Mickelsson's Ghosts, published in 1982, is American writer John Gardner's ninth novel. It was the final novel published during Gardner’s lifetime.
Synopsis
On the “Acknowledgments” page of the novel, Gardner says that the town of Susquehanna, Pennsylvania is the “fictionalized setting of most of this novel’s action.” The main protagonist is Peter Mickelsson, at onetime “a frequently written about football player,” but now a Professor of Philosophy at Binghamton University. Mickelsson is driven, opinionated, probably a drunk, definitely bankrupt, and perhaps is losing his sanity.
During his personal descent into some kind of madness or dark night of the soul, which he seems powerless to stop, Mickelsson buys a farmhouse in northern Pennsylvania's Endless Mountains. Purportedly, it was once owned by Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion. The farmhouse seems to be haunted by the ghosts of an incestuous family.
Meanwhile, the self-destructive Mickelsson has several affairs including one with Donnie, a young teenage prostitute who becomes pregnant; and another affair with a fellow faculty member who attempts to help him put his life back together. and were “tepid, if not harsh,” as Gardner’s biographer Barry Silesky has noted. For example, Kirkus Reviews called the book "a fascinating, oddly depressing failure".
Since the initial “mixed” and “tepid” reception of Mickelsson's Ghosts in the early 1980s, the novel has slowly gained in stature, and now is viewed as one of Gardner’s important novelistic achievements.