HOT PROPERTIES by Rafael Yglesias (Dutton: $16.95; 408 pp.)

Iwarn you: It is all a mix-up. (The charter for this corner of The Book Review is to scout out and write about a variety of more-or-less artistically intended fiction, and sometimes nonfiction.)

Now, Rafael Yglesias has written several serious, amiably received and not-very-profitable novels. He belongs, furthermore, to a modestly celebrated literary family. It seemed reasonable, if glib, to pick up his latest novel for reviewing.

True, its title is “Hot Properties.” True, the reviewers’ copies came in hot-pink wrappers, and the jacket on the bookstore copies shows a manicured feminine hand stroking a manila envelope as if it contained something other than a manuscript.

In a manner of speaking, I thought that I was on the way to Plato’s Symposium. Instead, here I am at Plato’s Retreat. I am dressed wrong. In fact, I am dressed.

By Page 40 or so, three couples connected to New York’s power literati are practicing slurpy sex, recipes attached. Patty, who is merely cuddly at this point, though she will end up as a serious feminist novelist, is saying “God, God, God, God, God” in the general direction of the overhead sprinkler system.

There is a glimmer of hope in those sprinklers. We have been to a literary dinner party. We realize that the publishing world is going to be examined searchingly. We suspect that an insider’s account of political maneuvering at Newsweek magazine will be forthcoming. We begin to loosen neckties--I told you I had too many clothes on--for a savaging of New York ambition, glitter, power-madness, exploitation and essential hollowness.

Could it be a spoof? Will those sprinklers go off? Alas, no. Yglesias is signaling to us, here and at several other spots, that he is too sophisticated for all this, too discriminating. But needs must, when the Devil drives, as I never expected to have a chance to say. There’s no devil in it, of course, simply strenuous consumer research by an author hoping to move from the boutique to the supermarket.

“Hot Properties” follows the fortunes of a number of writers and would-be writers along the New York-Los Angeles axis of publishing and entertainment. They all get together, very stiffly, at that initial dinner party and talk about The American Book Awards. Before long, the host, Fred, is nuzzling Patty outside the bathroom; and we’re off.

Off consists of:

Fred, a former sportswriter who wants desperately to be a novelist. Without a shred of talent, he is maneuvered by his agent and editor--both hotshots-- into best-sellerdom and permanent celebrity.

Patty, who goes from sex-pottery to a literary and intellectual success that, by book’s end, is bound to turn profitable, or at least get her invited to a lot of dinners.

Tony, who writes sensitively for off-Broadway. After struggling with false pride, he settles for the higher mission of turning out junk screen plays and waiting, with humble certitude, for power and wealth to invest him. It helps that his mother and father are both powers in Hollywood and that he goes to bed with a big movie star and the star’s equally, though differently, big wife.

David, who loses out, both with Patty and with a power play on a magazine modeled upon Newsweek. He comes to no good end, after assiduously patronizing a leather-clad professional dominatrix.

Two wives, notable for unhappiness.

Assorted slick, crass and lecherous publishers, agents, film executives and writers, many of whom can be traced--if you know your way around, or read the gossip columns, or even care at all--to real people.

Yglesias knows, of course, about the agony of struggling to write books and have them succeed. Fred, in his naive longing to be published, can be comic and even appealing. His self-importance crumbles utterly under a barrage of suggestions from his editor who, in fact, writes his book for him. When blocked, he takes out his contract and admires the 19th-Century-style copper plate on its cover. Patty, too, possesses some charm in her struggle to get out of bed and start writing.

The others are simply creaky engines of the author’s ornate and heavy-handed plotting. And the dialogue is close to a perpetual embarrassment.

Agent to client: “Will you join me for an early lunch to talk further?”

Of Tony’s playwrighting: “Theater grabbed his life by the elbow, slowing its hurried pace, and replayed its exquisite arguments and loves.”

Patty, in love and at work: “She had paddled out into life’s ocean, stripped naked, and trusted herself to cold waves, been slapped and rebuked by them, only to rise glorious and young at last. . . .”

Tony, now at work on his screen play: “The words themselves seemed drab and lonely on the page, as though they were uncollected orphans walking the streets aimlessly with runny noses and tattered shoes.”

Quite a long time ago, half a dozen employees of the Long Island newspaper Newsday got together to write a briefly celebrated novel called “Naked Came the Stranger.” Each one did a chapter; the result was a sex spoof whose only charm lay in the idea of its being one, and in the congenial collegiality involved in turning it out.

I can’t be sure whether “Hot Properties” is intended as a spoof or not; but Yglesias is as graceless as six people writing in one room, and without the pleasure of company, or any other kind of pleasure either.