William Kerrigan

CALIFORNIA HELLl, the third novel of the Ghost Killers, combines superb myth-making with fascinating historical detail. Its tone runs the gamut from eerie to hilarious. Mike Buckman and his companions journey to the Babalon Bar on old Route 66 in the desert wastelands of California, where they battle a vicious cult of Satanists. With the aid of a local Palm Springs medium and an investigative reporter for an evangelical weekly, Mike traces the cult's ancestry to Jack Parsons, pioneer in rocketry and devout follower of British magus Aleister Crowley, and to his wife, the artist and underground film star Marjorie Cameron. Due to their previous case (see THE PASSED ON), the Ghost Killers are able to secure the advice and cooperation of Crowley's spirit. At the book's climax they meet an ancient Syrian demon with a raging appetite for light.

A Tale of the Ghost Killers

California Hell

In an overview of the history of Hamlet criticism, Kerrigan argues that recent critics have done little or nothing to elucidate the play, and he suggests ways in which the abandoned tradition of Hamlet commentary might still inspire fruitful approaches to the play. He explores the phrase "good night" in terms of the play's nocturnal preoccupations of grief, melancholy, haunting, crime, and death.

Hamlet's Perfection

John Milton

This reading of Milton juxtaposes the poet's theology and Freud's account of the Oedipus complex in ways that yield both new understanding of Milton and a model for psychoanalytic interpretation of literature. The book ranges widely through the art and life of Milton, including extensive discussions of his theological irregularities and the significance, medical and symbolic, he assigned to his blindness. Kerrigan analyzes the oedipal aspect of Milton's religion; examines the nature of the Miltonic godhead; studies Milton's analogies linking human, angelic, and cosmic bodies; and explores Milton's symbolism of home. In a commanding demonstration, Kerrigan delineates how the great epic and the psyche of its author bestow meaning on each other.

On the Psychogenesis of Paradise Lost

The Sacred Complex

Weaving together the stories of the Old World apple in America and the life and myth of John Chapman, Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard casts new light on both.

A Cultural History

Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard

Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard illuminates the meaning of Johnny "Appleseed" Chapman's life and the environmental and cultural significance of the plant he propagated. Creating a startling new portrait of the eccentric apple tree planter, William Kerrigan carefully dissects the oral tradition of the Appleseed myth and draws upon material from archives and local historical societies across New England and the Midwest. The character of Johnny Appleseed stands apart from other frontier heroes like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, who employed violence against Native Americans and nature to remake the West. His apple trees, nonetheless, were a central part of the agro-ecological revolution at the heart of that transformation. Yet men like Chapman, who planted trees from seed rather than grafting, ultimately came under assault from agricultural reformers who promoted commercial fruit stock and were determined to extend national markets into the West. Over the course of his life John Chapman was transformed from a colporteur of a new ecological world to a curious relic of a pre-market one. Weaving together the stories of the Old World apple in America and the life and myth of John Chapman, Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard casts new light on both. -- James Gilbert, University of Maryland

William Kerrigan

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