[at-l] "WALKING HOME" Clarification

[saunterer@jimbullard.org (saunterer@jimbullard.org)]

At 02:29 PM 4/13/02 -0400, rick boudrie wrote:
>Thanks for giving me something to respond to on this, the saturday before 
>April 15th.  Or before the 16th for us special people in MA.
>
>With regard to AT Books, I don't see the problem with changing names, so 
>long as the other elements remain true.

I didn't say it was wrong.  Authors are entitled to alter the way they tell 
their stories any way they wish, however, I had taken the book as a literal 
telling of her attempted thru-hike and I now realize that to a significant 
extent, it is not.

 From having read a substantial number of thru-hike and attempted thru-hike 
accounts I know that there is considerable variety in style.  Some are 
straight diary accounts, they start each entry with the date and relate the 
events of that day.  Others write a narrative account that leaves out 
unnecessary details to make the story line flow better.  Some are a mix of 
the two.  I anticipate that a journal is generally factual unless something 
indicates otherwise (or in Felix case, I know the author has a fertile 
imagination.  ;-) ).  I suspect that some authors embellish their stories 
(consciously or unconsciously) in writing it out from their 'field 
journal'.  What I found surprising was the extent of invention in WALKING HOME.

Again, it remains a good story of a thru-hike attempt but given the 100% 
extent of invented names, identities (including the author's own trail 
name?  The wording of the disclaimer leaves that as a possibility) I no 
longer consider it a literal account.  YMMV.  I still recommend it as a 
good AT book, just not as a literal journal.

sAunTerer