Spout Hill Press Releases Three Novellas by Gerald Locklin (ENGL)

Spout Hill Press recently released Gerald Locklin’s Bear Trilogy: a reprint of The Case of the Missing Blue Volkswagen and the follow-up novellas Come Back, Bear and Last Tango in Long Beach.

As noted on the publisher’s website, Spout Hill Press is “dedicated to the beauty and elegance that can be found only in the novella. We publish works of this length because so many of our favorite works were written in this form. Our mission is to publish the best novellas we read, whether they are from long-established writers or those who are new to the field.”

The following descriptions of Locklin’s novellas are from the Spout Hill Press website:

The Case of the Missing Blue Volkswagen is Gerald Locklin’s classic post-modern epic of Los Angeles and gumshoe detectives. At once homage and spoof, the novella follows Bear, a private detective, as he searches for the eponymous blue Volkswagen through the meanest streets of the West Coast and into a more dangerous world, his subconscious. The novella is at once a comedy, a discussion of the detective genre, and a look into the various cultures and subcultures of the 1970s.

Come Back, Bear is Gerald Locklin’s long awaited sequel to The Case of the Missing Blue Volkswagen. Where Locklin explored the subconscious and the idea of the detective novel in the first novella of the series, here he delves into the Western novel and the idea of loyalty. Locklin is at his best here as he becomes irreverent in his relationships, his love of the classic cowboy novel, and his view of America.

Last Tango in Long Beach completes Gerald Locklin’s trilogy of post-modern novellas that began with The Case of the Missing Blue Volkswagen and continued with Come Back, Bear. In this final story, Locklin explores the 1970s sex drama but backs away from his classic humor to take an inside look at the politics of a real couple. It takes a painfully accurate view of the way life can be in the long run even with people who love each other.

Gerald Locklin is now a Professor Emeritus of English at California State University, Long Beach, where he taught from 1965 to 2007, and continues as an occasional part-time lecturer. He has published over 3000 poems, stories, articles, reviews, and interviews in periodicals, and is the author of over 125 books, chapbooks, and broadsides of poetry, fiction, and criticism. Locklin‘s poetry will appear in the upcoming Silver Birch Press Green Anthology, scheduled to be released March 15, 2013. Click here to visit Locklin’s website.