THE LIGHT FANDANGO Fiction by John...

THE LIGHT FANDANGO Fiction by John Jacob (Another Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill., 60611: $9.50)

The author, the winner of the 1981 Carl Sandburg Award for poetry, writes with a powerful style and authoritative voice, but his technique is at the service of a bleak world view that distances him from his subjects. Jacob is successful in crafting stories that don’t demand deep character insight: “Silhouettes,” for example, is a chilling tale about a man who initially seems to be thinking about his lover (“I have pictures of her reflection in glass . . . pictures of those troubled frowns”) but who turns out to be a voyeur taking photos from afar. More typical, however, is Jacob’s story about teen-age renegades, which accepts their pretense of toughness at face value, failing to probe their underlying fear, sadness and insecurity.