THE TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON (282 pp.)—Vern Snelder— Putnam ($3). Captain Jeff Fisby, an ex-pharmacist from Ohio, neither looked, felt nor behaved like a professional soldier. He was chubby and ...

THE BRIGHT SANDS (254 pp.)—Robert Lewis Taylor—Doubleday ($3.50). For a nation that enjoys humor, the U.S. gets mighty little in its fiction, and things are apt to get worse before they get better.