BOOK REVIEW : Hollywood Remake That Works : CREATIVE DIFFERENCES<i> By Buffy Shutt Robinson</i> SOHO 288 pages, $18.95

“Creative Differences” is a “Hollywood” novel set mostly in New York, where the “money people” are reputed to be. It should garner a small but fanatically devoted readership because it gives us information that--as people who live and often work in “Hollywood”--we think we know. But here that information is seen from another coast and cast in an entirely new mode.

The novel takes the form of a monologue, or perhaps a diary. Emma goes to work for a movie studio (East Coast branch) as a lowly secretary. What she has going for her are her looks, her mind and her laugh. Also, and not incidentally, she is a good person, someone you’d like to know.

She’s not particularly ambitious, but she learns quickly. She’s not cut out to be a lifetime secretary; she’s not the kind of woman to subsist on gossip, mistreatment and the cold comfort of family pictures on her desk. It’s Emma’s blessing and curse to be able to perceive at least a corner of the larger picture of the corporation and to be able to do more than she’s paid for. When an opening for publicist appears, Emma applies for the position, even though “secretaries never do that.” Of course, she gets the job.

Another tiny step into the corporate aquarium and Emma sees more of the (so to say) big picture. She loves it! The glamour, the dishing, the schmoozing, the parties, the whole business of making something happen .

Emma knows how to organize, to make lists and check things off. She sets up interviews, keeps stars in line and hauls out to Las Vegas to give a sit-down dinner for 1,500 movie-theater owners. She learns the truly awesome dimension of the human ego: “Several filmmakers ask me where they’re sitting on the dais. By the way they ask, you’d think their entire self-worth is tied up in whether they are on the first tier or the second tier.” And Emma gets just a little different view of “movie stars” than the rest of us do.

Most Hollywood novels, when they deal with that weird question of “stardom,” use the phenomenon as an opportunity to explore questions of human corruption: People gain stardom and lose their souls, that sort of thing. But “Creative Differences” puts these potent symbols into action.

The whole point of Emma’s job is to make these creatures move, walk and talk, perform. Of course, what these stars do the most is cocaine, and then take punches at their lady friends, who enthusiastically retaliate in kind. (The cocaine here is more or less taken for granted. The feeling seems to be that you need it sometimes, when you’re called upon to put in 20-hour days and perform impossible tasks.)

Emma grows in her work. She becomes publicity director, then vice president, then senior vice president, then executive vice president. She gets caught in the cross-fire of co-workers crazed for power. She sees and hears awful things.

An executive dictates a termination notice to his secretary; it turns out to be her own. Or Emma is sent to jolt a movie director out of his creative block, spends a few days with him, realizes he is a step or two in front of her in terms of emotion and intelligence.

He’s coming from the position of What’s the point? What’s the point of all this money, power, product; what, indeed, is the point of any of it? It’s a drug, this business--these long hours; this crazy, glamorous, money-drenched soap opera--far stronger than any cocaine.

Emma, not dumb, isn’t surprised when the director commits suicide. She’s not surprised when she loses touch with her best girlfriend (who’s opted for a baby and a civilized life), or when her own long-suffering husband bails out.

Because, yes, Emma does have a husband. We never see him, never hear him utter a word. He’s a dream of Emma’s--an erotic dream, an image of domesticity. He’s never real, because he’s not supposed to be, in this exciting cinematic ocean of exotic fish gobbling each other up. Then, the corporation-shark comes along and opens its jaws, and everything here is called into question. . . .

Hollywood-novel fans will love this book. And it can be read as a map of American publishing as well.

Read it and weep. Or, laugh.

Next: Lee Dembart reviews “The Innovators” by John Diebold.