We've all heard the story before. A troubled rich kid reads a little Thoreau in his 10th grade English class and rebels against his family's lifestyle by becoming (or at least trying to become) a hermit in the wilderness. On the surface, that's what David Guterson's newest novel, "The Other" (2008), is about.
Chances are you've read Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild," the ostensibly similar tale of a college graduate who rejects the crass consumerism and vacuous small talk of mainstream society in favor of a life of isolation and truth in the woods. Or, if you haven't read the book, maybe you've seen Sean Penn's movie adaptation (2007), in which Kristen Stewart and Emile Hirsch provide some serious eye candy for people who aren't into the whole outdoors thing.
Even many of our own stories as Dartmouth students fit this mold. We all chose to be in the middle of nowhere for a reason, right? So why should you read "The Other" if the back cover makes it sound like a carbon copy of these transcendental tales?
Because it's actually an expertly written reflection on what constitutes a "meaningful life."
The novel begins as Neil Countryman and John William Barry compete against one another at a high school track meet. While Countryman comes from the local public school, Barry attends the elite private academy.
Despite their different backgrounds, they forge a friendship based on their mutual love of the outdoors. They hike through the wilderness of the Pacific northwest together smoking pot and questioning the society they live in.
But Barry the trust fund kid is always a little angrier, a little more dangerous than blue-collar Countryman. Barry is a radical, and it's no surprise that when the boys finish high school, he is the one who runs off to the woods.
Countryman tries to maintain their friendship, bringing Barry extra food, toilet paper and even medicine when the latter develops a nasty foot fungus.He does this despite the fact that Barry is increasingly hard to be around, becoming a mountain man who adopts a judgmental attitude toward the life Countryman has chosen to live (that of a happily married high school English teacher with two sons).
"The problem with living in hamburger world," Barry tells Countryman, "is that you risk turning into an idiot. Didn't you say you wanted to write books? You can't do it with the cheeseburger in your hand."
Countryman replies, "I disagree. The only way you can do it is with a cheeseburger in hand."
With such loaded exchanges, "The Other" explores the tension surrounding the definition of a meaningful life, leading readers to wonder if living in the woods by yourself is really the only way to live a life of truth. Guterson doesn't answer the question no one can answer that question. Both characters try to give a clear-cut solution, but ultimately cannot.
Even Countryman, who seems perfectly content with the life he has chosen, has moments of doubt. He thinks to himself about Barry, "Here he'd been going competently native, under these trees and in these woods, while I'd been analyzing Gerontion' in a college library carrel." The discrepancy between his lifestyle and the one chosen by Barry forces him to consider both sides of the coin.
Yet the novel is in no way a piece of propaganda for abandoning this so-called "hamburger world" in favor of a life of solitude in the wilderness.
Guterson is ambivalent about Barry's Thoreau-style attempt at rejecting societal norms, putting its validity in question by focusing on the mental illness that plagues the Barry family. Readers see this history most directly through Barry's mother, who suffers from what seem to be bouts of depression.
When, following one such episode, a young Barry tells his mother, "You're acting strange," his mother replies, "What's strange is what's normal." Through the Barrys' mental illness, Guterson further blurs the line between admirable and insane as it relates to Barry.
Some ardent nature lovers, I think, have these internal battles, especially if they're stuck in the daily grind of a big city or some stare-at-a-computer-all-day-long job. Indeed, even level-headed Countryman says, after returning to civilization following a few days' hike, "There was this lonely and acute perception of the organized social world as a pathetic illusion."
But that's before he finds a wife and has kids. At one point, Barry tells Countryman to "get out here [to the woods] before it's too late," but readers wonder if Countryman's life is really that artificial and vacuous. It's ultimately up to the reader to decide, but with Barry's tragic ending, I think Guterson is saying that as is often the case it's best to achieve a balance.
