Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer (born April 12, 1954) is an American non-fiction author and mountaineer, well-known for outdoor and mountain-climbing writing. In 2003, he entered the field of investigative journalism.

Early life

Krakauer was born in Brookline, Massachusetts but was raised in Corvallis, Oregon from the age of two, as the third of five children. He competed in tennis at Corvallis High School and graduated in 1972. He went on to study at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, where in 1976 he received his degree in Environmental Studies. In 1977, he met former climber Linda Mariam Moore; they married in 1980.

Mountaineering

In 1974, Krakauer was part of a group of seven friends pioneering peaks in the Arrigetch Peaks of the Brooks Range in Alaska and was invited by American Alpine Journal to write about those experiences. Though he neither expected nor received a fee, he was excited when the Journal published his article. One year after graduating from college, he climbed a new route on the Devil's Thumb in the Stikine Icecap region of Alaska, an experience he described in Eiger Dreams and in Into the Wild. In 1975, he and two others made the second ascent of The Moose's Tooth, a highly technical peak in the Alaska Range.

He is noted for climbing the west face of Cerro Torre in the Andes of Argentine Patagonia in 1992, then considered one of the hardest technical climbs in the world.

Magazine writing

Much of Krauker’s popularity as a writer came from being a journalist for Outside magazine. In November 1983, he was able to abandon part-time work as a fisherman and a carpenter to become a full-time writer. His freelance writing involved great variety; for instance, he wrote a monthly column on fitness for Playboy magazine, in addition to his many works involving mountain climbing. His writing has also appeared in Smithsonian, National Geographic Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Architectural Digest.

Bestselling nonfiction

The bestseller Into the Wild was published in 1996 and secured Krakauer's reputation as an outstanding adventure writer. The book tells the true story of Christopher McCandless, a young man from a well-to-do East Coast family who, after graduating from college, donated all of the money in his bank account to charity, changed his name to "Alexander Supertramp," and began a journey in the American West. Nearly two years later, McCandless was found dead in the Alaska wilderness. In the book, Krakauer draws parallels between his own experiences and motivations and those of McCandless. Krakauer also recounts the story of Everett Ruess, a young artist and wanderer who disappeared in the Utah desert in 1934 at age 20.

In May 1996, on assignment from Outside, Krakauer was in one of four Mount Everest summit-assault parties that sustained fatalities when they were caught in an exceptional storm high up on the mountain. His writing focuses on two parties: the one he was in, led by Rob Hall, and the one led by Scott Fischer, both of which successfully guided clients to the summit but experienced difficulty while descending. The storm, and, in his estimation, irresponsible choices by guides of both parties, led to a number of deaths, including both head guides. Krakauer received much criticism from other climbers due to his personal account of the Everest climb. Some climbers on the expedition did not view the disaster in the same light as Krauker presented it in his magazine article. Additionally, Krakauer did not feel his article accurately covered the entire event in only one short account. In 1997, he expanded his September 1996 Outside article into his best known work, Into Thin Air, describing those parties' experiences and the general state of Everest mountaineering at the time. It reached first place on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list and was among the final three books considered for the General Non-Fiction Pulitzer Prize in 1998. As a result of his writings on the lure of the outdoors, Krakauer was awarded Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999.

In 2003, A Story of Violent Faith became Krakauer's third non-fiction bestseller. The book examines extremes of religious belief, in particular Mormonism. Specifically, Krakauer looks at the practice of polygamy among fundamentalist Mormons and places it in the context of the history of the Mormon religion as a whole. Much of the focus of the book is on the Lafferty brothers, who murdered in the name of their faith. Some have criticized the book as misleading history, an unfair attack on the Church of Latter Day Saints or on religion in general.

As of 2004, he also edits the Exploration series of the Modern Library.

Criticisms

Other members of the expeditions described in Into Thin Air have objected to his characterization of events. Anatoli Boukreev, one of the guides, wrote his own book, The Climb (using original journals and log books) to refute Krakauer's version of history on the 1996 Everest climb and maintained that Into Thin Air was a distorted account to his dying day.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has objected to his work Under the Banner of Heaven declaring "This book is not history, and Krakauer is no historian. He is a storyteller who cuts corners to make the story sound good. His basic thesis appears to be that people who are religious are irrational, and that irrational people do strange things." The LDS Church provided Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal and Christian Science Monitor reviews of the book that described it as "misleading" or worse.LDS Newsroom, "Excerpts from reviews of Under the Banner of Heaven"

In response Krakauer criticized the LDS Church, citing the opinion of historian D. Michael Quinn, who wrote, "The tragic reality is that there have been occasions when Church leaders, teachers, and writers have not told the truth they knew about difficulties of the Mormon past, but have offered to the Saints instead a mixture of platitudes, half-truths, omissions, and plausible denials." Krakauer wrote, "I happen to share Dr. Quinn's perspective."Krakauer, Jon, "A Response from the Author"

Selected bibliography

Ventures Among Men and Mountains (1990) ISBN 0385488181
Into the Wild (1996) ISBN 0385486804
Into Thin Air (1997) ISBN 0385492081 (expanded from the original Outside Online article)
A Story of Violent Faith (2003) ISBN 0385509510.

Notes

References

External links

Jon Krakauer | Jon Krakauer | John Krakauer | Jon Krakauer

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