Pass the Butterworms: Remote Journeys Oddly Rendered
Travel writing has been popular sinceHerodotusfirst jotted down his observations while journeying abroad. Now Tim Cahill addsPass the Butterwormsto the genre, and a welcome addition it is. As in his earlier booksJaguars Ripped My Flesh,A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg,andPecked to Death by Ducks,Mr. Cahill chronicles his trips to the far-flung corners of the world.  Part of this author's charm is his resolute Everyman persona--he is neither remarkably brave nor extraordinarily competent.  This is a man, after all, who capsizes his sea kayak in still waters and describes his rock-climbing experience as "hanging from a rope affixed to a diaper, which I am wearing in the place where diapers are most often worn. . . ."Not all of Tim Cahill's essays inPass the Butterwormsare comic, however. Perhaps the most memorable in the collection is "A Darkness on the River," Cahill's account of the senseless murder of a friend's son in Peru and its aftermath. And even his funniest tales have a bittersweet quality to them--the inevitable by-product of an outsider looking in.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.