A MILLION GUITARS

The young Robert Taylor"" is too old an image for most kids to identify, and it is this frame of reference that surrounds a collection of bland short stories. The timing is off; several rely on end-of-the-tale information to twist scenes into focus but the master's touch is missing, the turn leaves a blurred impression. In the title story a pre-Presley youth strums to his sweetheart, to the irritation of her father, although the older man later admits that ""bumptious crazy wonder"" is a most desirable quality. More humorously, ""George the Sweet Singer"" introduces an engineering student who wakes up knowing his tenor is the greatest; after a day of internal rave reviews, his voice breaks ""into thirty or forty fragments. . . up and up like a siren,"" which gets sympathetic nods from his fraternity brothers, a good laugh from a coed who knows he ""caught every decibel."" The prelims are capable; the moment lacks strength, so the melody doesn't linger.