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....