Thank You, Queen Isabella

The first fiction title issued by this university press is a dark comedy about the decline of an innocuous young Dallas man. Seen one way, Garland Wyatt's problem is too much money. A trust fund has maintained him in a dream world that a stint in the legal profession and a Mexican bender with a homicidal Alabama bigot rudely dispel. ""I've been had,'' he thinks, viewing the modern world. ``I'm perfectly suited to life in 1750. Why didn't somebody tell me?'' His main interlocutorsWyatt Senior, whose sole interests are the judicial system and a divorcee tax lawyer; Sara, the former girlfriend who left because Garland wasn't fun anymore; her new flame Richard Bing, a well-adjusted white collar psychopath; and Marvin Jessup, six feet under, assaulting the world record for being buried alivedon't tell Garland much beyond ``get lost.'' And by the end of his hair-raising competition with Bing, Wyatt's as lost as you get. With well-paced, deadpan delivery, the novel is effective tragicomedy. Still, the Wyatts' maid, Hattie, the only sympathetic character here, asks a key question: ``What is it about boys like you that got so much but feel so bad?'' and disappointingly, the author never ventures a reply. (March 26)