It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Whirl : THE HALLIE LAWRENCE STORY <i> By Joyce Walter (St. Martin’s Press: $18.95; 336 pp.)</i>

Forget reality. There are no fat thighs in this universe. Life is beautiful. Everyone (except shopkeepers and servants) is gorgeous and graceful and amusing and rich. Of course there is no death. There is only love.

Welcome to the world of the romantic farce/screwball comedy/escapism through sheer bubble-brained joy. For centuries, theatergoers, movie watchers and readers delighted as fools-for-love characters raced through convoluted plots and fell on their flawless faces in hot (but not steamy) pursuit of a Beloved who, in the denouement, did not always turn out not to be the One True Love. “The Hallie Lawrence Story,” a first novel by Joyce Walter, is part of this tradition that embraces the philosophy that we need a recess from real life; that it is sensible to be silly.

It is a distinguished and popular convention: From Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to Georges Feydeau’s “ Occupe-toi d’Amelie “ to Noel Coward’s “Private Lives” to Neil Simon’s “Seems Like Old Times,” the romantic farce has given us all we could possibly ask for in diversion: laughs, a means of feeling superior to the rich and famous, time out from ugliness and meanness, and the conviction, no matter how ephemeral, that there is perfect happiness.

“The Hallie Lawrence Story” is not first-rate froth. Still, it has much to recommend it. In the tradition of romantic farce, it is the story of a bunch of glamorous, appealing dopes who love neither wisely nor well, but live happily ever after anyway.

Hallie (Harold) Lawrence is old enough (well into his mid-30s), smart enough (educated at Exeter, Harvard and Harvard Law School), cultured and smooth enough not to make an ass of himself over a girl. He is the ultimate urbane man, the son of Alfred, a Leonard Bernstein-like conductor, and Lily, social butterfly and charmer.

But then this person of Jewish gentility, out for a day with old prep-school pal, Kip, meets Martha Housewright, a woman so young, so awesomely leggy, so stunningly stacked, so utterly delightful and so relentlessly Gentile that Whammo! Hallie is smitten. Within days of meeting, he and Martha are engaged to be married.

However (and there can be no romantic farce without howevers), Alfred demands that Hallie represent Nikki Mikhailovitch, a virtuoso violinist, adorable redhead and young Russian emigree. A soloist who sometimes performs with Alfred’s orchestra, Nikki has been offered a movie contract; Alfred wants Hallie to put the kibosh on the deal.

Hallie won’t oblige, however, and Nikki does go off to Hollywood, where she finds herself in a film directed by supreme slicko Malcolm Ferrari. Malcolm, it turns out, used to be Martha’s live-in lover in Paris, a relationship that Martha forgot to mention to the by-now wildly jealous Hallie.

Throughout the book, Hallie and Kip and Martha and Nikki, to say nothing of old oleaginous Malcolm and Alfred and Lily, race around Manhattan and Los Angeles, jet around the world, drink great wine, wear glorious clothes, listen to magnificent music and act like, well, pretty much like characters in a screwball comedy.

This behavior has its limitations in a novel. Romantic farce is a genre that best takes place with an invisible clock ticking in the background. Whether it is “A Comedy of Errors” or “The Palm Beach Story,” it works best when it moves lightly and quickly within a tight time framework, as in a play or a film. Because farcical characters are pretty puppets of the author, they have to do their dance and be gone; they should not sit down and attempt meaningful conversation.

Perhaps this is why there are so few screwball comic novels. Unlike the playwright and the screenwriter who have collaborators--actors--who can dash off stage, or fall down in a faint, or leap into a lover’s arms, a novelist can only collaborate with the reader. Instead of showing the audience a fast gesture, a quick sidelong glance, the novelist is obligated to describe. And the frivolous world of screwball comedy cannot tolerate too much description, too many words.

Words, the stuff of fiction, are the problem with “The Hallie Lawrence Story.” These lighter-than-air characters are set up verbally, not visually, and often they do not fare well. If Hallie were, indeed, the hot-shot lawyer and cosmopolite the author describes at so much length, he would, by definition, be far too substantive to live for love the way he does. A delightfully pretty actress playing Martha--a Claudette Colbert, a Meg Ryan--might get away with a sappy line such as “I said, make me get dressed, Hallie Lawrence, Mr. Grumpo,” but these words are simply too coy, too false to be believable when read.

Now and then, a light romantic novel, like Richard Peck’s “New York Time” or Laurie Colwin’s “Shine On, O Bright and Dangerous Object,” does succeed, but that is because the authors have enormous control, gracefulness, a feathery touch. Although Joyce Walter has a fine ability to set a complicated plot in motion, she tends to be too heavy-handed in her portrayals, too long-winded in her descriptions.

There is, for example, too much explicit sex for what is, in essence, a comedy of manners. This is one of those rare instances when it is decidedly not fun to get down and dirty. True, there is some business with a man, a woman and a ripe peach that is pretty intriguing, but then there is the man, the woman and an ice cube, to say nothing of descriptions of stand-up and sit-down sex, cunnilingus, fellatio and so forth. All this intense coupling bogs down the narrative drive, muddies the tone.

The author, who has a satirical eye for detail, has a tendency to pile on too much of it. If Hallie is such a worldly, assimilated Jew, why the near-endless examinations of Martha’s and Kip’s WASPiness? “Hallie wondered when these Gentiles were going to notice that it was about ten degrees out.” “Since Hallie had seen no such emotional reaction from her at breakfast, he realized the degree of shiksacity he was dealing with.” “It really is in the blood, thought Hallie. Jews are eaters, blacks have rhythm, and Gentiles have hunt prints.” Far too much time is spent on observations already observed by Philip Roth, Woody Allen and Jackie Mason; they drag down the novel.

There also are too many descriptions of clothes, of dinners, of perfume, of Martha’s blondness, of travel arrangements, of how women adore Hallie, of Lily’s elegance, of Alfred’s ego, of everything. The novel is chock-full of particulars; instead of being trivial, it is bursting with trivia.

Still, despite its flaws, Walter has written a book worth reading. In these weighty times, fluff can have a salutary effect. True, “The Hallie Lawrence Story” might have been a great deal fluffier, but it is light enough to serve. It is good to enjoy a bit of giddiness, a few minutes of uninterrupted, innocent joy.