The Undeclared Wars of Men

By CHARLES MICHENER

The war between the sexes does not particularly concern Ethan Canin. While other writers chronicle that battle, as well as the myriad conflicts that ignite female relationships, Canin stalks the less traveled turf -- at home, at work and at play -- where men wage undeclared hostilities against one another. In The Palace Thief (Random House; 205 pages; $21), a superb collection of four novellas, as in his acclaimed earlier fiction (Emperor of the Air, Blue River), Canin also reminds us of a more interior battle: the struggle among men to discover who they really are.

Take the narrator of the opening story, Accountant. Outwardly, as Abba Roth tells us, he is the picture of upwardly mobile success: "We live in San Rafael, California, and I work at Priebe, Emond & Farmer, the San Francisco firm, where I have worked since the last days of the Eisenhower administration. At one time or another we have owned a Shetland pony, dug a swimming pool, leased a summer cottage at Lake Tahoe, and given generously to the Israel General Fund . . ." Inwardly, he is trying to come to grips with an irrational act of petty theft he committed against a man who could have advanced his career -- an act that will leave him both professionally shaken and curiously liberated.

Or take the younger brother, William, in Batosag and Szerelem, who grows up in the shadow of his older brother, Clive, a math prodigy. When their father discovers the secret of Clive's homosexuality, the brothers' positions in the family are irrevocably reversed. Years later, William finds himself at the bedside of the dying Clive. Now it is his turn to acknowledge his own "half- hidden secret" -- that the inevitability of Clive's tragedy had taken root "deep in my own character, as the fleeting ghostly shape of a wish."

City of Broken Hearts tells of a middle-aged Bostonian whose wife has left him for another man. He tries to connect with his grown son through their old bond of going to a Red Sox game, only to discover that their roles are now reversed: in order to find a new life, the father must learn from the son.

In the title story, the most masterly of the group, a teacher of ancient history at an exclusive boarding school finds himself drawn into a battle of wits with a student liar and cheat. Later the student rises to the pinnacle of public life. Meanwhile, the teacher sinks into obscurity, still hungry for recognition of his former importance to the "boys" but unable to ask for it.

These are old-fashioned tales, resurrecting issues like passivity vs. action and honesty vs. self-delusion, and relying on such time-honored devices as unreliable narrators, characters who turn out to be angels in disguise, and good old melodrama. Echoes of past masters -- Henry James and John O'Hara, for instance -- abound. What saves the stories from seeming contrived is their natural assurance of voice (the sentences read as if spoken aloud), their steadiness of moral compass and their acuity -- often humorous -- of detail.

Some readers will object that the female supporting characters are little more than shadows, some of them close to stereotype (Jewish Mother, Compulsive Shopper, Girl from the Wrong Side of the Tracks). But this should not prevent Canin from becoming required reading in Women's Studies 101. Above all, his wise stories are concerned with a subject common to both genders: the startling consequences of feeling.