Pilgrimage: A Memoir of Poland and Rome

Elaborating on his two-week trip to Poland and Rome in 1988, the author discusses his meeting with the Pope, the Polish Prime Minister, Lech Walesa, and a Jewish immigrant who revealed how contraband copies of "The Source" inspired his Russian community

Michener's memoir of a recent trip to Poland and Rome is as witless as a postcard, its greeting something like "Having a wonderful time, you won't believe the fuss being made over me." The visit to Poland--Michener's 14th--was occasioned by a government invitation to receive a friendship medal as the author of the novel Poland . Traveling with an entourage of nine, which included industrialist Edward Piszek and former baseball star Stan Musial, Polish-Americans, Michener seems to have been so feted as to make him lose his well-known modesty: " Poland has accomplished so much good that it constitutes a kind of national treasure, whose merit could be duplicated by nothing else." The last stop on the pilgrimage was to clerical Rome, with Michener, a Quaker, receiving communion in the Pope's chapel from "John Pawel Drugi" himself. In recalling his heady trip, the author expresses only one fittingly wry comment: "This is rather out of proportion. All I did was write a book." Photos.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Unwelcome there after publication of his novel Poland ( LJ 9/1/83), Michener was invited to visit the post-glasnost nation in 1988 for a surprise presentation of its prestigious Medal of Honor. On the way home, he and his party stopped in Rome for a meeting with Pope John Paul II. This slight, heavily illustrated account of his trip is about Michener, not the places he visited; as the author himself says, "I wanted to show how exceedingly full the life of a writer can be as he moves well into his ninth decade." For avid Michener fans and comprehensive Michener collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/90.
-Nancy C. Cridland, Indiana Univ. Libs., Bloomington
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.