STONE WORK: Reflections on Serious Play and Other Aspects of Country Life <i> by John Jerome (Penguin: $8.95) </i>

John Jerome attempts to use the process of building a stone wall at his farm in the Vermont Berkshires as a vehicle for philosophical ruminations, a sort of “Zen and the Art of Masonry,” but his efforts to use physical labor as a metaphor for larger issues are too self-conscious and effortful. Unlike Robert Pirsig, his obvious model, Jerome remains a dilettante who lacks a serious commitment to his work. Wall building is a hobby he enjoys fussing with, not a vocation that embodies his view of the world. He frequently contrasts the pleasures of masonry with the mundane drudgery of his job as a writer--although that job allows him to live in considerable luxury--and the reader gets the impression that if Jerome were a professional mason, he’d write about the joys of being an author.