Coleslaw & Chocolate

THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS (220 pp.)--Max Shulman--Doubleday ($2.50).

Dobie Gillis is "a warm-blooded man of 18 summers" who enrolls at the University of Minnesota chiefly because "I was getting nowhere with the girls back home." But poor Dobie--he has his setbacks at Minnesota too. Perhaps the barber who gives him crew cuts has mowed too close and sliced away what little brain he had. In any case, as described in this collection of magazine stories by Max Shulman, Dobie's activities keep involving him in such things as academic failures, incarceration for love's sake in a semester of home ec., and the righteous rages of his father, who tells Dobie: "I will pound you into the ground like a tent stake."

Perhaps to console himself, Dobie takes to devouring something called a "Varsity Voom" at the "Kozy Kampus Korner." The recipe: "One scoop vanilla, one scoop chocolate, one scoop coleslaw, hot fudge, and rolled anchovies."

By a happy coincidence, this mixture perfectly conveys the flavor of Shulman's humor. Readers whose palates were tickled by Shulman's previous concoctions (Barefoot Boy with Cheek, Sleep Till Noon) will find these stories just about as pleasant to swallow as anything he has written. People who have never tried Shulman might be well advised to test themselves first with a Varsity Voom.

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