The Wilderness Singers

A nearly forgotten literary lion in winter holding forth in a nursing home in New York City while a pair of media players hover around him mysteriously; a frustrated would-be impresario struggling on the fringes of nineteen-fifties popular music; a persevering cat whose adventures seem to embody a mysterious metaphor of survival; a buttoned-down engineer and his desperate gamble; these and other characters inhabit an unusual debut collection of fictional writing.<p> Often moving and emotionally nuanced at other times the author's language is topical and essay-like. Satirical passages provoked by the cultural scene or world events are unusually perceptive and savage. Antic humor co-exists with the dramatic in this collection which features a short novel and stories.