Designed to appeal to me - I have a love of both survival-in-nature tales (honestly come by - read my copy of "My Side of the Mountain" til the cover fell off) and disaster stories.
Of course, I enjoy Krakauer's writing - he manages to patch together a convincing human interest tale out of a few scraps of evidence. It's not terrifically maudlin, either, which is a danger when you're reading this kind of book - "when this tragedy-struck young man wandered off that Alaska path that sunny day, did he know that with that very step...," etc., etc. He also manages to convey the parallels between his life and McCandless's without seeming narcissistic, as if he's just using McCandless to get readers to read about his own life (it helps that Krakauer's story involves the perils of solo mountain climbing, one of which is burning down your tent by lighting a joint on the mountainside - who knew).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment