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THE BLACK PRINCE, by Shirley Ann Grau (294 pp.; Knopf; $3.50), is the most impressive U.S. short story debut between hard covers since J. D. Salinger's Nine Stories (1953). Only 25, daughter of an old New Orleans family, Author Grau describes herself as "a thoroughly ordinary sort of person." Her book proves she. is not, at least not when she settles down before her typewriter. Sticking to what she knows, she tells of Southerners, black and white, of their problems and of the ordinary pressures of common experience. But Author Grau makes ordinariness seem pressing. At least three of these nine stories are unsuccessful, but the remaining ones cover a variety of emotion and background that are remarkable in the work of a young author. The title story tells of a love affair between young Negroes in the dreariest and poorest part of a southern state, where the main recreations are boozing and fighting. Against this squalid background the affair has first the quality of a simple idyl, but after its bloody, tragic ending it takes on the shape of legend. In Joshua, which takes place during World War II, an imaginative Negro youngster proves his courage by doing what the Bayou fishermen, including his father, do not dare do: he paddles down to the Gulf where surfaced German subs have fired at the fishing boats. One Summer is a beautifully effective story about a young white boy's first experience with death. Author Grau is short on plot, long on intuition, and lyrical without stumbling into sentimentality. Her ambition is "to write an even dozen novels." These stories suggest that it would be a fine thing for U.S. readers if she did.