I don’t mean to harp.That’s not true....

I don’t mean to harp.

That’s not true. I do mean to, at least a little bit. Doesn’t the elite triple-play author--the one whose advance, print run and paperback sale are all in the six-or-more figures--have a social responsibility? Isn’t there a literary equivalent of noblesse oblige ?

Surely I jest; Coca-Cola and Hershey’s Kisses aren’t nutritious, just wildly popular. Stories of love gone awry can’t be expected to devote a single psychospiritual calorie to the health and welfare of the collective soul. They’re just fun to nibble at.

Sometimes, though, I can’t help but wish for a big, popular book that tastes good and is good for me, too.

Rona Jaffe’s An American Love Story (Delacorte Press: $19.95; 432 pp.) certainly has the pizazz. Four women are in love with the same callow fellow, television producer (ne talent agent) Clay Bowen. There’s his wife Laura, a ballerina of the Gelsey Kirkland pharmaceutical school; his daughter Nina, who does everything she can to gain Dad’s attention; Bambi, the ambitious agent, and Susan, the writer whose career gets launched when she befriends a Lenny Bruce sound-alike and gets an exclusive interview.

The comic asks Susan, “Do you take notes, or what?” and her response is, “I used to, but it made people nervous. . . . Now I just remember, I have a very good memory.” That noise you hear is all the libel lawyers who read this column, laughing their heads off--and Susan is supposed to be the smartest of the quartet.

Which is the point: How many different ways can you doll up the leftovers? What Jaffe’s dishing up is the same old story about good women gone wrong, or at least temporarily daft. It’s the literary equivalent of comfort food. Jaffe’s a seasoned cook, so this is very classy macaroni and cheese, but hey--let’s see somebody write a story about four guys who are mad as hatters over an elusive dame.

At least Julia Fenton believes in equality of the sexes--in Black Tie Only (Contemporary Books: $19.95; 447 pp.), both villainy and charm ooze their way across gender lines. Fenton is one of those name-brand authors, the ones who believe that proper nouns will ground an otherwise featherweight tale. She also seems to have a database of every best-seller story line ever spun: Fenton’s tale of the beauteous Alexandra, a Chicago socialite, is really several stories at once. There’s the deep, dark secret, involving a drug-hazed accidental death, that threatens to rear its ugly head just as Alexandra puts the finishing touches on a gala for Princess Di, who happens to be an old private-school pal from the era when the deep, dark secret occurred; there’s Alexandra’s strained marriage, where, for the sake of titillation, the sex is still great; and, last but bloodily not least, there’s the hotel/union/Mafia problems that threaten Alexandra’s husband’s empire, as well as his wife and kids.

It’s familiar stuff. But whatever energy the author conserved in imagination she spends on the execution. Fenton won’t settle for the standard snatch-and-grab of a kid from his school-yard playground; Alexandra is probably the first heroine to be confronted in an elevator by a union wacko disguised as a delivery man, who pops a videotape into a VCR and shows her a computerized simulation of the planned kidnaping of her eldest child (I’ve spent too much time wondering where he plugged the VCR in, in a moving elevator, but I’ve always had trouble with the willing suspension of disbelief). And our heroine doesn’t stand by, quaking, while some tough guy saves the day. She’s right in there dodging bullets.

Ladies have less of a role in Sidney Zion’s Markers (Donald I. Fine: $19.95; 426 pp.) but maybe that’s because Zion writes about power, and women still don’t have enough of it. This is, essentially, a buddy book: Mike O’Rourke is the hard-working journalist and Jesse Frank is his childhood pal, a criminal attorney who has made the collecting of favors--markers--into a lucrative art form. Jesse calls Mike Scoop ; Mike dreams of winning the Pulitzer some day and, you guessed it, before too long, they’re on a collision course. Zion, a lawyer and journalist himself (is this the world’s first split-personality novel?), serves up an insider’s look at courtroom and press room shenanigans--and if his women tend to do things such as cook breakfast and marvel adoringly over a man’s sexual prowess, maybe they do more interesting stuff offstage that we never read about.

Andrew Greeley has written another kind of buddy novel in The Cardinal Virtues (Warner Books: $19.95; 464 pp.). The buddies here are old Father Lar and younger Father Jamie, together facing a corrupt church hierarchy that tries to intrude on Father Lar’s management of his rather lively flock. Greeley has wandered down this lucrative path before with the best-selling “The Cardinal Sins,” and with more than 12 million copies of 10 novels in print, he’s proven that we’re as willing to read about PG-rated philosophical indiscretions as we are the seamier-- and/or steamier--sort.