wxMaxima 0.7.4/Maxima 5.18.1 on Gentoo Linux

I'm having trouble with the above configuration with symptoms similar to 
those reported by others.  Unfortunately, I either was unable to find 
any reported solutions, or possibly was too dense to recognize them.  
Anyway:

1)  An earlier version of wxMaxima / Maxima worked fine.  I 
unfortunately neglected to note what that version was.
2)  After installation of 0.7.4/5.18.1, the first invocation of wxMaxima 
worked fine.  All subsequent invocations result in the maxima engine 
dying with the report (at the bottom of the wxMaxima window) "Maxima 
process terminated."  Attempting restart of the maxima engine from 
within wxMaxima results in the same message.
3)  I've experimented with editing the "maxima=" line in .wxMaxima to 
point to the maxima executable, as well as deleting the file altogether 
with no apparent effect.
4)  Although I thought at first that xmaxima was also failing, the last 
few attempts worked fine.
5)  Command line maxima works fine.
6) 127.0.0.1  localhost appears in /etc/hosts
7) No firewalls are in use.
8)  The lisp compiler is SBCL

Suggestions?

-- Greg