The Single Hound

With their terminal ennui, casual sex and hip detachment, Sydney-based writer Wilding's blase characters seem right out of Southern California, yet Australia, land of menacing emptiness, is the setting of these 14 stories. The best and most powerful entry, ``The Man of Slow Feeling,'' concerns an accident victim slowly regaining his senses, for whom sex is a disorienting nightmare. In ``Beach Report,'' a surreal, comic-book-like montage, beach bums welcome a massive UFO invasion as a ``surrender to a greater force.'' In the haunting, metaphysical ``See You Later,'' a man stumbles upon wraithlike figures in a valley, but we soon realize that he may be the wraith, having just died. The one-page, title story deals, among other things, with two lesbians making love in the midst of a cocktail party. When Wilding gets away from dope-smoking writers, filmmakers and other arty types, his stories become more interesting. First serial rights to Harper's. (July)