In his deceased father's study, UC Davis anthropologist Ben Orlove found a 1,600-word description of the first time his father and mother made love and accounts of the tangled sexual and artistic relations among New York painters, models and hangers-on -- but no real surprises. Riding the latest academic wave -- autobiography -- Orlove found big dreams, small scandals and ultimately a better appreciation for the present in his new book, "In My Father's Study" (University of Iowa Press, 1995). Named for the room where Orlove sifted through his father's personal papers, the book recreates the story of Robert Orlove, a Russian Jewish immigrant with an old-worldly erudite appreciation of the arts and nature but with a surprisingly bohemian attitude toward religious traditions and business success. The story follows the transformation of the father from a reserved, insecure and unhappy youth into an urbane, creative older man whose whimsical collages and prose-poems bring pleasure to a circle of friends and relatives. The book is at once an adult son's memoir of his father, an immigrant biography and an intimate autobiographical account of the son's experience going through the mementos found in the study.