Paperbacks

Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940-1956 ed Ann Charters (Penguin, pounds 12.50) Americans take the idea of being a writer so seriously. This book, acclaimed in the US, mainly consists of intense, maundering self-analysis. But there's no denying Kerouac's energy - an autobiographical epistle to Neal Cassidy running to 17 pages is not untypical. The writer's chameleon character changes according to the addressee: mystical to Ginsberg; macabre and viperish to Burroughs. This anthology stands up as a work of literature in its own right - and with the benefit of concision - but really for fans only.

Scottish Journey by Edwin Muir (Mainstream, pounds 6.99) Keen-eyed and thoughtful, the poet's 1935 ramble has striking modern resonances, particularly in the sensible remarks on Scottish identity. Though he gets bogged down in Glasgow slums, his account is highly readable. There are flashes of humour (a Serbian asks if a fight between prostitutes is a ''national custom'') and, occasionally, a real surprise. One statement would work wonders for the Scottish National Tourist Board: ''Nowhere I have seen is so bathed and steeped and rolled about in floating sexual desire as certain streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh.''

Virtually Normal by Andrew Sullivan (Picador, pounds 6.99) An elegant discussion of homosexuality which concludes with disappointing triteness: gays should marry. Sullian speaks movingly of his own experience: the ''inchoate ache'' he felt in childhood; how his first gay affair changed his life, like ''a black-and-white movie that had suddenly converted to colour''. But his argument relies too heavily on generalisations, such as comparing homosexuals to sterile heterosexuals. The truth is that many people do not fit Sullivan's socio-sexual stereotypes. Increasingly, there is no such condition as ''normal''.

Romance by Ed McBain (Coronet, pounds 5.99) Ed McBain's latest 87th Precinct Novel is as about as exciting as an episode of Murder She Wrote. Plotting what happens when an actress meets the same fate as the character she is playing in an off-off Broadway production, McBain spices up the proceedings with a risque subplot featuring an inter-racial romance betwen Detective Bert Kling and his beautiful superior, Deputy-Chief Surgeon Sharyn Cooke. Much rain falls, many bourbons are drunk and many thespians behave camply. A comforting read, if only for the noticeable lack of pscyho-killers and frozen body parts.

Shards of Memory by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Penguin, pounds 6.99) It takes a chapter or so to get the generations straight in Prawer Jhabvala's latest family saga. The cosmopolitan Kopf famly - whose members include Hampstead lesbians, Manhattan matrons, and Indian poets - have always been open- minded, and over four generations have cultivated a relationship with ''The Master'', a never-ageing spiritual guru with a taste for pretty women. Muddling along in a large NY apartment building, grandparents, parents and children try to make sense of each other's stories. Human weakness studied with a kind and forgiving eye.