Into The Wild - Jon Krakauer

Your reaction to this peculiar account of the life and death of Chris McCandless, a young man who wandered naively into the Alaskan wilderness to live off the land and starved to death, depends on your view of the subject. Was he a visionary, poetic adventurer or a selfish, arrogant fool who left behind a grief-stricken family. The author is very much in the first camp whereas I'm afraid that I tend towards the latter.

I suppose the tone is American Romantic, invoking Thoreau, Jack London and Kerouac in the whole "rejecting society by heading off to nowhere" thing. I've never got around to Thoreau but I've hated the London and Kerouac that I've read. My favourite art is about how people behave in society rather than about people rejecting society. Basically, I'm an Enlightenment kind of guy, I'm more interested in the majesty of the mountain rather than how the majesty of the mountain makes the individual feel. The sublime my arse.

The book is based on a magazine article which explains the journalistic tone, and the padding is all to obvious.