IN SEARCH OF STONE

Severe inflammation of the ego is in evidence as ex-therapist Peck (Further Along the Road Less Traveled, 1993, etc.) muses on life and recounts his 21-day tour of Great Britain's ancient megalithic sites. Following his nephew's wedding at a famous London church, Peck and his wife, Lily, set out by train for Wales, the English Lake District, and Scotland in search of stones, similar to those at Stonehenge, set up in mysterious patterns more than 4,000 years ago. Peck tells us that he is too clever and possibly too humble to write an autobiography and that this is the closest he will get to it. As we follow him from the ``litter'' of Paddington Station to Cardiff, where the best hotel vaguely reminds him of Calcutta and he finds the natives unintelligible, we hear of his embarrassment at his privileged upbringing on the better part of Manhattan's Park Avenue and of his marital infidelities (which he says have ceased due to the onset of late middle age). He cites, as a bit of British provincialism, the fact that an English clergyman was scandalized at his $10,000 fee for a day's speaking engagement (half the priest's yearly income). As for Scotland itself, Peck found Glasgow ``grimy and littered'' and somehow missed out on its ancient cathedral and renowned architecture. He visited the New Age Community at Findhorn (which also disappointed him) but failed to call at the nearby 13th-century Pluscarden Abbey, with its remarkable stonework and vigorous religious community. Eloquent in his allusions to the Druids, the Merlin legend, and the mysterious people who built the stone circles, the author seems to have been hardly aware of their more recent counterparts. For the moment, Peck seems to have run out of road.