Bachelor Girls

In this melange of 29 semi-humorous pieces, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wasserstein ( The Heidi Chronicles ) expatiates on manicures, ``Worst Boyfriends Ever,'' body hair and waxing, male shoppers, hating her telephone, ``superfeline'' second wives, her love of plaid, ambivalence about Los Angeles, and so forth. Possibly amusing as stage patter or magazine filler, such trite ephemerae turn deadly gathered between a book's covers. Spoofs on dieting or on ``the new agony of single men'' don't rise above their material. There is a touching piece on the author's formative relationship with her brother, a funny gag about actress Jessica Lange as role model, a cameo of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, a French revolutionary painter who figures in The Heidi Chronicles. But in many of these articles, Wasserstein misses opportunities to say something interesting, as when she writes of chaperoning her niece on a chess tournament in Romania. Literary Guild alternate. (Apr.)