NONFICTION - Dec. 29, 1991

THIS THING CALLED LOVE: Thoughts of an Out-of-Step Romantic by Steven Schnur (William Morrow: $15; 208 pp.). Writer Steven Schnur hardly seems as out-of-step as his subtitle suggests, for he shares his baby-boomer generation’s preoccupation with marriage and family. Among baby-boomer literati, however, Schnur’s simple rhapsodies about the redemptive power of ordinary suburban life will undoubtedly be considered un-hip: The preferred poses are sardonic (Amy Ephron, Don Delillo) and transcendent (Barry Lopez, Diane Ackerman).

An old-fashioned romantic, Schnur watches his wife steal a few hours of sleep while the kids nap, and then asks, “How does it happen that total strangers wander into each other’s orbit, fall in love, marry, and spend the rest of their lives together raising children and salving each other’s wounds?” His questions are posed more out of wonder than a search for truth. Indeed, if there is a theme uniting these stories it is “maybe we think too much.” Like his 85-year-old grandmother, who busies herself with some chore when she begins thinking of recently deceased friends, Schnur believes that happiness is to be found more in action than reflection. “All the paralyzing imponderables born of college and career and burgeoning independence,” he writes, can be “confronted and overcome once we turn our attentions away from ourselves and toward the building of family.”