Tinsel

DATELINE: EUROPE -- Leonard Ross --Harcourt, Brace ($2).

Two years ago, Leo Calvin Rosten, 31, Polish-born teacher, humorist, researcher, social scientist, won pseudonymous fame as Leonard Q. Ross, author of The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N. When that book appeared, Author Rosten was in Washington, working on a serious journalistic survey, The Washington Correspondents. Sly Author Rosten enjoyed hearing correspondents chuckle over Hyman Kaplan, ask who Leonard Q. Ross might be. Afraid they might not take his research job seriously if they knew, Author Rosten kept mum.

In Dateline: Europe he adds a split to the already dual personality of Rosten and Ross, in a glib, neatly joined short novel about a foreign correspondent. Laid in Belgovenia, it covers the adventures of Peter Strake and girls in an abortive Putsch, drips conversational tinsel like a Christmas tree, is neither standard Ross nor Rosten. As one character says: "It's like a cross between Graustark and the Arabian Nights, written by E. Phillips Oppenheim." Authors McCutcheon, Scheherazade, Oppenheim might object, but to most readers Dateline: Europe will seem like a versatile slip which can do Author Rosten no harm, if not repeated.

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