AFTER YOU, MARK TWAIN; A Modern Journey Around the Equator <i> By Betty Wetzel (Fulcrum: $11.95, illustrated) </i>

Newspaper columnist Betty Wetzel’s attempt to retrace the journey Mark Twain documented in “Following the Equator” is foolish and ill-advised. The comparisons between her model and her own work are inevitably unflattering, and the numerous quotations from Twain’s witty original underscore the gap in the level of reportage. This sort of highly personal travelogue requires a keen observer and a consummate stylist; Wetzel, alas, is neither. She offers readers breathless revelations: gems are mined in Sri Lanka; the claim of some Afrikaners to have settled in South Africa before the black tribes is false. “After You” reads like a letter from a well-intentioned but not terribly interesting aunt: You’d never dream of hurting her feelings, but you wouldn’t want to read a 169-page postcard from her.