>>1641209"The beatification of Chris McCandless: From thieving poacher into saint"
Thanks to the magic of words -- and words can indeed be magic -- the poacher Chris
McCandless was transformed in his afterlife into some sort of poor, admirable romantic soul lost
in the wilds of Alaska, and now appears on the verge of becoming some sort of beloved vampire.
Given the way things are going, the dead McCandless is sure to live on longer than the live
McCandless, who starved to death in Interior Alaska because he wasn't quite successful enough
as a poacher.
Alaska moose hunters in August 1992 found the remains of his 67-pound body in a sleeping bag
in a deserted bus not far off the George Parks Highway west of Healy. Author Jon Krakauer later
immortalized McCandless in the 1996 book "Into the Wild," conspired with director Sean Penn
to bring him back to life again in the 2007 movie of the same name, and is now playing the
media to resurrect McCandless once more with a new theory as to how the 24-year-old died.
Since Krakauer, the maker of the literary magic and a man who seems interested in nothing in
life so much as book sales, wants to revisit his defining character, isn't it about time for a painful
and objective public consideration of the real McCandless, given that he has now been dead long
enough that no one really needs to play nice about his behaviors preceding his death.
Enough with Krakauer and his mysterious poisons, isn't it about time to wash off the makeup
Krakauer put on the corpse of the offspring of a very comfortable American upbringing and take
a serious look at the boy-man beneath?
What you find there is not very pretty. It could leave many more than a little troubled that some
schools in America actually encourage students to read Krakauer's eulogy to the bum, poacher
and thief Chris McCandless as if his behaviors had redeeming value.
cont,
https://www.sanjuan.edu/cms/lib/CA01902727/Centricity/Domain/3981/beatification%20of%20mccandless.pdf 
