"Still, his sympathies are more readily tapped by the likes of Alan Root, an English wildlife documentary filmmaker working in East Africa, who survived attacks from a hippopotamus, a leopard, a burrowing viper, a puff adder, a gorilla and a duiker (male antelope), all with the stiffest of upper lips (perhaps because it was bitten by his pet mongoose). Plimpton admires Root's compassion for these animals, embodied in the filmmaker's inevitable excuse for their attacks: ''They're having a bad day.'' In his graceful acceptance of insult and injury, his appreciation of hard-won disaster, Root is a man after Plimpton's own heart. " I Must admit I only knew Plimpton for Paper Lion.