BLACK MAPS

Black Maps ($22.95; June 1996; 176 pp.; 1-55849-033-7). Jauss's second collection (following Crimes of Passion, 1984), winner of an Associated Writing Programs Award, offers nine intense and provocative, if occasionally derivative, portrayals of adult despair and teenage disillusionment. ``Torque,'' for example, about an abandoned husband who saws his beloved Cadillac in half, closely resembles an essentially similar Raymond Carver story—and ``The Bigs,'' which describes the emotional upheaval of a minor-league pitcher about to complete his no-hitter, virtually apes the climactic action of Alan Sillitoe's famous ``The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.'' But elsewhere Jauss hits his stride, especially in a fine Vietnam story (``Freeze'') and in the moving ``Rainier,'' in which a drunken wreck of a father discovers at his only son's funeral the accusatory and inescapable shape of the life that lies before him.