" Krakauer took a poor misfortunate prone to paranoia, someone who left a note talking about his desire to kill the “false being within,” someone who managed to

" Krakauer took a poor misfortunate prone to paranoia, someone who left a note talking about his desire to kill the “false being within,” someone who managed to starve to death in a deserted bus not far off the George Parks Highway, and made the guy into a celebrity. Why the author did that should be obvious. He wanted to write a story that would sell." Well, if there's one thing I'm sure about, it's that selling books wasn't why Krakauer was compelled to tell that story. Reading Krakauer's accounts of his own life, in both Into The Wild and in Eiger Dreams, it's pretty clear he felt the same urge to challenge himself with the wilderness that McCandless did, and that the books are Krakauer's attempts to understand that drive. Those books are mainly journeys of self-understanding that happen to be available for other people to read.