Lean Cuisine for Picky Palates : LIKE LIFE Stories <i> by Lorrie Moore (Alfred A. Knopf: $18.95; 161 pp.; 0.394-58101-6) </i>

The appearance of her third book, “Like Life,” confirms my impression of Lorrie Moore as a writer with a wry, skittish sense of humor and enough verbal glibness to provide material for all the stand-up comics in Los Angeles, but with very little ability to create convincing characters or tell stories that invite us to suspend our disbelief as we read them or to brood upon them after they’ve been read.

Moore’s first book, “Self-Help,” was a collection of stories that won critical praise for its offbeat humor. “Anagrams,” her second book, was billed as a novel, but, more accurately, it was a group of stories featuring the same set of characters taking up different positions in each story. “Like Life” is, hence, Moore’s third story collection, its title perhaps an ironic acknowledgement of potential criticism from those who may complain that her work lacks the fleshed-out verisimilitude of old-fashioned realism.

Moore, who is nothing if not coolly self-aware, would seem to be tacitly responding that all fiction--from the most painstaking realism to the most playful allegory--can only be like life and cannot, should not, be life. And, indeed, when the phrase like life occurs in the context of the story bearing this title, Moore is actually suggesting that life itself, as we experience it, is only “like life”: not quite the real thing we expected, but only a close approximation of it. Self-consciousness and self-estrangement--the suspicion that everything they do is only a pose--are attitudes that distance Moore’s characters from their lives and provide the mordant twist that distinguishes their author’s style and stance.

Moore’s stories have appeared in The New Yorker and other magazines. Although most critics would never dream of labeling this kind of self-consciously “literary” writing “commercial,” it does, in fact, have characteristics that render it surprisingly marketable: a kind of Lean Cuisine for street-smart urban sophisticates who like to read and run.

The eight stories in this collection are crisply packaged, skillfully produced and light-yet-piquant enough to appeal to the weariest palate. “Two Boys” presents Mary, who is juggling two love affairs at the same time. She recommends the practice in postcards to her friends. Mary’s breezy insouciance soon yields to a “subtle”’ kind of “nervous collapse,” which Moore renders in the same breezily insouciant style.

“Vissi d’Arte” is a mocking thumbnail sketch of a self-important playwright living in squalor near Times Square. It is a slick, yet unconvincing blend of irony and pathos. The same goes for “Joy,” a day-in-the-life of a woman who works in a cheese store in “the deep Midwest,” where there is “no real seafood for miles” and “meat sections in the grocery stores read: BEEF, PORK and FISH STICKS.”

The Midwest is viewed even more ironically in “You’re Ugly, Too,” where it is seen through the eyes of expatriate Easterner Zo Hendricks, whose uniformly blond students assume that brunettes come from foreign countries. “Just because Prof. Hendricks is from Spain doesn’t give her the right to be so negative about our country,” runs one comment. Moore’s sense of comedy can be priceless.

It’s when she tries for greater depth of emotion that she seems to lose her touch. Three more stories--”The Jewish Hunter,” “Places to Look for Your Mind” and “Like Life”--reveal this limitation.

“Starving Again,” the shortest, least substantial story in the book, shows Moore doing what she does best. In essence, this story is nothing more than a conversation between Dennis, recently divorced, and his friend Mave, who is currently dating a womanizer. It contains some of Moore’s funnier lines:

“I’ve got my own means of revenge,” says Dennis, who’s upset by his ex-wife’s new romance. “If she wants to go out with other men, I’m going to sit here and just let her.” Replies Mave: “That’s an incredibly powerful form of revenge.” Later, Dennis gets his own back by accusing Mave of getting all her boyfriends “on sale. It’s called Bargain Debasement.”

One must credit Moore for her flair at doing what she does, but having praised her for her polish, one must also question the value of her enterprise. It is perfectly defensible for a writer to concoct ingenious, flimsy, self-referential card houses built of attitude and verbal sallies; it may even be the height of literary fashion. But when style becomes this stylized, it is likely to prove a fad.