The Museum of Useless Efforts

In Peri Rossi's world, life is a musty warehouse full of old phrases and clich s. Her absurdist sketches some only two pages long bring these phrases into the open and contort them into mad situations in which metaphor becomes reality. The title story, like many of these 30 pieces, has no plot per se: its narrator is obsessed with a museum really more of a library that archives such dubious curiosities as the tale of a man who tried to make his dog talk and that of another who attempted to fly. ""Instructions for Getting Out of Bed"" is narrated by a figure whose phobic reaction to every aspect of life, including the necessity of standing on two legs, prevents him from venturing more than a few steps from his bed. Another bedtime sketch, ""The Rebellious Sheep,"" takes the time-honored remedy for insomnia and adds a macabre element: when the first sheep refuses to jump over the fence, the crazed, sleep-deprived narrator commences to beat it to death with a stick. And ""Tarzan's Roar"" envisions a drunken, washed-up Johnny Weissmuller recreating the famous holler in his tacky apartment in California, much to the consternation of his neighbors. This collection shouldn't be read straight through, since the compounded effect of Peri Rossi's humor can be tedious as the clerk at the eponymous museum observes, ""I think the abundance of items destroyed their appeal."" But at her best, she distills small, unexpected delights from the flotsam and jetsam of everyday speech. (Apr.) Forecast: Peri Rossi, an Uruguayan exile living in Spain, has written 20 books. While this one certainly won't take the States by storm, admirers of Borges might be drawn to her poker-faced mingling of the mundane with the bizarre.