Reviews of three new books. Meat Won't Pay My Light Bill By Kurt Eisenlohr (Future Tense Books, 240 pages, $14) This novel could be considered the latest addition to the alcoholic literature subgenre. Considering that its protagonist, Lupus Totten, gets tanked every two or three pages, it's a feat that he's able to narrate the story at all. Lupus, a hopeless romantic, seems forever bound to the small town around him--a tourist mecca on the shore of Lake Michigan called Stillwater. But like drink, love does strange things to people, and in Lupus' case it's his desire to reunite with his elusive ex-lover in Chicago, Tia Correlia, that fixates him. In hopes of heading back to her, he lands jobs at a supermarket and a bar to save up money, all while maintaining his wild and licentious lifestyle. Aside from the fact that he's an artist who's in love with someone who doesn't love him, Lupus has problems. Various traumatic childhood flashbacks reveal him to be a sick and disturbed individual. Though they sometimes come off as unconvincing and tacked-on, his memories do effectively compound the pity the reader feels for him. While traveling on this life-stained magic carpet through Lupus' world, we encounter a slew of grotesque and misunderstood characters that give the story a coat of dark candy that allows the plot's many inconsistencies to be swallowed more easily. Eisenlohr's real strength is his dialogue, which is at once crude and enigmatic. His ear for the deep-blue-collar tongue summons the spirit and essence of Charles Bukowski. Like that patron saint of hung-over writers everywhere, Eisenlohr shows a kinship with the alienated, downtrodden person who wanders from bottle to bottle, timeclock to tavern. David Diaz Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece by Ashley Kahn (DaCapo, 224 pages, $23)   In this age of "metafication," when all art must be coldly dissected, it was only a matter of time until Miles Davis' Kind of Blue landed on the petri dish. The Davis sextet, John Coltrane, Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb and, of course, Davis, together created a musical symbiosis that was seemingly effortless. It is a work of its time and, yet, supremely transcendent of it. For those of us who cherish the work, its graceful modality and biting elegance--the appearance of Ashley Kahn's study is definite cause for excitement. From Davis' apprenticeship with Charlie Parker through Birth of the Cool and the construction of the sextet, Kahn's first 90 pages set the scene with resolute pacing. The next 60 pages are the book's raison d'être. Kahn sequestered himself in the Columbia vaults, listened to the master tape on the sessions and documented every word for posterity. In the process, he explores the derivation of the modal sketches Miles used and the controversy behind Bill Evans' possible authoring of some of the sketches. Though Kahn doesn't pass definitive judgment, there seems to be no question that at the very least Kind of Blue was a Davis-Evans collaboration. Finally, Kahn looks at the work's legacy. In its initial three years the recording sold in the tens of thousands. It now consistently sells 5,000 copies per week, 20,000 around the holidays. Kahn sews together many loose ends, but inevitably the book can't do much to explain the magic that mystifies the record's listeners. In the end, that's probably just as it should be. Bill Smith   In the Snow Forest by Roy Parvin (W.W. Norton, 195 Pages, $23.95) Roy Parvin will read at Annie Bloom's Books, 7834 SW Capitol Highway, 246-0053. 7:30 pm Thursday, Oct. 19. Northern California is lousy with good, accomplished writers of whom no one has ever heard. Roy Parvin (The Loneliest Road in America) is one of them. Though his work often drips with testosterone, there is also a delicate receptiveness: His stories are in touch with their feminine side. His new book, In the Snow Forest, is a collection of three novellas tied together with the themes of journey and luck. The novella is a quaint, underused form; it's long enough for some serious character development and complicated plotting, yet short enough to satisfy modern attention spans. Parvin takes full advantage of his chosen format, delivering intense stories about simple people who live in the treacherous, gorgeous woods. In the title novella, an injured Northern Californian logger is left behind when his cohorts find work out-of-town. He strikes up a friendship with an aging, legendary party girl who has an extremely disabled child at home and is shocked when he falls in love with her. Parvin unfolds their relationship gently, and the surprise ending is heart-wrenching. In "Betty Hutton," an ex-con leaves New Jersey for the first time, looking for something that will change his life. He has leisurely conversations with a variety of odd people on the road that finally ends in the wilds of Montana. Parvin's prose isn't perfect. He can relate every tiny detail of a snowstorm in a mountain canyon, yet he never actually describes his characters' physical appearances. In spite of such flaws, Parvin's book is a volume of good writing from someone who will never be a household name. Susan Wickstrom