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.

Often moving and emotionally nuanced, at other times the author's language is topical and essay-like. Satirical passages,...