DATE: Tuesday, September 16, 1997           TAG: 9709160043

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E6   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review 

SOURCE: BY RICKEY WRIGHT 

                                            LENGTH:   57 lines

AUTHOR'S PROFOUND SPARKS OFFSET BY SERMONS

BOB GREENE is sometimes a prophet of doom in his new collection, ``Chevrolet Summers, Dairy Queen Nights.'' He sees America's current incivility, sometime indifference to children's rights and even cursing in public as threats to not only the social order but to the nation's very future. The book's subtitle, ``Of Cloudless and Carefree American Days,'' is partly ironic, drawn as it is from the remembrance of an old friend's murder in a carjacking.

At the same time this is the same whimsical, nostalgic Bob Greene whom we know from his decades as a Chicago-based syndicated columnist and contributor to Esquire magazine. If anything, in ``Chevrolet Summers,'' he's more nostalgic, more the bemused softie than he was before. But as pleasant as his voice is, after a few dozen of these 100-plus pieces, his themes become a bit predictable and wearing. He celebrates ordinary lives like those of his parents not just as worthy lives but as those of ``heroes'' and champions.

Next time, Bob, say it with flowers.

Greene's best can bring out the reader's worst.

Elsewhere, Greene mutters darkly about bad sportsmanship, gets way too exercised over a California collegian who regularly attended class in the nude, and worries that too many modern ties resemble ``dog puke'' rather than the striped models he grew up with. He ends, not surprisingly, by buying a bunch of the striped ones in an airport.

As silly and occasionally annoying as Greene can be - he actually named a book ``Johnny Deadline, Reporter'' - there's more to ``Chevrolet Summers'' than paeans to The Way It Used To Be. Greene's advocacy on behalf of children, a minor but powerful theme here, is impressive. So too are offbeat columns about his dad's decision to move to a different permanent chair at the dinner table and an airline's brief flirtation with on-board stand-up comedians.

Greene's eye is still good: He notices Michael Jordan, during his baseball stint, memorizing names and faces in a fan guide.

There are also several deeply moving moments, none more so than that of a poor father entertaining his young son on an airport train carrying passengers from one terminal to another. The image is the most memorable thing in the book.

Whatever edge Greene might have boasted in the 1970s has largely dissipated, and his writing is often monotonous these days. But the sparks of real life beyond the author's dogmatism make ``Chevrolet Summers'' worth at least a glance. MEMO: Rickey Wright is a free-lance writer who lives in Norfolk. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

BOOK REVIEW

``Chevrolet Summers, Dairy Queen Nights:

Of Cloudless and Carefree American Days''

Author: Bob Greene

Publisher: Viking. 281 pp.

Price: $24.95

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