Published : 2021 || Format : print || Location : Colombia ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ What was it about the country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring alone there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.. Thoughts : Infinite Country follows two characters - young Talia, who at the beginning of this book, escapes a girl’s reform school in North Colombia so that she can make her previously booked flight to the US. Before she can do that, she needs to travel many miles to reach her father and get her ticket to the rest of her family. As we follow Talia’s treacherous journey south, we learn about how she ended up in the reform school in the first place and why half her family resides in the US. Infinite Country tells the story of her family through the other protagonist, El
Remember my review from six months ago about Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild? No? Don't worry, I didn't expect you to. Although if you did, I'm super flattered. Without going into a re-review, Into the Wild is about a young man named Chris McCandless who was so enamored by living in the wild, without any of the modern conveniences that we all take for granted, that he left his family after school and went to live on his own. Within a span of a year and a half, he had been places but Alaska was always the territory he wanted to conquer. He finally got there, made his own living by hiking, hunting, reading and simply, living in the wild. He knew his botany well, but unfortunately, he ate something that disagreed horribly with him, eventually causing him to die of starvation.
In my review, I whined quite a bit about how McCandless had scant regard for his own family. To me, he was one of those who gave a lot of interest in other people, but wouldn't give any respect in his own house. He never bothered to write home in the two years that he was away, sufficient time, in my mind, to at least send a note. Despite my exasperation with him, McCandless stayed on in my mind as a guy who, however stubborn or arrogant he may have been, didn't deserve to die doing something like living in the wild. He kept coming back to me, occasionally, and I felt it such a pity that nobody could even reach a consensus on how he died.
Krakauer made a speculation in his book that it was the seeds of wild potato that killed him. The reason that nobody bought that was because botanists have established for ages that wild potato seeds are safe for ingestion. This is sort of like someone saying that the sun actually rises in the west. So the speculation continued.
Until now, hopefully.
In this New Yorker article, Krakauer explains how a writer named Ronald Hamilton did some research to establish that wild potato seeds itself killed McCandless. Apparently, it was something used during the World War 2 as one of the many infamous debilitating experiments on Jewish prisoners. The symptoms during that experiment matched McCandless' end of days physical condition, making it more obvious that Krakauer was right all along. What baffles me though is how something that has been having potent impact on people all along, could still be in the safe-to-eat sections of scientific literature.
If you have read Krakauer's book or watched the movie, the article may interest you. Irrespective of what you think of McCandless, paralysis followed by starvation due to being helpless is a really sad way to die.
Krakauer made a speculation in his book that it was the seeds of wild potato that killed him. The reason that nobody bought that was because botanists have established for ages that wild potato seeds are safe for ingestion. This is sort of like someone saying that the sun actually rises in the west. So the speculation continued.
Until now, hopefully.
In this New Yorker article, Krakauer explains how a writer named Ronald Hamilton did some research to establish that wild potato seeds itself killed McCandless. Apparently, it was something used during the World War 2 as one of the many infamous debilitating experiments on Jewish prisoners. The symptoms during that experiment matched McCandless' end of days physical condition, making it more obvious that Krakauer was right all along. What baffles me though is how something that has been having potent impact on people all along, could still be in the safe-to-eat sections of scientific literature.
If you have read Krakauer's book or watched the movie, the article may interest you. Irrespective of what you think of McCandless, paralysis followed by starvation due to being helpless is a really sad way to die.
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