Outdated ‘World’ From Down Under : THE GREAT WORLD, <i> by David Malouf,</i> Pantheon Books, $21.95; 333 pages

David Malouf, an Australian writer who has a great reputation in his own country for innovative artistic vision and purity of prose style, has chosen this time to write in the most traditional of forms: A three-generational serious novel that focuses on World War II.

“The Great World” recalls tales written 40, 50 years ago by Norman Mailer, Irwin Shaw, even Howard Fast. (There’s also a huge dose of Nevil Shute’s “A Town Like Alice” in these pages, particularly in the long middle section set in Malaya.)

Americans will be able to hum right along with the tunes of this book. We are given two protagonists: The first, Digger Keen, is the son of a feckless ferryman and a brave orphan girl. The Keen family lives in great hardship, but Digger is esteemed by his mother, and early is given the responsibility for his “slow” elder sister. Digger is thoughtful, intelligent, and can be said to love the land.

The second young man, Vic Curran, has lived in dreadful poverty in an obscure squatters’ shack. He has tended his mother until she died, and--in great shame--watched his father’s alcoholism lead him to an early and violent death. Vic is then adopted into an upper-middle-class family that owns a soap factory: Ma and Pa Warrender, and their daughters, Lucille and Ellie. Vic is warped.

After the Great Depression jerks all these characters around for 60 or 70 pages, World War II throws Digger and Vic together in Malaya, where they’re captured and spend time, first in Changi prison camp, and then toiling on the railroad line from Bangkok to Rangoon. Japanese soldiers fade into the background here. The real test for all the Australian prisoners shapes up between them and nature--starvation, cerebral malaria, pellagra, beriberi, dengue fever.

Vic manages to get one of his Aussie mates killed off by his own carelessness. That’s bad. On the other hand, he saves Digger from a hideous gangrene death. That’s good. The main difference between the two young men seems to be that Vic lives outside his life, covering up a yawning emotional hole. Digger, though deeply confused about everything, lives his own life.

Back in Australia, Digger finds an older woman, loves her a lot, goes back to his ferry crossing and thinks deeply about things. Vic, who has been planning to marry Lucille, finds himself betrayed by her and ends up marrying the very decent Ellie. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Vic turns the soap factory into a giant conglomerate, becomes a zillion-zillionaire, cheats on his wife, is disappointed in his hippie son, who runs away from home and takes up a dangerous drug habit. Equally, it won’t come as a surprise that the humble Digger begins a long (and honorable) friendship with the very decent Ellie.

There is one real surprise, however. Pa Warrender, who has been aced out of his soap interests by his own wife and his materialistic son-in-law, turns to poetry, so that when his funeral finally comes around, Digger can reflect on “poetry itself . . . How it spoke up . . . For what is deeply felt and might otherwise go unrecorded: All those unique and repeatable events, the little sacraments of daily existence, movements of the heart and intimations of the close but inexpressible grandeur and terror of things, that is our other history. . . .”

Vic doesn’t care a bar of soap for any of this stuff. He’s never even read one of his father-in-law’s books. But guess what? All his millions don’t get him one step closer to his wife or son, or anything else that matters. Nobody loves Vic, and Vic doesn’t love a living soul. It’s his friend, Digger, who owns nothing but affection, responsibility, low expectations and The Land, who ends up with the Keys to the Kingdom.

What possessed David Malouf to write this chewed-over stuff? I guess he figures you can’t have too many of this kind of novel.

Next: Bettyann Kevles reviews “Bully for Brontosaurus” by Stephen Jay Gould.