October 23, 1983

The Reagan Administration wants Federal employees to keep their mouths shut, and favors one particular way of making sure they do. Last week, the Justice Department backed random lie detector tests for screening officials with access to especially sensitive information. But in a rebuff of another part of the President's plan - lifelong censorship - the Senate voted 56 to 34 for a delay pending Congressional hearings.

VANESSA BELL By Frances Spalding. Illustrated. 399 pp. New York: Ticknor & Fields. $22.95. VITA The Life of Vita Sackville-West. By Victoria Glendinning. Illustrated. 464 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $17.95. BOOKS about the lives of gifted women are inevitably also books about the restraints in women's lives - society, conventions, manners, class, men - and about the desires of those women to free their gifts from such restraints and to live their lives on their own terms. Two new biographies - one of Vanessa Bell by Frances Spalding, the other of Vita Sackville-West by Victoria Glendinning - tell us much that is interesting about English society in the first half of this century, about the professional and upper classes, as well as the growth of two unusual talents. They also offer still more additions to the chronique scandaleuse of the Bloomsbury set. If you really want to know, you can find here just how many times Virginia Woolf went to bed with Vita, and whom Duncan Grant was in love with when. But I'd be happy to leave the sex lives of the dead to the necrophiles and attend instead to other aspects of these two careers.

WHEN John A. Passidomo, the Democratic Supervisor/Mayor of Harrison, was appointed State Commissioner of Motor Vehicles by Governor Cuomo last February, Republicans in the coterminous town and village were presented with one of their strongest opportunities to capture a position that Mr. Passidomo had held for 19 years. The Republicans selected Pat V. Angarano, a financial consultant who, in 1977, came within 49 votes of defeating the extremely popular Mr. Passidomo. His opponent will be Frank A. Vetere, a Harrison Councilman since 1968, who was selected by the Town Board as Acting Supervisor after Mr. Passidomo's departure. The Harrison contest is considered to be among the most interesting in an election year in which supervisor races are being held in 18 of the county's 19 towns. All supervisor terms are for two years.

In the past few years the warehouse district of Secaucus, N.J. has emerged as a haven for bargin hunters who have been drawn to the neighborhood by discounted goods sold by retailers leasing storage space there. So popular has the neighborhood become that on some weekends shoppers bring traffic in the area to a halt.

TODAY I am running in the New York City Marathon, a statement most people who know me will not believe. I'm the one in school no one ever wanted on their team; the plump, overly protected bookworm whose parents did not even send to summer camp. I'm the one who was always hauling grapefruits home to control my weight or having my toenails painted to show off in sandals. I'm the one who boycotted athletic events, flunked tryouts for the cheerleading squad, considered the waltz her only sport. I'm still not even sure whether I enjoy running. I find talk about it self-indulgent and other runners boring. I say the best part of running is stopping and soaping up in the shower. And yet I'll be out there today pounding the pavements like everyone else; running through five boroughs, crossing a total of five bridges, attempting to conquer the ''wall'' - a concept that even after all these weeks of training amazes me.