Temples

College-age angst meets juvenile self-absorption in Williams's sophomoric first effort about a group of middle-class African Americans at the University of Maryland. Terence (also known as Langston, as in Langston Hughes) Hurston is a would-be poet who fritters away much of the summer in Baltimore talking poetry, chasing women and basking in the afterglow of his rapper friends Tim, Truth, space and Mark, whose group is called the Lost Boys. He discards two girlfriends (Stacy and Jodie) only to take up unwittingly with their friend Zora, who is also a budding writer and whom he finds most appealing. In the meantime, however, he has gotten a third woman, Tara, pregnant, and while he puzzles over what to do, all the time mouthing platitudes about the responsibilities of black fathers, she arranges for an abortion. Finally, Maya, another poet friend, sets him straight, telling him what a selfish oaf he is. By now, Williams has exhausted the reader's patience with tiresome diatribes about Thelonious Monk, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Malcolm X, how ""Hip-Hop is the natural extension of Jazz"" and the Zen of running. The first-person narrative is rife with hackneyed phrases and forced street banter. By the end of the summer, Terence and his friends all seem to be relatively clear about which direction their Buppie lives are headed. (Dec.)