Resurrecting this dead-soldier-of-a-thread, I just finished Into the Wild, after having been given it by a friend via mail last week. Have not seen the movie, but will wait for the rental DVD, soon to be out after Christmas, no doubt.

I, unlike mockturtle, found the diversion chapter(s) of Krakauer's own Devils Thumb escapade just that, diversive. Everyone has a reason for writing, and I found Krakauer's rather elaborate description of his youthful adventure as a sort of author's hijacking of another's biography to somehow relate or equate Chris's and his adventure and found it a bit too much. Krakauer could have summed up what he did on Devil's Thumb in 2 paragraphs in "Into the Wild," or turned it into 3 chapters in another book about himself.

But I was still thoroughly captivated by the book. For Krakauer to have gained access to the family to find out what dynamics were going within the McLandess's home certainly shows that Krakauer is a very decent person, or they surely would have told him to get lost.

Naivity and happenstance did poor Alex in. One person stumbling upon that bus in July or early August and they would no doubt be the recipient of a periodic Supertramp postcard and we would never have read the book.

Krakauer makes reference near the end to the "small stature" complex of Chris McLandess. And, of course, I think of one of my favorite persons of smaller stature, the other Chris -- Chris Townsend. Their differences are apparent. Chris T. knew what he is doing when he hiked the Canadian Rockies south to north, so instead of there being one book about the late him, we've got a library of books about his adventures written by him.

Despite my small criticism above, I love to read all that Jon Krakauer writes. I agree with mockturtle, JK is as interesting as the characters he writes about.