BOOK REVIEW : Travel Writers Veer Far Off the Beaten Track : THEY WENT: The Art and Craft of Travel Writing <i> edited by William Zinsser</i> ; Houghton Mifflin $19.95 cloth, $8.95 paper; 184 pages

They came, they saw, they wrote a book.

And now, in the pages of “They Went,” six authors talk about the spiritual, intellectual and logistic dimensions of travel writing. It’s the latest title in the “Writer’s Craft” series, which includes “Extraordinary Lives,” “Inventing the Truth,” and other titles, but the book clearly aspires to a readership outside the ranks of working (and would-be) writers.

Some of the six talks in “They Went” are, well, talky . Each chapter started out as a short presentation in a lecture series at the New York Public Library in 1990. And some of the charm that may have attended a talk by an engaging and well-traveled speaker--one imagines a rainy afternoon, the smell of old books, a spot of tea--seems to have been lost along the way.

Thus, for example, the otherwise estimable Calvin Trillin seems to devote a bit too much time and space to a recitation of some of his favorite first lines from the long-running “U.S. Journal” series in the New Yorker. Other contributors resort to reciting their resumes, or reliving a bout with some inner demon.

“At the end of two years I went back home and I still didn’t have any idea what I wanted to do with my life,” says Mark Salzman, author of “Iron and Silk,” and we can imagine ourselves on folding chairs in the library auditorium, fighting a yawn and wondering when they’re going to uncover the platter of cookies.

Of course, “They Went” is intended as book about travel writing, rather than a book of travel writing, and in that mission, the work succeeds admirably.

At its very best moments, “They Went” goes beyond the merely didactic and strikes some sparks of inspiration. Ian Frazier (“Great Plains”), for one, has taken his assignment seriously and offers some specific and practical advice for the travel writer: “I don’t believe you know a place until you’ve been really bored in it.” But Frazier has something to say to every traveler.

“On the Great Plains--and I’m sure in the rest of America as well--you have to get off the paved road if you want to see where you are,” Frazier observes. “If you’re not getting stuck occasionally, sliding off the road, knocking your outside mirrors off, bumping your oil pan, you’re not doing the job.”

Armchair adventurers, on the other hand, may be frustrated by the lack of exotic locales, picturesque scenes and vivid experiences. Many of the contributors were under the impression that the audience really wanted to hear about the inner demons that drove them abroad. And so Vivian Gornick (“In Search of Ali Mahmoud”) goes on and on about why she found the Egyptians to be her kindred spirits:

“The Egyptians and I became one,” she says. “They were nervous, I was nervous,” she writes.

Only rarely in the pages of “They Went” do we encounter a gifted storyteller who has the power to captivate us with tales of faraway places. Tobias Schneebaum (“Keep the River on Your Right” and other titles) is one of the few contributors who really knows how to tell a tale--and his matter-of-fact account of his days as a collector of decorated human skulls and other artifacts of New Guinea is, by far, the most compelling yarn in the book.

Among the very best pieces in “They Went” is a lengthy introduction by the editor himself, William Zinsser, who provides a memoir of his own travels and, notably, his own favorites in the literature of travel writing.

One only wishes that some of the other contributors to “They Went” had read and learned from Zinsser before they stood up and cleared their throats at the New York Public Library.

Next: Richard Eder reviews “Cousin It” by Lynn Caraganis (Ticknor & Fields).