Room Service

Moorhouse and his alter-ego, Francois Blase, like to travel light. Carrying a typewriter, a six-pack and a healthy amount of hedonistic humor, the Australian pair tour the globe's underbelly in these brilliant pieces, exchanging barbs, witticisms and stinging insights on the ways of people. The tales dissect the anti-art of traveling and provide incisive narratives that alternately wink at their subjects and then ""whonk'' them on the backAussie style. The tour includes Hiltonia (Hilton chains, commonly called ``Tip Town''), the Land of the Laundromats (where laundry is a ``metaphorical shedding of skins'') or Autobahnia (national freeways that ``suggest nationality''). In particular, the author pokes fun at Australians and their penal-colony past. With these humor stories, Moorhouse proves his skill as a master of satire. (October)