THE LONG WAY ROUND.

By Leonard Levitt'63. New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972.155 pp. $5.95.

The paths that lead to the "grownup world" take a young gent named Deamis through a series of entanglements that read like a melange of "Summer of '42," "Goodbye, Columbus," or Alan King comedy.

You'd have to be there to believe it. At that, it's a challenge.

What happens is this:

Deamis discovers, with the assistance of a buddy named Boomer (and Boomer's father) that his ability as the best basketball player in Atlantic Beach, Long Island, can open doors to social acceptance that he never would dare imagine.

It opens the door, too, to first love and betrayal in the person of one Susan Stickwell. Further awakening comes to Deamis at Dooton College (any Big Greener worth his beanie will recognize the place) where hockey in the halls, Johnny Mathis records, and Susan's ding letter become chapters in his poignant growing process.

He forsakes Dooton after a year and turns to work in a New York warehouse owned by the exhusband of his father's second wife, a chick named Cupcake. Deamis' mother has suffered a nervous breakdown and after passing encounters with Muffin, Triscuit, and now Cupcake, it's easy to see why.

The warehouse, introduction to characters named Phurphey (he runs numbers on the side), a poet named Wexell Snathely, Kingsnake and a reunion with old buddy Boomer and a honey named Lydia Jane Levy, serve to make life at the Acapulco Hotel on the upper west side another series of absurdities.

It's supposed to lead to the emergence of a lonely young man in search of himself. Whether it does or not is completely up to you.

As Dartmouth Director of Sports Informationwith offices in Alumni Gymnasium, Mr. DeGange is a close observer of athletics indoors andout and in print.