Pass The Butterworms:  Remote Journeys Oddly Rendered, by Tim Cahill

One can feel a great deal of sympathy for a writer who finds himself in the position that the author does.  An apparently sensitive and reflective sort of man who has a gift for zany humor and a great deal of quirkiness in the way he tells travel stories, the author’s writings came to public attention largely because of the outrageous titles that he gave his earliest books, some of which are in my queue to read.   This book is the sort of book one would expect from someone who has a great love of the outdoors, a humane look on other people and on creation, and a political and journalistic worldview that allows him to fit in well with people like Jann Wenner and other mainstream literati.  And although outdoor reading is not necessarily my forte, being a fairly sedentary person myself, if the author deserves some credit for raising the tone of such writing and allowing it to receive some respect as a genre of literature, that reputation is not undeserved as there is a great deal to enjoy and appreciate here, even if the author’s worldview and my own are different.

This book consists of a variety of expanded essays and articles that have mostly been published elsewhere, and amount to a bit more than 250 pages in total.  There is a wide variety of subject matter here, and what one finds to be of most interest is rather telling as far as one’s own approach and what one likes to read about.  For example, there is a poignant essay here about the author’s journey to remote South America to deal with the repercussions of the death of his photographer’s son, who was a fairly standard do-gooder leftist who was killed by indigenous people whose well-being he would have supported.  There are more humorous essays here about acquiring hair from Mongolians for genetic testing, about flying when the pilot has sustained a heart attack and trying to land it, about his thoughts on the end of a literal rope, about a trip to the North Pole in a Russian icebreaker, and about the experiences of having malaria.  On the other hand, the author has some poignant thoughts on Honduras and its attempts to develop tourism income on its Caribbean littoral, and the author’s reflection on the morality of various stone age peoples in New Guinea, among many other reflections, one of the briefest being a short piece on scuba diving in Bonaire, something that sounds amazing to do.

To a great extent this book delivers a beta male’s approach to travel writing that places travel within the context of being gracious towards others and believing in sustainability and the rights and respect due to indigenous peoples and all that.  There might be some people who are offended by the author’s writings, but as someone who enjoys traveling and has a humane view of other people, albeit a rather fierce religious and political perspective, there was a lot here I was certainly able to identify with.  Without being too envious of the author I was able to recognize in his writings an approach that was not wholly dissimilar to my own, along with a similar appreciation that there were others who enjoyed this sort of writing and this perspective and that it was something that one could make a living at.  In that respect, the author has done well and I can only add to my mild appreciation of his work and approach that I think I will generally enjoy reading more of him.