![]() ![]() ![]() The moment is telling not because of what Bryson says but because of what he declines to say. There's the ecological rationale: the Appalachian wilderness is endangered in any number of ways, and the author hopes to fax his readers an urgent dispatch from the front lines. ![]() There's the he-man rationale: when faced with impending danger, Bryson would like to feel more like a flinty Cormac McCarthy protagonist than someone who is ''jumpier than Don Knotts with pistol drawn.'' Finally, There's the fitness rationale: Bryson is a mildly overweight, middle-aged writer who's tired of looking, as he puts it, like ''a cupcake.'' He's subjecting himself to a five-month slog through the underbrush. Here's an awkward and telling moment, early in Bill Bryson's new book about hiking the Appalachian Trail, in which he casts about for the exact reasons Christopher Lehmann-Haupt Reviews 'A Walk in the Woods' (May 21, 1998).A long walk with an author who is smart and funny. ![]()
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