T H I S+W E E K Favorite travel books By Don George, Editor >Two Towns in Provence by M.F.K. Fisher Natural Opium by Diane Johnson The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen Roughing It by Mark Twain _ _ _ _ _ Hong Kong Farewell By Simon Winchester D E P A R T M E N T S Postmark | Brighton: Absurd in England By Andrew Ross The Surreal Gourmet Bananas for Bastille Day By Bob Blumer Readers' Tips and Tales Why does the world love to hate U.S. tourists? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LA S T+W E E K Tuesday, July 1 American Byways Summer festivals, great road books and other glories A full list of all Wanderlust articles

two towns in provence BY M.F.K. FISHER VINTAGE BOOKS 208 PAGES _ _ _ _ _ _ BY PETER MAYLE it's difficult to pick out just one favorite travel book -- I like Paul Theroux's "Great Railway Bazaar" a great deal, and I like Bruce Chatwin's "In Patagonia" very much as well. But if I had to pick just one favorite, it wouldn't exactly be a travel book, but rather a "being there" book -- and that is "Two Towns in Provence" by M.F.K. Fisher. This book stands out for me because it is about somewhere I wanted to be at the time I first read it, and it was a great influence in making me get off my ass and go there. I read Fisher's book in Devon, England, in August, with the rain pouring down as usual. (Summer in England is a great time to read because the weather's so dreadful you can't go outside.) As I read I thought, God love us, what am I doing sitting here? It was one of the turning moments in my life. She was writing about a cafe I've subsequently come to know very well in Aix-en-Provence called the Deux Garcons. I could smell it, and I could taste the little things she and her children were having at the time. And I thought, That's where I want to be -- not sitting under a rainstorm in Devon. Part of the magic of the book is that Fisher herself had a very good time in Provence. It was just after she and her husband of the moment had split up. She was finding her own feet and was plainly pleased that she'd been able to survive. Her writing reflects the self-confidence that she was getting. But also Fisher does her research well: She has very evocative ways of describing things, and her sense of place is extraordinary. One of the lessons she taught me is that it's the little details that add credibility. Anybody can say: "Here we are in beautiful downtown 16th century Avignon, where you'll find the Palais des Papes, you'll find this, you'll find that, you'll find the other." This doesn't actually give you a sense of what it's like to be there. The only way you can do that is to really pile detail upon detail, until you pass on a sort of richness in your imagination that enables the reader to feel what it's like to actually sit there, walk there, eat and talk and laugh there. Consider for example her first description of the Deux Garcons: "It is two large rooms, elegant in a deliberately faded style. "The larger ... is long, with a looming old zinc bar across its far end, where the waiters fill their orders except for liqueurs and spirits, which are dispensed carefully at the high cashier's desk near the two public telephone booths. "The main part of this room is mirrored, with woodwork painted dimly in gold and black. Oblong tables of grayish marble go along the two sides in front of the leather benches, and then down the middle. People never sit in the middle unless the room is crowded. "There is a large fern in front of this third row of tables, on an obsolete circular radiator, and usually the philoprogenitive cafe cat is asleep there under its luxuriant leaves. "In the room to the left ... the elegant old décor is simpler, without any mirrors; and students sit there, as they always have, or rare tourists who do not know that they are intruding on the cabalistic rituals of beer and Gauloises Bleues. "Across the whole generous façade of the Deux Garçons stretches a terrace filled with little marble-topped tables, and dozens of green chairs. In summer it is deeply shaded by the double row of towering plane trees of the Left Bank of the Cours. In winter it catches all the thin pure sunlight that falls through their naked branches. In the spring the light is incredibly dappled and of the color of a fine greenish wine from the Moselle. Sometimes in late autumn after a rainy wind there are only a few eccentrics who still sit there, to watch the golden leaves plastered against the shining black pavement of the street." Almost any passage you read at random in this book will offer similarly wonderful descriptions, but for some reason I always return to the Deux Garcons. In my mind Fisher is buying ice creams for her daughters, then observing the waiters, and the dust in the air, and the plane trees -- and suddenly I'm there! If you're reading this in August in England, it's enough to make you go crazy. Or, even better, to Provence. July 8, 1997 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Do you have a favorite travel book that you want to recommend? Discuss the best of travel reads in the Wanderlust section of Table Talk.

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