Gold Rush and Other Stories Including the Bukowski/Barfly Narrative

The persona in most of these stories is, like Locklin ( The Case of the Missing Blue Volkswagen ), a university professor living in Southern California. He is on his third marriage, loves his wife, his children and his mistress. He's recently experienced back pains that prevent him from getting as much exercise as he'd like. Naive, emotionally destitute characters often insult the reader's intelligence, as in Jack of "I Am, Am I?" who comes up with the "revolutionary idea" that "George Steinbrenner should be put in charge of hiring and firing of presidents. As owner of both the Yankees and the Confederacy, he would make America a winning team once again." "In the Presence of Greatness," recounting the premiere of the recent film Barfly , makes no discernible attempt at fiction. In six other stories, the plot is interrupted as the writer steps aside to comment on the action, employing a technique more appropriate to essays or to journal entries than to fiction. Only "The Effect of Vitamin E on Man-of-the-World Marigolds" and "The Gold Rush" are convincing--stories with protagonists perhaps furthest from Locklin himself.
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