High Priest of California

High Priest of California is a the first published novel by Charles Ray Willeford III (January 2 1919 - March 27 1988). Willeford was an American writer. An author of fiction poetry autobiography and literary criticism. [In his novels] Willeford created a world in which the predatory cannibalism of American capitalism provides the model for all human relations in which the American success ethic mercilessly casts aside all who are unable or unwilling to compete and in which the innate human appreciation of artistic beauty is cruelly distorted by the exigencies of mass culture. (Cochran 2000)