Such Good Friends

By Christopher Porterfield

LAUGHING ALL THE WAY by BARARA HOWAR 298 pages. Stein & Day. $7.95 THE LAST OF THE SOUTHERN GIRLS by WILLIE MORRIS 287 pages. pages. Knopf. $6.95.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, which was probably a year or two ago in some Georgetown parlor or Southhampton sun deck. Washington Socialite Barbara Howar would write a memoir of her already copiously documented career as a ringmaster of Washington's social capers, her marriage to-- and divorce from-- the heir to a construction fortune, her affairs and flirtations with the mighty, her fall from grace as a lady in waiting to the John son White House. At the same time, her constant companion, ex-Harper's Editor Willie Morris, would write a novel transparently based on the same material. Alas, it might have been better if Morris had ghosted the memoir and Howar attempted a novel.

For the unglittering and uninfluential majority who have never had Howar zero in on them at a party, her bestselling book obviously provides a print immersion in high-powered gos sip and naughty Southern charm honed to a cutting edge. Like any clever wom an, she is less revealing than she pre tends to be. Most of the lovers are not named (a U.S. Senator, a White House aide), while most of the named are not lovers; not until page 241 does the au thor break the suspense by conceding "an absence of carnal knowledge be tween me and Henry [Kissinger]."

Most of what she seems to have gleaned from the Washington social circuit are banal generalities ("That November day in 1963 was a turning point ...") or trivial particulars ("Edmund Muskie and I were arguing about abortion . . ."). Indeed, Laughing is only incidentally an anatomy of power in the nation's capital. Howar's story is much older: how a girl with looks, sass and plenty of hustle cultivates powerful people and becomes the next best thing to powerful --famous.

If Laughing is what one might have expected from Howar, The Last of the Southern Girls is a disappointment from Morris. Admirers of his editing career and his other books (North To ward Home, Yazoo) may not know what to make of it, unless they shrug it off as the indulgence of every man's right to do something silly to impress his girl friend. A few passages-- earthy scenes from his heroine's childhood, vignettes of her stumping through a rural state with her Congressman lover--hint at the book that he might have written.

But Girls most resembles a political novel in the way its narrative keeps jerking to a halt like a campaign train, while Morris hops off to deliver a high-flown speech ("An aura of romance and beauty surrounded her, there was a rare electricity to her movements, she seemed touched with gold . . .").

Howar casts her book in a valedictory tone, as if taking leave of youthful vanity. Yet the conviction shines through her every line that she remains utterly important and captivating. Mor ris brings his heroine to the realization that everything she regarded as substantial "dwelled in fleeting mists: affirmation against the darkness"; however, he has her cast off her Congressman be cause "he is a loser" and turn again to "the Washington that awaited her" -- presumably to clear away those mists with some rattling good dinner parties.

The reader is left with the dispiriting sense that Barbara still believes her own publicity, and Willie is now writing it.

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