Back Into the Wild with Chromatography Analysis

Earlier this year Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild, published a follow-up article on the New Yorker website. That book described the death of Christopher J. McCandless in the Alaska wilderness in 1992; it prompted widely varying reactions.

Krakauer’s article suggested that a hitherto unrecognized factor in McCandless’s death is that he had been eating seeds from the wild potato Hedysarum alpinum. People thought this plant was non-toxic, but Krakauer wrote that new laboratory testing showed it contained large amounts of an amino acid that cripples the nervous system. He shared the lab’s report.

Last month Chemistry and Engineering News asked experts to review the lab findings. They replied that the high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) results don’t show what Krakauer understood they did. Certainly my untrained eye sees stark differences between the HPLC charts for another seed known to contain the amino acid and the Alaskan samples tested. That’s not just what different compounds appear but the quality and complexity of the readout.

The C&E News experts don’t say the neurotoxin theory is untenable; they say the lab test didn’t offer results good enough to interpret one way or another, so it’s far from proven. They also suggest that a mass spectrometer and other tests would be more reliable.

The journal spoke to an Alaskan professor who’d analyzed the same type of seeds for Krakauer years back and found no toxins; he seems relieved that his findings haven’t been contradicted after all.

Once More Into the Wild

Tomorrow at 3:30 Sarah Beth Durst will read at the Worcester Barnes & Noble, so this posting about her book, Into the Wild (previously highlighted back here), is more timely than I'd planned.

Both that novel and Diana Wynne Jones's The Game (discussed this week) take their heroines into supernatural landscapes where they witness, and are caught up in, the endless playing out of traditional stories. In Into the Wild those tales are Europe's fairy tales. In The Game they're Greek myths.

In both cases, the books highlight the beauty and the cruelty of those stories, and their implacable, cyclic unstoppability. Jones doesn't delve into the mechanics of her "mythosphere," and her characters defeat its governor quickly, without much planning. Durst's story, on the other hand, is all about trying to figure out the workings of the Wild and bringing it under control, which means Durst spends more time explaining just how those stories play out over and over again.

Does the difference reflect British versus American sensibilities? The acceptance of age versus the eagerness of youth? Or just the two authors' visions? These parallel tales were in the works at the same time, so there's no direct inspiration, just two storytellers exploring similar ideas.

Two of Durst's choices in Into the Wild struck me as particularly bold. Her second chapter and later passages of the book shift the point of view from the young heroine, Julie, to hairdresser Zel. What makes this so bold is that Zel is Julie's mother. Yes, a book for young teen girls asking them almost immediately to sympathize with the heroine's mother. Not that Zel's a typical mother, but still.

The second bold choice involves the character who lets the Wild loose in underhanded fashion, thus endangering our heroine, her mother, and all of central Massachusetts. This fact isn't deeply hidden, it doesn't drive the plot or the heroine's emotional journey, so it's only a small ***spoiler*** that I feel comfortable highlighting.

That character is the town's librarian. She wants the Wild to spin more traditional tales for the world, and her library. How's that for a gutsy move by a first-time author? Make the closest thing your novel has to a villain someone from your most important constituency!

Divided by a Common Language Into the Wild

Usually I use the "Divided by a Common Language" heading to discuss difference between American and British English. But there are also language gaps within a nation, and one of those might become a challenge as young people discover Sarah Beth Durst's debut novel, Into the Wild, published today.

The premise of Into the Wild is that the force behind fairy tales has escaped from under the young heroine's bed (where else?) and taken over a swath of central Massachusetts. A recognizable swath, in fact. The fabled discount and salvage store Spag's (now under new management) is the lair of a pimply young wizard. The Higgins Armory Museum is an ogre's castle. Folks from the author's home town of Northboro’, Massachusetts, will no doubt recognize even more locales.

I live in the next county, but close enough to offer help with a difficult word at the beginning of Chapter 15:

On the Route 290 bridge over Lake Quinsigamond, the griffin sunned himself. He stretched, exposing his lion stomach, across three lanes. Shortly beyond him, the bridge ended in mid-air. Blueness stretched on and one into the horizon.

Julie tried to sound casual. "You know, Worcester used to be on the other side of this bridge." Even to her own ears, her voice sounded weak. "I also don't recall a griffin last time I was here."

One place name in that passage is hard for people from other places to pronounce correctly. No, not "Quinsigamond"; that sounds just like it looks, with the accent on the "sig."

The hard word is "Worcester." It looks like it should contain three syllables, two of them ending with R-sounds. Instead, there are two accepted pronunciations:

• "Wood-stir" without the D-sound.
• "Wiss-tah," favored by some locals--but don't let them think you're making fun of them by saying that!