GREAT WITS <i> by Alice Mattison (Penguin: $7.95) </i>

Although many of the stories in this collection appeared in the The New Yorker, they read like parodies of that magazine’s fiction. Alice Mattison’s upscale, aging-but-hip Easterners seem to marry, divorce, rear children and commit adultery without really being aware of what they’re doing. As emotionally tepid as last week’s bathwater, they’re much too busy exploring the nuances of their rather dreary psyches to notice anyone else’s thoughts or feelings. Each story ends with a description of some mundane act--a teen-ager taking two steps backward, a woman adjusting the collar of her mother’s coat--that have suddenly taken on a New Significance. These glib, unconvincing revelations suggest that Zabar’s has introduced a line of pre-packaged satori.