Briefly noted: the season's highlights from scholarly publishers; Hawks on Hawks, by Joseph McBride. Berkeley: University of California Press. 190 pp. $14.95.

As an oral history, based on a series of interviews with the noted filmmaker, this book doesn't have the directness or drive of a ''Red River'' or ''Rio Bravo.'' It meanders and digresses, while barely touching on the complex critical theories that have sprung up around Hawks's pictures. But it's packed with information and anecdotes, avoiding pretension and verbosity as eagerly as Hawks's movies did.