Krakauerism

This past week I have been reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, who is also the author of Into Thin Air and Under the Banner of Heaven.  Krakauer is a well known writer focusing on the Sub-genre of outdoor and climbing non-fiction.  His work has been very successful, with three bestsellers, a big studio film adaptation, and many T.V. features and adaptations as well. 

Into the Wild is one of the first non-fiction novels about a subject that I was unfamiliar with that really interested me.  It follows the "big adventure" of Christopher McCandless's adventure to live in the wild of Alaska.  After four months after entering into the wild, he was found dead in 1992 by starvation in an abandoned bus.  I have read several music and film non-fictions/biographies, most of which I thoroughly enjoyed, but I can partly blame the enjoyment on my enthusiasm for the subject.  Into the Wild is an outdoors book at first glance, and I do enjoy the outdoors, but would not usually seek out on my own.  After reading, I realized that it was not at all about the technical or literal aspects of being outdoors, but rather why McCandless loved being on his own, depending on essentially nothing material.

Chris McCandless in the Alaskan wild

Analysis of "A Letter to Horace Greeley."

Within the vast scope of non-fiction, I seem to skip over the plot of land that covers political writing.  Political speaking.  It sounds yawny to me.  

Colbert is the exception to
political tediousness.

And yes, I just invented that adjective. It's like brawny, but...yawny.  Lame.  Tiring.  Tedious.  Boring.  

So, as part of my self-directed learning plan, I want to study a little more political writing.  Within an anthology of letters, I found this little gem:

A letter to Horace Greeley, from Abraham Lincoln, in response to an article written by Greeley, titled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions." I decided to take a stab at it critically (inspired by Dr. Burton's review of Neal A. Maxwell's dissection of two sermons) ; being careful to analyze the appeals to ethos, logos and pathos, while also examining kairos: the timeliness of the exchange.  

Thoughts on Borges' Thoughts.

Charly, dear.  Dear Charly. Thank you for that essay.  Verbiage for Poems.

Considering the fact that he accused the Royal Spanish Academy of "florid vagueness," he was quite extravagant in expressing himself.  But I was ultimately impressed by what he had to say.

My favorite epiphanic rant he went on was on page 20:

"We touch a sphere, see a small heap of dawn-colored light, our mouths enjoy a tingling sensation, and we lie to ourselves that those three disparate things are only one thing called an orange."

I laughed out loud while reading that.  Really, and I mean really, where would we be without common, objective nouns?

Me: Could you hand me that tingle-inducing, dawn-colored sphere, there?  That one, on the flat, wooden-made surface?  

You:  Are you....talking about the orange-colored ball of juice that squirts ooze when you open it?  

Me: Nope.  Definitely not what I'm talking about. You're so ignorant. 

We would be in subjective disarray, I think.

Okay, I know that's not what he's saying.  Though I think his "utopic...ideas" (his words, not mine) are honorable in their explanation, they're a bit silly.

Again, ultimately, to his credit, I think he raises some very valid points.  And, since this was written in 1926, I'm sure he would be even more passionate on the subject given the decay of our language in the past half-century.  The evolution of language has its own personal history, I think.  Somewhere not on this blog...

http://www.library.nd.edu

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges