- Paperback: 590 pages
- Publisher: Vintage (April 12 1985)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0394729382
- ISBN-13: 978-0394729381
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.5 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 499 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,445,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
The critically acclaimed final masterwork of John Gardner is an American novel haunted with macabre and cerebral elements.
The final novel by John Gardner, "Mickelsson's Ghosts," originally published in 1982 just months before his untimely death in a motorcycle accident, is a tour de force. The protagonist Peter Mickelsson, a former star philosophy professor at Brown, relocates to Binghamton University. On the verge of bankruptcy, separated from his wife, in questionable mental health, and drinking heavily, Mickelsson decides to buy a country house in northeastern Pennsylvania. What he encounters there are impassioned and shameless love affairs (one of which results in a regrettable pregnancy), a Mormon extremist cult, small town mythologies, the robbery of a robber, multiple murders, the ghosts of an incestuous family, Plato, and our hero's own possible insanity. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
About the Author
John Gardner, one of the authors of the well-known James Bond stories, was born in Northumberland, England on November 20, 1926. He attended Cambridge University and was a member of the Royal Marines. He became a journalist and a critic after leaving the service. Gardner's first novel was "The Liquidator" (1964) and it introduced the character Boysie Oakes. In the 1970's, he wrote a series of novels known as the Moriarty Journals, which brought back Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes' nemesis. In the 1980's, the holders of the James Bond copyright commissioned him to begin a new series with 007. The first Bond novel written by Gardner was "License Renewed" (1981), which was a success. From that point on, Gardner produced a new Bond novel every year, with the exception of 1985, until he retired from the series in 1996. The Bond titles that followed were "For Special Services" (1982), "Icebreaker" (1983), "Role of Honour" (1984), "Nobody Lives Forever" (1986), "No Deals, Mr. Bond" (1987), "Scorpius" (1988), "Win, Lose, or Die" (1989), "Brokenclaw" (1990), "The Man from Barbarossa" (1991), "Death is Forever" (1992), "Never Send Flowers" (1993), "Seafire" (1994), and "Cold" (aka Cold Fall) (1996).
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Fiction,
By disco75 "disco75" (State College, PA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: MICKELSSON'S GHOST (Paperback)
I've read this book seven times since it was published and have over the years hoarded copies because it is so difficult to find (and thus lend to those seeking a good read). It is dense, complex, thought provoking, and even frustrating. Gardner thrusts us immediately into the mind, emotions, and experiences of the protagonist. He creates an idea-filled treatise on modern life and its struggles, a mystery, a psychological ghost story, and a funny excoriation of academia. It deserves more exposure than it got, but perhaps demands more of the reader than most want to give to a book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gloomy, brooding, deeply philosophical - no "beach book",
By
This review is from: MICKELSSON'S GHOST (Paperback)
It isn't difficult to understand why this novel is out of print. As one of the characters remarks, "(People) don't *want* to think. People want secure, happy families, pleasant barbecue parties, predictable-in-advance nights for bowling and the opera." Well, you're not going to get those kinds of things in this claustrophobic, dense novel about a man's descent into insanity. Peter Mickelsson, separated, with a son on the run and an estranged daughter, is losing control of his life. Or has given up *trying* to control it - he can't face the daily tasks of paying bills, teaching classes, or dealing with the thousand minutia that occupy the rest of us. Instead, he allows himself the luxury of endless introspective episodes, dwelling at length on Nietzsche, Luther, occasionally Wittgenstein, or Kant. His career is failing, the IRS is breathing down his neck, and he can't afford his next meal. So he does what no one else would consider - purchases a rambling farmhouse in the Endless Mountains and sets to restoring it. Mickelsson is by no means a sympathetic character, but in his refusal to face his troubles and the increasingly desperate world that envelops him, he could be a metaphor for society at large, eager for distraction, never actively considering the consequences of his actions in what is not an actual pursuit of pleasure as it is a passive *allowing* things to happen. He concludes, "Action was a problem. What was one to do if he knew every movement of the spirit was poisoned at the source?" Ah, the anguish, the soul-searching! Great, weighty BLOCKS on what it is to be human, what sorrows are ours, "Such was the fruit of all those eons of evolution, from hydrogen to consciousness: galaxies wailing their sorrow. Music of the spheres." Search this one out. Read it on winter nights. It may offer some fuel for your own meditations. Serious books too often seem preachy, or worse, have an all-too-obvious agenda, are shrill, haranguing. What makes Mickelsson so absorbing is that he is UNcertain. That alone is remarkable anymore.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gloomy, brooding, deeply philosophical - no "beach book",
By Mary Shanks (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
This review is from: MICKELSSON'S GHOSTS (Paperback)
It isn't difficult to understand why this novel is out of print. As one of the characters remarks, "(People) don't *want* to think. People want secure, happy families, pleasant barbecue parties, predictable-in-advance nights for bowling and the opera." Well, you're not going to get those kinds of things in this claustrophobic, dense novel about a man's descent into insanity. Peter Mickelsson, separated, with a son on the run and an estranged daughter, is losing control of his life. Or has given up *trying* to control it - he can't face the daily tasks of paying bills, teaching classes, or dealing with the thousand minutia that occupy the rest of us. Instead, he allows himself the luxury of endless introspective episodes, dwelling at length on Nietzsche, Luther, occasionally Wittgenstein, or Kant. His career is failing, the IRS is breathing down his neck, and he can't afford his next meal. So he does what no one else would consider - purchases a rambling farmhouse in the Endless Mountains and sets to restoring it. Mickelsson is by no means a sympathetic character, but in his refusal to face his troubles and the increasingly desperate world that envelops him, he could be a metaphor for society at large, eager for distraction, never actively considering the consequences of his actions in what is not an actual pursuit of pleasure as it is a passive *allowing* things to happen. He concludes, "Action was a problem. What was one to do if he knew every movement of the spirit was poisoned at the source?" Ah, the anguish, the soul-searching! Great, weighty BLOCKS on what it is to be human, what sorrows are ours, "Such was the fruit of all those eons of evolution, from hydrogen to consciousness: galaxies wailing their sorrow. Music of the spheres." Search this one out. Read it on winter nights. It may offer some fuel for your own meditations. Serious books too often seem preachy, or worse, have an all-too-obvious agenda, are shrill, haranguing. What makes Mickelsson so absorbing is that he is UNcertain. That alone is remarkable anymore.
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