THE MOTEL IN AMERICA

THE MOTEL IN AMERICA John A. Jakle, Keith A. Sculle, and Jefferson S. Rogers (Johns Hopkins University Press, $32.95) Lolita was debauched in one; Kentucky Fried Chicken was born in another. Lots of interesting things happen behind the impervious, often cheesy facade of roadside motels, with their ''lumpy mattresses and broken ice machines/...those tiny bars of soap/grimy towels, empty pools, paper-thin walls/and forgotten wake-up calls.'' But that odd little haiku of a dedication notwithstanding, this book -- part of a series on ''The Road and American Culture'' -- isn't about poetry. This is a pretty dense annal, written by two geographers and a historian, and consequently stuffed with maps, facts, and figures about the motel's changing floor plans, its artful euphemisms (''inn,'' ''court,'' ''cottage''), and its predictable transition from mom-and-pop operation to corporate room-packaging industry. But the authors' love of the American landscape is a big neon sign blinking through the statistics; they've compiled a masterful scrapbook for fellow devotees. A- -- Alexandra Jacobs