To judge from John Gardner's 10th novel [Mickelsson's Ghosts], published shortly before his death last month in a motorcycle accident at age 49, he believed in ghosts. Also in witches, hex signs and divergent spectral assemblies, such as a government-supported group of Mafia landfillers and a Mormon-affiliated SS troop called the Sons of Dan. Although Peter Mickelsson, Gardner's primary witness to these questionable incarnations, is a philosophy instructor who might well be cast as "the nutty professor," the weird phenomena are visible to more responsible friends and colleagues as well. The author thus seemed to indicate that he indeed thought them real.

But the spooks are only used to set the scene. What, if anything, they have to do with the plot is impossible to deduce. This is a novel that asks the question: Can a man who is being sued for alimony in excess of his earnings and pursued by IRS agents, criminals and spirits, a man who impregnates a teenage prostitute, harbors a terrorist son and inadvertently commits a murder, still find happiness with the woman he loves?…

Mickelsson is full of ruminations on Life, Death, Truth, Beauty, Meaning, and Suicide, punctuated with quotations from Plato, Kant, Aristotle, Wittgenstein, and especially Nietzsche. This is a serious work by a serious intellectual, right? Well, the nutty professor certainly displays his credentials….

Gardner's own curriculum vitae was quite impressive. Author of 15 books and recipient of abundant critical acclaim, he had even sought to define art. In a collection of essays, On Moral Fiction, he wrote: "… true art is moral; it seeks to improve life, not debase it. It seeks to hold off, at least for a while, the twilight of the gods and us…. We recognize true art by its careful, thoroughly honest search for an analysis of values. It is not didactic because, instead of teaching by authority and force it explores, open-mindedly, to learn what it should teach … moral art tests values and rouses trustworthy feelings about the better and the worse in human action."

Using Gardner's criteria to assess his last work, one must ask: Is Peter Mickelsson a moral man? By conventional standards, absolutely not. The first thing we see him do is kill a dog…. He deliberately snubs a suicide-prone student by not inviting him to a party. He ignores his children.

At the same time, he does feel responsible for the lives he touches. He is ready to give his ex-wife anything and everything—making concessions far beyond his means that she hardly seems to deserve. We wonder what horrors he must have perpetrated to feel so much guilt. (The author never tells us.)… [Mickelsson] worries about the suicidal young man, he worries about his children. He worries a lot. The suggestion is that concern equals morality….

Mickelsson's moral stature is, at best, dubious. Nevertheless, he is a survivor. Retribution through suffering is his strongest claim to a happy ending. Anyone who gets through so much misery, Gardner seems to be saying, is entitled to whatever he can salvage.