THE AGE OF MALAISE (203 pp.]Docia MarainiGrove ($3.95).
Adult amazement at the wayward bussing and bedding of today's youth is worldwide. But it expresses itself differently in different regions. In the U.S., a land flowing with milk and sociology, it has induced oleaginous teenage columns. In Europe, where literature is still thought to have a lingering relevance to life, it has resulted in a whole writing genre, as often as not penned by the troubled and troubling young themselves.
France's Françoise Sagan is the most famous example: at 18, she coolly chronicled how a...