Books: The Infatuated Traveler

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IBERIA by James A. Michener. 818 pages. Random House. $10.

This hefty, meticulous report on the authors meanderings and experiences in Spain is, he says, "a 19th century English-style travel book." Happily, it is that and much more. It is an unabashed celebration of an old infatuation with a country, and thus has the engaging, slightly breathless quality that is rarely found in modern travel books, now that the world has grown small.

James Michener first visited Spain as a chart boy aboard a freighter that hauled oranges from the eastern coast to the marmalade factories of Dundee. In the 35 years since then, he has returned repeatedly, both as a knockabout traveler and a rich tourist. In his book he makes no effort to prettify the country's problems or ignore its faults. As long as Spain remains ruled by the army, the landed families and the church, he sees scant hope of any dramatic social or industrial progress—although he does grant that there have been genuine advances in recent years. He is acerbic about the humiliating political strictures imposed by the Franco government, deplores the abrasive, remorseless poverty that makes even the dogs in the provinces scrawny and unlovable. Though he shares the passion of so many norteamericano writers for bullfighting, he also exposes it as a miserably corrupt racket whose only honorable figure all too often is the bull.

In spite of Michener's long-windedness, no single book since V. S. Pritchett's The Spanish Temper and Gerald Brenan's The Face of Spain has succeeded so well in embracing the country's history and culture, its natural and architectural milieu, and the quality of the Spanish character—which Michener sums up in one evocative word, duende, meaning "mysterious and ineffable charm." All the immemorial sights are here too: the revelry following the feria at Seville, the impact of the roomful of Velázquez paintings at the Prado, the soaring, glowing Gothic church at León, the splendor of the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. Michener's Tales of the South Pacific, The Source, and Hawaii brought him deserved standing as a competent if often heavy-footed popular novelist. His Iberia proves him a better Baedeker.