Notable

THE AMATEURS by David Halberstam Morrow; 221 pages; $14.95

The author's customary beat is major league politics and journalism (The Best and the Brightest, The Powers That Be), and his usual tone is portentous. But in this canny change of pace, David Halberstam becomes a miniaturist, examining the claustrophobic world of competitive rowing.

The Amateurs begins as straightforward coverage of the manic scramble for a handful of spots on the 1984 U.S. Olympic rowing team: "It was not a celebrated event ... no tickets were sold, and the community in which it was held, Princeton, New Jersey, largely ignored it." But a subtext soon makes itself apparent. Within a few pages the book becomes not merely an examination and celebration of one of the few authentic amateur sports. It is also a close analysis of addiction. For these rowers are, to a man, driven, single-minded, type-A combatants who make better companions on the page than they could possibly be in life.

What goads them? What makes former Harvard Oarsman Tiff Wood keep training into his 30s? Why does onetime Yale Rower John Biglow ignore severe back pain to continue his training? Why is Brad Lewis, a brooding Californian, so determined to beat the Ivy Leaguers at their own sport? Certainly it is not money, and surely it is not fame. Halberstam, who took the time to get to know the oarsmen in their boats and onshore, offers some provocative answers. They are not likely to make the sport or the sportsmen popular, but they provide valuable insights into the psychology of amateurs and of athletes in general.

OUT OF THE BLACKOUT by Robert Barnard Scribners; 182 pages; $12.95

He plots a mystery as well as any other writer alive, and he never takes the easy path of repeating a winning formula. Instead, Robert Barnard has worked his way, with freshness and originality, through the customary British variations: the stories involving academic life, the publishing world, the news media, stately homes, ancient titles, the royal family and the down-and-out. The only consistent elements in his novels have been precise perceptions and a larkish sense of humor. In Out of the Blackout, Barnard finds unlikely vitality in one of the most overworked subgenres: the story of an adopted child who sifts through the embers of his past in search of a sense of self, only to uncover a murder and undertake a kind of revenge.

The narrative holds its quota of surprises, but draws its force from the shrewd characterizations, which grant Dickensian life to what at first seem stock figures. Barnard, a closet satirist, is at his best when reviling his creations rather than cherishing them, and there are villains a plenty to hiss at in this oddly affecting tale.