Out of the Midwest, Wise Words to Take to Heart and Live By : MY FATHER’S WAR AND OTHER STORIES, <i> by Barton Sutter,</i> Viking, $19.95, 257 pages

Here we see more sorrowful summer short stories, but these are astonishingly good. These are written by a man who doesn’t seem to have a “literary” bone in his body, and that’s a compliment.

Like David Means’ “A Quick Kiss of Redemption,” the stories in “My Father’s War and Other Stories” are set in the Midwest, but there’s nothing grungy in Barton Sutter’s vision: It’s just another place to live out lives. It’s possible to live life to the absolute ecstatic fullest in Northern Minnesota, or it’s possible to screw up, make the wrong choices, squander your years meaninglessly, in the Midwest. Scariest of all, it’s possible to live next to lives of a great meaning and not recognize that fact.

Robert Penn Warren said in “All the King’s Men” that “whatever you live is life,” whether it’s with a wife and three kids or paddling up the Amazon. Most of us struggle with that conundrum. It’s true--but it’s depressing. All of us think we would like to be spending this particular morning in an Amazon canoe. But most of us are at home right now, getting ready for work, errands or phone calls. Meanwhile, life is rushing by.

The six pieces here are very carefully put together. They don’t make up a novel, but they examine life in various planned stages. In “You Ain’t Dead Yet,” a high school kid gets a summer job digging graves and, in the process, mourns his mother’s death. Searching for significance, he asks an old guy: “Do you believe in life after death?” The geezer, who has seen it all, replies: “I believe in life before death.”

If that’s all we have, life before death, we’d better use it right. “Don’t Stick Your Elbow Out Too Far” concerns another young man who, after a stint in the city, returns to a small Iowa town, calling on his uncle to help him buy a used car. The days go by with extreme sweetness, and the young man ends up with a beautiful used Galaxie.

He asks his uncle if he’s ever thought of leaving town and gets this reply: “I like a small town. Look at the fun we had today.” The nephew makes a small town choice in his own life, and page 55 carries such a halcyon description of this life that it’s enough to send you packing off to the Midwest immediately.

But it is intensity, more than location, that determines how a life is lived. “Happiness” is about three 20-year-olds who spend a vacation camping on the Canadian border. This is such a masculine story that a woman can barely take it.

The risks these kids take, their “thoughtlessness,” their mindless ignorance of “what could happen” is appalling. But--for now--this is what they choose, before wives and jobs can dull and drug them. By the end, the most timid reader understands why skin divers skin dive; why young men must tempt death.

“Very Truly Ours” looks at a notoriously terrible old grandfather and integrates him into a decent family. This is how lives are wasted, the author seems to be saying. The least we can do is understand the process. “Blackie” takes a married couple at that delicate balancing point where they can either live their lives with decency or in decline and waste. It looks like they’re making the dead-wrong choice, but they don’t know it, and it’s a judgment call.

The last story here, “My Father’s War,” is brilliant, horribly sad and, in a slightly different deal of the cards, would be favorably compared to William Styron’s “The Long March.”

At a Christmas family reunion, three brothers listen to their long-suffering, hen-pecked father as he finally talks about his experiences in World War II. He has suffered terribly, and his suffering has maimed him, wrecked him for ordinary life. His wife’s life is ruined too. But his boys, in listening, redeem him and themselves. Because they aren’t allowed to swear, the boys must limit their oaths to: “Man oh man” and “My land.”

Man, oh, man, Barton Sutter appears to say, this is your land, your life. You must live it well, this life before death. And women must respect that process. Because although we may be separate, we are in this together.

Next: Constance Casey reviews “Brando” by Richard Schickel (Atheneum).