TROUBLE IN ACADEMIA

By Martha Duffy

ANN BEATTIE'S NEW NOVEL, HER fifth, is enough to make one wince. Another You (Knopf; 323 pages; $24) is set in academia, a trap for many novelists--too many temptations to flaunt the detritus of years of reading, watching and listening to the culture. Beattie, with her penchant for artsy or newsy allusions, is caught right away. In the opening five pages are references to Richard Nixon, Elvis Presley, Henry Kissinger and Marianne Faithfull. Marshall Lockard, the New England college professor who is at the novel's center, meets an early challenge thus: "He did something he never did: he turned off All Things Considered."

Another You focuses on the emotional messes that ensnare Marshall and, before him, his father Miles. The latter engineered a menage a trois that warped the lives of two women. His drear tale is told through letters--printed in Beattie's trademark italics--that he wrote to his young mistress. The subject matter ranges from inviting her advice on buying a dog to callous admonitions: "You must promise not to write me again in haste, as it causes me great pain."

Marshall sidesteps into a more complicated dilemma involving his wife, a pretty student with whom he is flirting and a colleague charged with sexual abuse. Everyone in the novel, needless to say, turns out to be "another you" from the one apparent at the outset. But the narrative, crammed with choppy incident and dialogue, never gathers enough force to power the story. This is Beattie's first novel in five years (she has published one collection of short stories since 1990's Picturing Will), and so a real disappointment. She was an authentic voice of the late 1970s and '80s, with a particular talent for detail and dialogue. Can it be that, five years into the '90s, Beattie's technique of constructing character by naming and labeling is dated? That, unfortunately, is the verdict on this book.