Pilgrimage

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.''