I HEAR AMERICA SWINGING

De Vries is still trawling in the antic shallows of wordplay and farce as quips and punning allusions rise up like sargasso weed. This time the broad target is the sex revolution and its hip citified practitioners whose brittle drivel is corrupting Middle City, Iowa. The seminal case for Bumpers, a marriage counselor, concerns the former hard-working, Bible-reading Herk Brown--he now wears an F. Scott Fitzgerald T-shirt and no longer reads but ""dips into"" Scripture. The plight of Mrs. Brown, rocked by the new Herk and his ""inner city laugh,"" is compounded when other erstwhile yeomen become like Herk. Bumpers makes house calls, dutifully plows through group sex and consorts with a countryside full of ""Ma's""--homemade food tycoons in poke bonnets. But the devastation of Iowa proceeds apace: ""There goes the menage a trois,"" remark mesmerized porch sitters. If puns like ""Hello Dali,"" get to you, you'll swing along as the mocking bird flies.