night I woke up, and found him whispering to me, he sounded weak and sad,
“You must paint what I show you, I will be gone soon”
I was scared, but I did as I was told. I had to. He sounded so desperate. I painted the murder, yes I painted that. He told me to paint his death, and his killer, he showed me and I did as I was told.
After that he was gone.
The next day I saw that horrible forgery being sold on the street, and under my name no less! That painting of him was the most revolting thing I have ever seen. I understood who, no, what had taken him from me. His murderer had sucked him from me with this painting, had crushed his soul and forced it into this horrible square of canvas. I was alone. I was an island in an endless sea. He was gone and I was alone. I went home, and I wept. The meaning of the last painting we had done took a while to set in, but when I understood, I knew I could save him from this hell he was in. I went and found his killer in a mockery of a studio. I did what I had to do. You say I murdered a man, but I simply destroyed a mad beast. And oh only if you could understand the relief we felt when it was done. We went back to my apartment, and painted together for days. A landscape and a lone faceless man, a woman dancing with a gray body, we did not eat we did not sleep, we only painted. we painted until the police came, and we painted as they dragged us away, it is the only thing that matters to us, can you not understand that? I know that you think me crazy, do you think i cannot hear you when you mutter your own answers to each other?
“Skitso”
“Split personality”
I am not a man to you; to you I do not exist.
Can you not understand?
Can you hear me?
Can you see me?
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