My question has to do with the evolution of an adventure travel writer, or perhaps adventure travel itself. Specifically, are you becoming more comfortable in your travels or is travel itself becoming easier? I ask because the title of your latest book appears to break from the theme of being consumed (e.g., wolverines eating, ducks pecking, jaguars ripping) shifting 180 degrees to the theme of actively consuming. Is this an unconcious (or premeditated?) shift from victim to aggressor, or mearly a personal fascination with food?

Best,
Paul

Tim: Dear Paul,

Actually, the first collection of travel/adventure pieces, Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, was meant to be a joke. Editors at Outside originally thought travel adventures pieces were the kind of sub-literate stories then found in magazines with titles like Adventure for Men or Man's Testicle. These stories, I was told, always had titles like Jaguars Ripped My Flesh. So the first collection — quite successful and still in print — was a kind of in joke directed at editors who said no one wants to read that kind of stuff.

The second collection, A Wolverine is Eating My Leg, was actually cribbed from a magazine entitled Man's Adventure. By the third, I thought I'd taken the joke as far as it wanted to go and called it Pecked to Death by Ducks.

By the fourth collection, this new one, I thought the joke had completely played itself out. I wanted to call the collection Remote Journeys Oddly Rendered. Tell the reader exactly what was in the book. Maybe get some new readers who had no idea what was in these books. My editor at Random House, David Rosenthal, said that the (old, tired) joke sells the book. Give me a funny title. Hence, Pass the Butterworms, with the descriptive sub-title: Remote Journeys Oddly Rendered.

(Interesting question, Paul. Thanks)

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