PASSIONS AND PREJUDICES

Twenty-six Rosten-ets, all dished out with his likably anecdotal delivery but few in his most becoming style: the haimish and down-to-earth vignette. The majority of the pieces (some are awfully old ones from Look) fall into two of Rosten's least flattering extremes. 1) Serious sermons and musings on politics, science, creativity, and communication that cosily simplify complex issues or sincerely paraphrase timeworn ideas. 2) Trivial, good-natured amusements, like a gathering of ""typographical boo-boos"" or a parody of cocktail-party chatter or a foreign traveler's guide to lingual mishaps that palely echoes S. J. Perelman. But let Rosten just be himself--meeting the poison-tongued Evelyn Waugh, sending a daughter off to college (giving rise to a ""Rent-a-Child"" fantasy), remembering a wartime ""Episode in Munich,"" or revealing his prejudice against ""people who blow theft nose while I am swallowing oysters""--and all is well. So: to hunt or not to hunt, for the few tasties in a pasty but never unsavory serving of Rosten strudel.