(5 of 10)
At the Eden in Rome ("Truly paradisal," says Fielding), their room turned out to be tiny and cramped, overlooking a courtyard that was "like an echo chamber"; at the Athens Hilton (Fielding: "Infinitely the best hostelry in Greece"), the Matisoos had to live with a thermostat that was permanently stuck at 80° and a ghostly toilet that flushed all by itself in the middle of the night. Says Juri: "The manager told us that all the toilets in the hotel were flushing, and there just wasn't anything he could do about it." But Harry's Bar in Florence made up for all the lapses. "A must for everybody," insists Fielding, and Lisa Matisoo concurs: "Harry makes absolutely the best martinis in Italy, and the hamburgers are excellent."
Anything but Tourists
It takes a special kind of travel writer to steer his readers to steerburgers in Italy. And Temple Fielding is special. He is a superpatriotic expatriate (witness the U.S. flag that flies from the fender of his siren-equipped Cadillac convertible) and a Swinburned sentimentalist. Although he has lived abroad for 18 years, most of them on the island of Majorca, he does not speak a foreign language. His son Dodge, a senior at New York's Hamilton College, recalls an awkward scene one day when Fielding kept telling a Spanish cab driver that he wanted to pick up some cojónes (testicles); he meant cajónes (boxes). In his politics, Fielding leans to the right, but he bends over leftward when it comes to cigars (Cuban) and stands up straight when it means business. As he explains in the style book for his staff: "We are never political in Free World references. Wisecracks or bons mots involving Soviet, Chinese Communist, or similar enemy figures are used if desired."
However, he continues in the instruction manual, "you will quickly observe how every member of our little group here detests bigotry in the deepest part of his or her heart. (Most of us happen to be political Conservatives rather than Liberals, but this has nothing to do with our unanimous views toward inhumanity.) In an infinitely smaller sense, it is bad business (and bad sales) to be depreciatory toward geographic locations or abnormal unfortunates. Say 'For the tourists from Cornville' rather than 'For the tourists from Sioux City.' Say 'For the Gay Boys,' or similar, without scorn. We sell books. They buy them—much more than one would think." Fielding, in fact, would just as soon avoid calling them tourists. "Nobody likes that," he says, and in his Guide, he goes out of his way to use synonyms ("travelers," "voyagers," "vacationers"), euphemisms ("pilgrims") and conceits ("Guidesters").
Fielding calls his staff his "family." It consists of Temple, his wife Nancy ("My Nancy"), Joe Raff (ex-managing editor of the Rome Daily American), Raff's wife Judy and Robert Bone, formerly of TIME Inc.'s Book Division. Each Fielding family member has a nickname, which