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Harlot's Ghost
With unprecedented scope and consummate skill, Norman Mailer unfolds a rich and riveting epic of an American spy. Harry Hubbard is the son and godson of CIA legends. His journey to learn the secrets of his society—and his own past—takes him through the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the “momentous catastrophe” of the Kennedy assassination. All the while, Hubbard is haunted by women who were loved by both his godfather and President Kennedy. Featuring a tapestry of unforgettable characters both real and imagined, Harlot’s Ghost is a panoramic achievement in the tradition of Tolstoy, Melville, and Balzac, a triumph of Mailer’s literary prowess.
Praise for Harlot’s Ghost
“[Norman Mailer is] the right man to exalt the history of the CIA into something better than history.”—Anthony Burgess, The Washington Post Book World
“Elegantly written and filled with almost electric tension . . . When I returned from the world of Harlot’s Ghost to the present I wished to be enveloped again by Mailer’s imagination.”—Robert Wilson, USA Today
“Immense, fascinating, and in large part brilliant.”—Salman Rushdie, The Independent on Sunday
“A towering creation . . . a fiction as real and as possible as actual history.”—The New York Times
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
Praise for Harlot’s Ghost
“[Norman Mailer is] the right man to exalt the history of the CIA into something better than history.”—Anthony Burgess, The Washington Post Book World
“Elegantly written and filled with almost electric tension . . . When I returned from the world of Harlot’s Ghost to the present I wished to be enveloped again by Mailer’s imagination.”—Robert Wilson, USA Today
“Immense, fascinating, and in large part brilliant.”—Salman Rushdie, The Independent on Sunday
“A towering creation . . . a fiction as real and as possible as actual history.”—The New York Times
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
1191 pages, Paperback
First published October 2, 1991
563 people are currently reading
4150 people want to read
About the author
Norman Mailer
353 books1,443 followersNorman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.
Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, but which covers the essay to the nonfiction novel. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. In 1955, Mailer, together with Ed Fancher and Dan Wolf, first published The Village Voice, which began as an arts- and politics-oriented weekly newspaper initially distributed in Greenwich Village. In 2005, he won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from The National Book Foundation.
Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, but which covers the essay to the nonfiction novel. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. In 1955, Mailer, together with Ed Fancher and Dan Wolf, first published The Village Voice, which began as an arts- and politics-oriented weekly newspaper initially distributed in Greenwich Village. In 2005, he won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from The National Book Foundation.
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May 11, 2024
“On a late-winter evening in 1983, while driving through fog along the Maine coast, recollections of old campfires began to drift into the March mist, and I thought of the Abnaki Indians of the Algonquin tribe who dwelt near Bangor a thousand years ago.”
- Norman Mailer, from the opening lines of Harlot’s Ghost
That opening line should have been a warning.
This is an epic novel about the history of the Central Intelligence Agency. But by all means, let us start a thousand years ago, with the Algonquin of Maine. Hell, we have well over a thousand pages to go – till the inconclusive end – so we might as well start at the beginning.
The very beginning.
***
In a book riddled with diversion after digression after redirection, until the detour becomes the plot, and the plot is but a dream of a giant turtle perched upon a tiny rock in an alternate universe where novels move toward resolution, we might as well start as far away from the point as possible.
My mom always said I was stubborn. I suppose this is a thing all parents say to their kids. Now, though, I have my proof: I finished this.
I finished Harlot’s Ghost even though it is absolutely terrible. I finished Harlot’s Ghost despite it being the most Normal Mailer-ish thing Norman Mailer could ever have pulled from his fevered mind. (It is almost a Norman Mailer parody). I finished Harlot’s Ghost despite the half-assed psychoanalyzing, the ridiculous nesting-egg framework, the laughably pretentious prose (I stopped counting the times one character told another to “expatiate”), the utterly unlikable characters, and the fact that this is boring.
Yes, I said it. The word I hate. The word I loathe to use in book reviews. The word I hate in life. When my kids tell me they’re bored, I tell them that no one who can read – and who has time – can ever be bored.
As with so many of the parenting things I say, this turned out to be so, so wrong.
Harlot’s Ghost is boring.
Think about this: Norman Mailer wrote a 1,000-plus page novel about the CIA, covering the Cold War in Berlin, the Bay of Pigs, and Operation Mongoose, and it is as far away from interesting as is possible.
More than that, Mailer made it about himself. This is Norman Mailer writing a novel that would make people stop and think: “Oh, how brilliant he is!” Now that I’ve written that down, it occurred to me that I should have expected this.
Anyway, this is literary onanism of the most insufferable sort. Yet I finished, because – as I mentioned above – I am stubborn.
***
This is the story of Harrick (Harry) Hubbard, as told by Harrick Hubbard, in the most indulgent way that can be imagined.
We start at the end, which in this case is 1983, and Harry is driving back from a tryst with his mistress. Waiting at home is his wife, Kittredge, who we soon learn Harry stole from his CIA mentor (and James Jesus Angleton stand-in) Hugh Montague (codename: Harlot). As he drives, there is a meandering discourse on Harry’s family history, a pirate ghost, and ruminations about sex with his mistress. When he arrives, however, he finds out that something has happened to Hugh. Soon enough, Harry is on a plane to the USSR, carrying with him his memoir.
It is his memoir that provides the bulk of this story. But for Mailer, a book within a book is not enough. Accordingly, he decides to narrate much of Harry’s story in epistolary fashion, as a series of lengthy (like, Tolstoy-length) letters between Harry and Kittredge (and sometimes, between Harry and his dad, fellow CIA officer Cal). Take that Joseph Conrad! Your nested narratives have nothing on Mailer!
There are so many problems with this conceit, it’s hard to know where to begin.
***
So, let’s begin with the sheer stupidity of telling such a massive, detailed, discursive tale by structuring it as a series of letters between two navel-gazing narcissists. No one writes this much. Wait, that’s not true. No one who is not Norman Mailer, writing his longest novel – which is saying something – writes this much. There is a point when Harry is supposed to be preparing for the Bay of Pigs, but instead explains everything that’s going on in a “letter” to Kittredge. At one point, without irony, he tells Kittredge he is so tired that he can barely stay awake. I laughed out loud, in a derisive manner. Are you kidding me, Harry? You’re tired? Here’s an idea: STOP WRITING THIS STUPID LETTER AND GO TO BED!
Sorry for yelling. But this shows the depth of this novel’s lack of awareness. No wonder the Bay of Pigs failed. Apparently, the case officers were too busy over-sharing with their best friends’ wives to pay attention to invasion details.
***
Another huge problem is familiar to the epistolary genre: it takes you out of the action. By filtering everything through letters between Kittredge and Harry, we seldom get to witness events up close. Indeed, much of the time, Kittredge and Harry aren’t even participants. They’re just passing on hearsay. For example, there is an extended (see: endless) sequence involving a woman named Modene Murphy (based on Judith Campbell Exner) who is having an affair with JFK, and hanging out with the mob. We never get inside Modene’s head. We never follow her as she meets Sinatra, has sex with Kennedy, or dates Sam Giancana. Instead, we are subjected to a series of wiretaps between Murphy and her friend, in which Murphy describes what happened in great detail. Thus, instead of a firsthand story, we have a letter about a discussion about something that happened somewhere else. That’s three layers of separation between the reader and the drama.
***
The most incredible thing about the letters, though, is that you’re supposed to believe that two putatively excellent CIA agents would write everything down on paper (including top secret intelligence), and pass that classified information on to another person using the U.S. Postal Service. Mailer, in his afterword, pats himself on the back about how accurate his novel is, about how much inside dish he unearthed, and how his fiction is closer to the truth than anyone dares. Ha! Besides being insidious (there isn’t a conspiracy theory that isn’t passed off as gospel, and Mailer is basically saying he has the inside dope they’re all true), it’s shockingly implausible. You have three CIA officers (Harry, Cal, and Kittredge) all ignoring the most basic trade craft (not to mention breaking the law) by listing our national secrets on paper and then passing them to third parties. Through the postal service. As though they were sending Christmas cards rather than engaging in borderline-treasonable activity.
***
This wouldn’t be such a big deal, perhaps, if the story was any good. It’s not, however. Harlot’s Ghost mainly fails because nothing happens. There is no excitement, no thrills, no nothing, really.
Well, we learn a lot about Harry’s sex life. When he talks about his time at an elite prep school, the focus is on his sexual abuse at the hands of a chaplain. When he talks about his training at the Farm, he is unable to describe a class in lock-picking without comparing it to the physical act of love. When Harry goes to Berlin, he ends up in a gay club, is propositioned by fellow agent Dix Butler, and gets gonorrhea (no detail is spared). Most of his time in Argentina is devoted to an affair he has with another man’s wife. The spy games I expected never materialized.
For that, please pick up Robert Littel’s The Company. Both books cover the same territory, share many of the same characters, and are as large as well-fed babies. The Company, though, is propulsive, exquisitely plotted, and seems to know the first thing about intelligence work, e.g., a good case agent doesn’t mail top secret info to non-cleared individuals using first-class mail, just because he is a raging egoist who doesn’t know the difference between sex and lock-picking.
***
No matter how bad this got (and it got pretty bad), I plunged on. That’s due to the stubbornness I mentioned above. It was also due to a need to know how it ended, simply for my peace of mind.
I didn't even get that.
The final words of Harlot’s Ghost are: “To be continued.”
That’s right. Despite the prodigious length of this exercise, Mailer doesn’t come close to finishing. There was meant to be a sequel. Unfortunately, life is seldom long enough for all our plans and projects.
I doubt I would’ve picked up a sequel, even if one had been produced. After all, since I’ve put this down, I’ve never once given a half-second’s thought to Harry, Kittredge, Harlot, or the rest. Nevertheless, the worst part of this truly horrible reading experience might be the fact that I’ll never learn the conclusion to a story I don’t care about in the least.
I don’t give out one-star ratings very often. The reason is that I typically pick a book I think I’m going to like, if not love. After all, I’m not a fast reader, and my time is valuable (at least to me). Every so often, though, I end up taking a wrong turn on Literary Lane and arrive at a blind alley that also happens to be on fire.
When that fire has been lit by Norman Mailer, it gives me a bit of pause. I’ve read many reviews describing with rapture the luminosity of Mailer’s genius. I have started to wonder if perhaps I missed something. It is possible.
But there’s no way in hell I’m going back to find out.
- Norman Mailer, from the opening lines of Harlot’s Ghost
That opening line should have been a warning.
This is an epic novel about the history of the Central Intelligence Agency. But by all means, let us start a thousand years ago, with the Algonquin of Maine. Hell, we have well over a thousand pages to go – till the inconclusive end – so we might as well start at the beginning.
The very beginning.
***
In a book riddled with diversion after digression after redirection, until the detour becomes the plot, and the plot is but a dream of a giant turtle perched upon a tiny rock in an alternate universe where novels move toward resolution, we might as well start as far away from the point as possible.
My mom always said I was stubborn. I suppose this is a thing all parents say to their kids. Now, though, I have my proof: I finished this.
I finished Harlot’s Ghost even though it is absolutely terrible. I finished Harlot’s Ghost despite it being the most Normal Mailer-ish thing Norman Mailer could ever have pulled from his fevered mind. (It is almost a Norman Mailer parody). I finished Harlot’s Ghost despite the half-assed psychoanalyzing, the ridiculous nesting-egg framework, the laughably pretentious prose (I stopped counting the times one character told another to “expatiate”), the utterly unlikable characters, and the fact that this is boring.
Yes, I said it. The word I hate. The word I loathe to use in book reviews. The word I hate in life. When my kids tell me they’re bored, I tell them that no one who can read – and who has time – can ever be bored.
As with so many of the parenting things I say, this turned out to be so, so wrong.
Harlot’s Ghost is boring.
Think about this: Norman Mailer wrote a 1,000-plus page novel about the CIA, covering the Cold War in Berlin, the Bay of Pigs, and Operation Mongoose, and it is as far away from interesting as is possible.
More than that, Mailer made it about himself. This is Norman Mailer writing a novel that would make people stop and think: “Oh, how brilliant he is!” Now that I’ve written that down, it occurred to me that I should have expected this.
Anyway, this is literary onanism of the most insufferable sort. Yet I finished, because – as I mentioned above – I am stubborn.
***
This is the story of Harrick (Harry) Hubbard, as told by Harrick Hubbard, in the most indulgent way that can be imagined.
We start at the end, which in this case is 1983, and Harry is driving back from a tryst with his mistress. Waiting at home is his wife, Kittredge, who we soon learn Harry stole from his CIA mentor (and James Jesus Angleton stand-in) Hugh Montague (codename: Harlot). As he drives, there is a meandering discourse on Harry’s family history, a pirate ghost, and ruminations about sex with his mistress. When he arrives, however, he finds out that something has happened to Hugh. Soon enough, Harry is on a plane to the USSR, carrying with him his memoir.
It is his memoir that provides the bulk of this story. But for Mailer, a book within a book is not enough. Accordingly, he decides to narrate much of Harry’s story in epistolary fashion, as a series of lengthy (like, Tolstoy-length) letters between Harry and Kittredge (and sometimes, between Harry and his dad, fellow CIA officer Cal). Take that Joseph Conrad! Your nested narratives have nothing on Mailer!
There are so many problems with this conceit, it’s hard to know where to begin.
***
So, let’s begin with the sheer stupidity of telling such a massive, detailed, discursive tale by structuring it as a series of letters between two navel-gazing narcissists. No one writes this much. Wait, that’s not true. No one who is not Norman Mailer, writing his longest novel – which is saying something – writes this much. There is a point when Harry is supposed to be preparing for the Bay of Pigs, but instead explains everything that’s going on in a “letter” to Kittredge. At one point, without irony, he tells Kittredge he is so tired that he can barely stay awake. I laughed out loud, in a derisive manner. Are you kidding me, Harry? You’re tired? Here’s an idea: STOP WRITING THIS STUPID LETTER AND GO TO BED!
Sorry for yelling. But this shows the depth of this novel’s lack of awareness. No wonder the Bay of Pigs failed. Apparently, the case officers were too busy over-sharing with their best friends’ wives to pay attention to invasion details.
***
Another huge problem is familiar to the epistolary genre: it takes you out of the action. By filtering everything through letters between Kittredge and Harry, we seldom get to witness events up close. Indeed, much of the time, Kittredge and Harry aren’t even participants. They’re just passing on hearsay. For example, there is an extended (see: endless) sequence involving a woman named Modene Murphy (based on Judith Campbell Exner) who is having an affair with JFK, and hanging out with the mob. We never get inside Modene’s head. We never follow her as she meets Sinatra, has sex with Kennedy, or dates Sam Giancana. Instead, we are subjected to a series of wiretaps between Murphy and her friend, in which Murphy describes what happened in great detail. Thus, instead of a firsthand story, we have a letter about a discussion about something that happened somewhere else. That’s three layers of separation between the reader and the drama.
***
The most incredible thing about the letters, though, is that you’re supposed to believe that two putatively excellent CIA agents would write everything down on paper (including top secret intelligence), and pass that classified information on to another person using the U.S. Postal Service. Mailer, in his afterword, pats himself on the back about how accurate his novel is, about how much inside dish he unearthed, and how his fiction is closer to the truth than anyone dares. Ha! Besides being insidious (there isn’t a conspiracy theory that isn’t passed off as gospel, and Mailer is basically saying he has the inside dope they’re all true), it’s shockingly implausible. You have three CIA officers (Harry, Cal, and Kittredge) all ignoring the most basic trade craft (not to mention breaking the law) by listing our national secrets on paper and then passing them to third parties. Through the postal service. As though they were sending Christmas cards rather than engaging in borderline-treasonable activity.
***
This wouldn’t be such a big deal, perhaps, if the story was any good. It’s not, however. Harlot’s Ghost mainly fails because nothing happens. There is no excitement, no thrills, no nothing, really.
Well, we learn a lot about Harry’s sex life. When he talks about his time at an elite prep school, the focus is on his sexual abuse at the hands of a chaplain. When he talks about his training at the Farm, he is unable to describe a class in lock-picking without comparing it to the physical act of love. When Harry goes to Berlin, he ends up in a gay club, is propositioned by fellow agent Dix Butler, and gets gonorrhea (no detail is spared). Most of his time in Argentina is devoted to an affair he has with another man’s wife. The spy games I expected never materialized.
For that, please pick up Robert Littel’s The Company. Both books cover the same territory, share many of the same characters, and are as large as well-fed babies. The Company, though, is propulsive, exquisitely plotted, and seems to know the first thing about intelligence work, e.g., a good case agent doesn’t mail top secret info to non-cleared individuals using first-class mail, just because he is a raging egoist who doesn’t know the difference between sex and lock-picking.
***
No matter how bad this got (and it got pretty bad), I plunged on. That’s due to the stubbornness I mentioned above. It was also due to a need to know how it ended, simply for my peace of mind.
I didn't even get that.
The final words of Harlot’s Ghost are: “To be continued.”
That’s right. Despite the prodigious length of this exercise, Mailer doesn’t come close to finishing. There was meant to be a sequel. Unfortunately, life is seldom long enough for all our plans and projects.
I doubt I would’ve picked up a sequel, even if one had been produced. After all, since I’ve put this down, I’ve never once given a half-second’s thought to Harry, Kittredge, Harlot, or the rest. Nevertheless, the worst part of this truly horrible reading experience might be the fact that I’ll never learn the conclusion to a story I don’t care about in the least.
I don’t give out one-star ratings very often. The reason is that I typically pick a book I think I’m going to like, if not love. After all, I’m not a fast reader, and my time is valuable (at least to me). Every so often, though, I end up taking a wrong turn on Literary Lane and arrive at a blind alley that also happens to be on fire.
When that fire has been lit by Norman Mailer, it gives me a bit of pause. I’ve read many reviews describing with rapture the luminosity of Mailer’s genius. I have started to wonder if perhaps I missed something. It is possible.
But there’s no way in hell I’m going back to find out.
February 28, 2021
Harlot’s Ghost begins like a tale of the haunted house…
Living on the dark side… Norman Mailer is perfectly knowledgeable about theory and practice of espionage… He knows the ropes…
What is the measure of evil? Which evil is greater… Can evil defeat other evil? One evil clandestinely fights the other and Norman Mailer turns this mad war into a sinister comedy…
President fucks, senators hate, chiefs conspire, generals rave, officials blunder, mobsters plunder, agents booze, spies betray, counterspies defect… All the attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro fail so the spectres out of the secret service end up murdering their own president…
We live in the haunted world and uncalled-for invisible ghosts look over our shoulder and learn all our secrets.
The sunless sky weighs over us, and a week can go by when we do not speak. That is loneliness kin to the despair of a convivial drinker who has not poured a glass for days. It is then that ghosts begin to visit the Keep. Our fine dwelling is hospitable to ghosts.
Living on the dark side… Norman Mailer is perfectly knowledgeable about theory and practice of espionage… He knows the ropes…
All the same, I must take one more pass at our instruction in the evils of Communism. Such studies may have lacked the zest of tradecraft, but they managed to convince me that any mischief we could work on our evil opponent left us clearly on the right side. I think that was the allure of tradecraft. Is there any state more agreeable than living and working like a wicked angel?
What is the measure of evil? Which evil is greater… Can evil defeat other evil? One evil clandestinely fights the other and Norman Mailer turns this mad war into a sinister comedy…
“I do not know that I would wish to live in your empire. Sometimes I view it as a community of bees who cling to the leader in an ecstasy of enthusiasm and patriotism.”
President fucks, senators hate, chiefs conspire, generals rave, officials blunder, mobsters plunder, agents booze, spies betray, counterspies defect… All the attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro fail so the spectres out of the secret service end up murdering their own president…
Profiteers, murderers, patriots, turncoats, informers, drug dealers, and double agents all swam in the same soup, and I became depressed once more over my competence to deal with such people.
We live in the haunted world and uncalled-for invisible ghosts look over our shoulder and learn all our secrets.
December 23, 2007
Mailer, check.
Too long, check.
Creaky structure, check.
Weird pseudo-psycho theorizing, check.
Obsession with buggery, check.
Tin ear for female characters, check.
BRILLIANT, check.
Yes, brilliant. Mailer's CIA novel, through to the Bay of Pigs, Cuban missile crisis, and Kennedy assassination. 1200 pages, give or take (who's counting at this length?). No minimalism here. This man knew how to breathe deep, to write expansively, to be outrageous, to give the finger to the so-called distinctions between fiction and fact, to imagine his way into that uptight wannabe-machismo world of "intelligence" (the quotation marks inordinately well deserved). In Le Carre, they always seem to know what they're doing. That's the real fiction. Mailer demonstrates in great detail exactly how screwed up they were (and are).
True, he was often an ass, but what a splendid one. I'm sorry he's not around any more.
Too long, check.
Creaky structure, check.
Weird pseudo-psycho theorizing, check.
Obsession with buggery, check.
Tin ear for female characters, check.
BRILLIANT, check.
Yes, brilliant. Mailer's CIA novel, through to the Bay of Pigs, Cuban missile crisis, and Kennedy assassination. 1200 pages, give or take (who's counting at this length?). No minimalism here. This man knew how to breathe deep, to write expansively, to be outrageous, to give the finger to the so-called distinctions between fiction and fact, to imagine his way into that uptight wannabe-machismo world of "intelligence" (the quotation marks inordinately well deserved). In Le Carre, they always seem to know what they're doing. That's the real fiction. Mailer demonstrates in great detail exactly how screwed up they were (and are).
True, he was often an ass, but what a splendid one. I'm sorry he's not around any more.
February 27, 2011
This post-modern novel by Mailer is inarguably the most informed novel of the CIA. This is not callow, veneered, cinema-informed CIA, or any of the "tell-all" non-fiction embellishments of CIA activity. This is a psychological study of the necessary duality of agents, teased from the central soul of the duality of humankind. Mailer has a comprehensive insider's knowledge of the structure and workings of the CIA.
Paradox lives on every layer; the characters in this fiction, other than the main characters, are people such as Howard Hunt, Che Guevara, Marilyn Monroe, John and Robert Kennedy, Allen Dulles--and the list goes on. Mailer cheekily provides notes at the end of the book stating that changing the names to fictional ones would cause readers to say, "That is really Howard Hunt," or, "John F Kennedy," etc., "He just changed their names." By using their known names, he expects readers to say the opposite. There is a very thin membrane separating historical fiction from fact. With cozening and cunning guile, Mailer writes about cozening and cunning in the CIA.
The prose is gorgeous, with sharp imagery, layered references, wry observations, and poetic paragraphs.
This novel also has Mailer's most fully realized female character, Kittredge. She is a CIA psychologist specializing in duality of spirit in both academics and in her career. The public self, the secret self and the inner conflicts that cloud an agent's ethics and takes over his soul are well-developed in Kittredge, as well as in the characters of Harlot and Harry.
This book contains the intricacies of Cold War politics and treachery. I was deeply fraught after reading about Operation Mongoose (as well as other subversive operations) in all its explication. It allowed me to connect the dots better on the enigma of 9/11. I was deeply disturbed, enlightened, and exhilarated to read a colossal, mammoth, unafraid novel about how trespasses into other minds and other countries are accomplished; this does not exclude state-sponsored terrorism by our government.
This is astonishing literature and a spine-tingling filter remover.
Eric Roth (screenwriter of Forrest Gump and The Insider), heavily based the movie, The Good Shepherd, on material from Harlot's Ghost.
Paradox lives on every layer; the characters in this fiction, other than the main characters, are people such as Howard Hunt, Che Guevara, Marilyn Monroe, John and Robert Kennedy, Allen Dulles--and the list goes on. Mailer cheekily provides notes at the end of the book stating that changing the names to fictional ones would cause readers to say, "That is really Howard Hunt," or, "John F Kennedy," etc., "He just changed their names." By using their known names, he expects readers to say the opposite. There is a very thin membrane separating historical fiction from fact. With cozening and cunning guile, Mailer writes about cozening and cunning in the CIA.
The prose is gorgeous, with sharp imagery, layered references, wry observations, and poetic paragraphs.
This novel also has Mailer's most fully realized female character, Kittredge. She is a CIA psychologist specializing in duality of spirit in both academics and in her career. The public self, the secret self and the inner conflicts that cloud an agent's ethics and takes over his soul are well-developed in Kittredge, as well as in the characters of Harlot and Harry.
This book contains the intricacies of Cold War politics and treachery. I was deeply fraught after reading about Operation Mongoose (as well as other subversive operations) in all its explication. It allowed me to connect the dots better on the enigma of 9/11. I was deeply disturbed, enlightened, and exhilarated to read a colossal, mammoth, unafraid novel about how trespasses into other minds and other countries are accomplished; this does not exclude state-sponsored terrorism by our government.
This is astonishing literature and a spine-tingling filter remover.
Eric Roth (screenwriter of Forrest Gump and The Insider), heavily based the movie, The Good Shepherd, on material from Harlot's Ghost.
July 25, 2023
I am writing this review from memory. I read most of Harlot's Ghost in seedy bars in Belapur, Navi Mumbai around 2009-10, under the influence of Blue Riband Duet gin. This book was huge. Mailer assembles a team of important historical events connected (or conjured by) to the CIA. They include the Bay of Pigs incident, the Cuban revolution, the Kennedy assassination and tangle with the Italian mafia. One of the CIA operations involved turning two high ranking KGB officers in love with the same woman against each other. One of them was sleeping with the other's wife. The CIA lets the husband know. Mailer paints all these major historical events with his grandness and knowledge and often thwarts the excitement with his tendency for dullness.
I liked the parts with Harry Hubbard (the CIA agent protagonist), his mentor Hugh Montague (Harry steals his wife Kittredge) and his father Cal Hubbard. Their scenes together are full of vigorous and inspiring male competition and achievement.
The epistolary bits where Harry hits on his mentor's wife Kittredge through long unremarkable letters were tough to get through. I remember the scene where the protagonist and Kittredge walk out of a Lenny Bruce show, offended at his jokes.
This is a novel for which Mailer promised a sequel but did not deliver. The Castle in the Forest was another one.
I want to read it again one day. I remember loving the first two hundred pages or so. But the remaining nine hundred pages were hard work. I am glad I read it though.
I liked the parts with Harry Hubbard (the CIA agent protagonist), his mentor Hugh Montague (Harry steals his wife Kittredge) and his father Cal Hubbard. Their scenes together are full of vigorous and inspiring male competition and achievement.
The epistolary bits where Harry hits on his mentor's wife Kittredge through long unremarkable letters were tough to get through. I remember the scene where the protagonist and Kittredge walk out of a Lenny Bruce show, offended at his jokes.
This is a novel for which Mailer promised a sequel but did not deliver. The Castle in the Forest was another one.
I want to read it again one day. I remember loving the first two hundred pages or so. But the remaining nine hundred pages were hard work. I am glad I read it though.
Want to read
August 22, 2025NOTES:
The subject matter here is mid to late 20th century global espionage. Cold War, the works. It is beautifully written historical fiction.
The novel, not surprisingly, is pervaded by ghosts. The narrator‘s wife from time to time talks to her dead mother through a bedroom wall.
"I love my mother," she said to me, "and it's a grace that I am able to talk to her.” (p. 48)
The two, both spies, have extra sensory connection and sometimes sense when the other’s predicament is perilous. During one such ordeal, when she is bleeding from a suicide attempt, he races to rescue her, thus legitimating this aspect of the novel.
Mailer has a way of writing about the engendering of thought that feels new (but probably isn’t):
“Standing in our empty bedroom, my thoughts collided face to face with Damon Butler . . . , first mate to Augustus Parr, two and a half centuries dead. This unholy surprise visited me at this moment neither as a ghost nor a voice, but as an image so deep within my mind that for an instant I felt occupied by another presence: I saw what he had seen.” (p. 90)
In its savvy alternations from gravity to humor, it reminds me of Shakespeare. One Falstaff here is the narrator’s father, an old OSS spy. Think a blundering and boisterous and barrel-chested American version of 007.
Oops, I’ve set it aside. Will try to return and finish.
The subject matter here is mid to late 20th century global espionage. Cold War, the works. It is beautifully written historical fiction.
The novel, not surprisingly, is pervaded by ghosts. The narrator‘s wife from time to time talks to her dead mother through a bedroom wall.
"I love my mother," she said to me, "and it's a grace that I am able to talk to her.” (p. 48)
The two, both spies, have extra sensory connection and sometimes sense when the other’s predicament is perilous. During one such ordeal, when she is bleeding from a suicide attempt, he races to rescue her, thus legitimating this aspect of the novel.
Mailer has a way of writing about the engendering of thought that feels new (but probably isn’t):
“Standing in our empty bedroom, my thoughts collided face to face with Damon Butler . . . , first mate to Augustus Parr, two and a half centuries dead. This unholy surprise visited me at this moment neither as a ghost nor a voice, but as an image so deep within my mind that for an instant I felt occupied by another presence: I saw what he had seen.” (p. 90)
In its savvy alternations from gravity to humor, it reminds me of Shakespeare. One Falstaff here is the narrator’s father, an old OSS spy. Think a blundering and boisterous and barrel-chested American version of 007.
Oops, I’ve set it aside. Will try to return and finish.
May 7, 2023
Probably my favorite Mailer novel. Moves quickly for a 1200 page novel. Meticulously detailed and crafted. Page turning indeed!
December 16, 2008
Hated by many and for good reason. There are great yawning sections of psycho-babble that convince no one; letters about stuff no one gives a damn about; and the "To Be Continued" at the end of the novel made many readers throw their hands up in disgust.
But ignore all the flaws (especially that last, which I'd argue isn't genuinely meant as a "To Be Continued"; more it is that Mailer recognizes that the story of the CIA cannot be finished, that this is an ongoing story that still affects the lives of everyone, and that any ending is a lie). What works here works marvellously well—the way an espionage group is put together, its daily workings, the way small projects balloon into horrible disasters, and more. The good parts read like the best of thrillers, smart and fast-paced. And the bad parts ... well, they can be gotten through.
I'd be afraid of reading it now, afraid of how it would strike me. But at the time I thought it was awesome, and I was gratified that Salman Rushdie seemed of all reviewers to *get* the novel: His NYTimes review raved about all the best aspects of the book while acknowledging the weak bits.
Which seemed fair. A book with ambitions this large is bound to fail, and that it succeeds as much as it does is a tribute to Mailer's talents. (The failures, too, are a tribute to Mailer's flaws. If only he'd been a better writer and a better mind.)
But ignore all the flaws (especially that last, which I'd argue isn't genuinely meant as a "To Be Continued"; more it is that Mailer recognizes that the story of the CIA cannot be finished, that this is an ongoing story that still affects the lives of everyone, and that any ending is a lie). What works here works marvellously well—the way an espionage group is put together, its daily workings, the way small projects balloon into horrible disasters, and more. The good parts read like the best of thrillers, smart and fast-paced. And the bad parts ... well, they can be gotten through.
I'd be afraid of reading it now, afraid of how it would strike me. But at the time I thought it was awesome, and I was gratified that Salman Rushdie seemed of all reviewers to *get* the novel: His NYTimes review raved about all the best aspects of the book while acknowledging the weak bits.
Which seemed fair. A book with ambitions this large is bound to fail, and that it succeeds as much as it does is a tribute to Mailer's talents. (The failures, too, are a tribute to Mailer's flaws. If only he'd been a better writer and a better mind.)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 18, 2012
Oh, I could be angry right now, terribly angry, having just finished an almost 1300-page fictional tome that ends with the words "To Be Continued", but I choose not to be since I chose to hang in there with this book long after I had concluded that it would not reward in ways commensurate with its length. In that I was not mistaken. There is much about this novel of the CIA in the 50s and early 60s to like, and there is no question of Mailer's devotion to his craft and the level of research that went into this massive thing, but dealing as he is here with state secrets, he could not betray his own conclusions about historical questions such as "who really killed JFK?" without moving the reader into the posture of assuming that he is offering a historical account disguised as fiction, and that he explicitly did not want to do. In short, read this book if you are really interested in the feel of what it might be like to be in the CIA, but read it in full light of the fact that it was written by a man with an ego of monumental proportions, that it is entirely TOO LONG, and that it needed to be edited by a woman.
May I add as a side-note that I now wish to dig up the remains of Herr Mailer, wherever they are interred, assuming they are, and beat them with my house shoe.
May I add as a side-note that I now wish to dig up the remains of Herr Mailer, wherever they are interred, assuming they are, and beat them with my house shoe.
September 2, 2015
really magnificent; there were indeed some swaths probably best cut, but awfully few of them for 1300 pages spanning five continents. at its best it read like the saner parts of Gravity's Rainbow, but with a Mailer touch. it moves incredibly quickly for the quality of the prose. people complaining about "mailer's psychobabble" as if it's a serious theory he's advancing are really missing the point behind Kittredge and her whole development. definitely recommended for anyone who liked Ellroy's American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand, as it uses some of the same historical figures (the Kennedys, Sam Giancana, Hoover, etc.) and motifs, but is on the whole much more a serious and coherent piece of fiction. i'm surprised it didn't get more Pulitzer flair.
August 5, 2020
Norman Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost laboriously restages the Cold War’s early years through the Central Intelligence Agency. His story focuses on Harry Hubbard, a Yale-educated Jew inducted into the CIA by spymaster William King Harvey (the “Harlot” of the title), an amoral, alcohol-sodden mentor who teaches Hubbard to leave his scruples behind. Hubbard’s improbably active career ranges through Berlin, Eastern Europe, South America and Cuba, where he receives a front-row seat to both the Bay of Pigs invasion and Operation MONGOOSE, the CIA-Mafia conspiracy to murder Fidel Castro. Between missions, Hubbard struggles with his strained marriage to a well-connected WASP, an affair with a gangster’s moll who’s also sleeping with John F. Kennedy (modeled on Judith Campbell Exner) and encounters with various historical figures, from Allen Dulles to Howard Hunt. With that premise, those characters and even its gargantuan length (1,400 pages in hardcover), it seems to promise exhaustively researched but merely serviceable historical fiction (like Robert Littell’s The Company, which covers almost identical ground). Yet Mailer is less interested in the nuts and bolts of espionage, although there’s an ample amount of that, than how the labyrinth of intelligence-gathering warps its operatives. For Hubbard, Harlot and their colleagues, intelligence becomes something akin to a religion; personal loyalty, morality, ideology and even patriotism become sublimated to the Mission. Being Mailer, the novel crawls with overbaked literary devices (much of the narrative’s related through letters from Hubbard to his wife Kittredge, and vice versa), credulity towards conspiracy theories (everything from the Kennedy Assassination to Marilyn Monroe to Watergate receives an “alternate explanation”), and the trials and tribulations of his protagonist’s penis (there’s an overlong passage on Hubbard’s bout with gonorrhea); the female characters, unsurprisingly, are prostitutes, floozies or Kittredge. Whether the reader finds these forgivable faults or deal-breakers depends on their tolerance for Mailer’s elaborate prose and aureate musings on Public Morality, etc. The present reader found it a spellbinding read; a masterful, richly ironic dramatization of America’s National Security State, through the eyes of its most devoted foot soldiers.
September 22, 2016
Yes, I read this whole book. I remember expecting to bail out from it due to its length, but as I recall I was never bored by the novel. That said, I don't remember much of it except for the mundane details of a spy's life, a life affair and talk of buggering. The buggering portion seemed reminiscent of Ancient Evenings, which was a book I read back in the 80's. I liked Ancient Evenings also. I don't know if either book is something I would recommend to anyone now. Maybe I would recommend something by Iris Murdoch instead. Or Armies of the Night by Mailer, which is easily one of his best books. Or The Executioner's Song, for another long read. That one I read twice. Back to Harlot's Ghost though...there is an undeniable swagger to Mailer's novel(s) that holds interest.
October 21, 2018
Mailer's massive novel about the CIA begins in 1983, with the narrator Harry Hubbard and his wife Kittredge on their small private island off the coast of Mount Desert Island in Maine. Soon things begin to go very wrong: one of Hubbard's colleagues makes a surreptitious visit to the island to deliver the bad news that Hugh Montague, aka "Harlot," Kittredge's former husband and Harry's godfather and CIA mentor, has turned up dead, either as a result of a sailing accident, or murder, or something else. One purpose of the novel, ostensibly, is to figure out what happened to Harlot. Is he really dead, or is it the body of an imposter? Was he merely a CIA agent, or a double agent working for the KGB? Has he fled to Moscow, as Harry suspects? At the end of the first section, Harry has gone to Moscow to figure it all out. So far, so good.
We now go back in time to 1955, with Harry fresh out of college and recruited to the Company. His first posting is to Berlin, working under the crazed and earthy station chief Bill Harvey; Uruguay follows, where future Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt is CIA chief of station, then Washington and Miami. Harry is in on the planning for the Bay of Pigs, and makes his way to the shores of Cuba during the missile crisis. Along the way we meet Harry's formidably crusty father Cal (also his CIA mentor), Harry's bullying, macho, sexually damaged colleague Dix Butler, a luscious stewardess named Modene Murphy (modeled after famed courtesan Judith Campbell Exner), Sam Giancana, Frank Sinatra, Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Fidel Castro, and others. Much of the novel is epistolary exchanges between Harry and Kittredge (who also works for the CIA as some type of behavioral analyst); through their letters much Cold War history and covert minutiae are revealed. Though their affair doesn't begin until the late 60s, Harry is in love with her from the moment they meet.
As a writer Mailer drips with natural talent and a wonderfully comic sensibility. The words he puts in the mouths of Hugh Montague, Cal Hubbard, and Bill Harvey are genius. Hugh: "I cannot bear that chirpy Bobby Kennedy, always building his beaver's nest with a few more facts. He needs to look into the abyss." A story about Hugh has passed into legend at the CIA - the time when
“In a lighted office across the court he saw one of his colleagues kissing a secretary. Harlot promptly dialed that office, and as he watched, the man separated himself from the embrace long enough to pick up his phone.
“Aren’t you appalled by yourself?” Harlot asked.
“Who is this?”
“God,” said Harlot and hung up.
Mailer is less successful with his main female character, Kittredge, and the interminable correspondence between her and Harry taxes the reader's patience. The story, at the outset, is an interesting one, whose resolution we would very much like to know. Unfortunately the novel's narrative arc is ultimately unsatisfying. There is simply too much extraneous information about side characters and peripheral storylines (I've read enough about Fidel Castro to last me several years), and too little focus on the novel's fascinating namesake, Harlot. Finally, the novel fails to resolve the mystery of Harlot.
January 3, 2012
Oh, I give up.
July 12, 2013
I am a fan of Mailer's writing, and I consider this to be his masterpiece. There is a lot of psychological complexity to the characters without ever seeming contrived or unrealistic!
September 10, 2017
Harlot's Ghost is a deeply flawed masterpiece. Its prodigious and incomplete nature signify all that is great and trivial about the work.
For all the post-net generations, it is difficult to comprehend the dark underbelly of US 1950-70 politics. That was the pre-market, pre-consumer era when important events that captured the US citizens' imagination and guided every smart person's ambitions were not in the financial, economic or corporate world. The Pentacle, if you will, of the US domestic politicians - particularly the White House, the two post-war institutional giants - the FBI and the CIA, enormously powerful mafia that controlled a large part of the profitable economy and international players including those sponsored by the USSR, were in a complex and continuously moving tango where no one was anyone's permanent friend nor a forever enemy.
Equally, all these power hungry players (almost exclusively men) were as moral-free from today's viewpoints as the next person. Sex and violence - with extreme attendant misogyny, homophobia, chauvinism, anti-semitism, racism, disregard for personal or media freedom, intolerance for any opposing voice, damaging nationalism, vestiges of colonialism etc - dominated these players' internecine warfares/games. The objectives were often petty/personal (as often visible in Castro/Cuba obsession and in the climax of the Watergate - not covered here) but still took the world to the edges of annihilation. The personalities were the most prominent from every conceivable field including music (Sinatra), media (Monroe) and corporate (Hughes) apart from the worlds of criminals, sleuths, politicians, and the police.
For those not intimately familiar with the later histories of characters like Hoover (tapes), Hunt (Watergate) or Harvey (from Philby to Mongoose) -
why so many "H"s...a nice para at the end in the book that explains nothing but still - a large part of the novel could be spent in trying to figure out what all the fuss is truly about. The Berlin and Montevideo sections appear meaningless until the Kennedy and other big characters arrive post the halfway mark and the book takes on the Cuban chapters. The author is holding back on revealing the true Harlot power and cunningness - possibly for the sequel that was never written. As a result, Angleton of this novel is nowhere near as interesting as in real life or of the books like the Company.
The weakest parts are around the love story and almost everything associated with Kittridge. The letters concoct a story-telling style that renders the historical fiction far weaker compared to so many others of the genre that started with War and Peace. Alpha and Omega philosophies are not only puerile but also destroy the story flow. The author spends little time in filtering to what he really needed to say, and as a result, the book is at least twice as big as it should have been. It does not help that the sequel never came which could have provided more context to some of the threads that appeared to have randomly started or left hanging in this book.
Overall, a masterpiece for readers who are interested in that period and also are somewhat familiar with the histories of the personalities involved.
For all the post-net generations, it is difficult to comprehend the dark underbelly of US 1950-70 politics. That was the pre-market, pre-consumer era when important events that captured the US citizens' imagination and guided every smart person's ambitions were not in the financial, economic or corporate world. The Pentacle, if you will, of the US domestic politicians - particularly the White House, the two post-war institutional giants - the FBI and the CIA, enormously powerful mafia that controlled a large part of the profitable economy and international players including those sponsored by the USSR, were in a complex and continuously moving tango where no one was anyone's permanent friend nor a forever enemy.
Equally, all these power hungry players (almost exclusively men) were as moral-free from today's viewpoints as the next person. Sex and violence - with extreme attendant misogyny, homophobia, chauvinism, anti-semitism, racism, disregard for personal or media freedom, intolerance for any opposing voice, damaging nationalism, vestiges of colonialism etc - dominated these players' internecine warfares/games. The objectives were often petty/personal (as often visible in Castro/Cuba obsession and in the climax of the Watergate - not covered here) but still took the world to the edges of annihilation. The personalities were the most prominent from every conceivable field including music (Sinatra), media (Monroe) and corporate (Hughes) apart from the worlds of criminals, sleuths, politicians, and the police.
For those not intimately familiar with the later histories of characters like Hoover (tapes), Hunt (Watergate) or Harvey (from Philby to Mongoose) -
why so many "H"s...a nice para at the end in the book that explains nothing but still - a large part of the novel could be spent in trying to figure out what all the fuss is truly about. The Berlin and Montevideo sections appear meaningless until the Kennedy and other big characters arrive post the halfway mark and the book takes on the Cuban chapters. The author is holding back on revealing the true Harlot power and cunningness - possibly for the sequel that was never written. As a result, Angleton of this novel is nowhere near as interesting as in real life or of the books like the Company.
The weakest parts are around the love story and almost everything associated with Kittridge. The letters concoct a story-telling style that renders the historical fiction far weaker compared to so many others of the genre that started with War and Peace. Alpha and Omega philosophies are not only puerile but also destroy the story flow. The author spends little time in filtering to what he really needed to say, and as a result, the book is at least twice as big as it should have been. It does not help that the sequel never came which could have provided more context to some of the threads that appeared to have randomly started or left hanging in this book.
Overall, a masterpiece for readers who are interested in that period and also are somewhat familiar with the histories of the personalities involved.
March 11, 2021
yes...hahahaha YES
November 19, 2021
Fucking brilliant.
August 7, 2016
Most readers of Harlot's Ghost who found themselves jumping ship before the last page were probably pushed there by the style of the book's narrator, Harry Hubbard. He writes with the rhetorical flourish of a Harvard undergraduate who never touches ink after graduation, except to write a letter or interoffice memo - exactly the kind of guy Mailer knew well and enjoyed lampooning. Readers who pushed all the way through begin to understand that the narrator's art of controlling and dispersing information is not so different than the spy's.
What this novel has going for it is this: it is a perfectly scaled model of the workings of the American government. Other novelists (Pynchon and co.) imagine conspirators as cold, O'Brienesque shadow figures lording it over an idiotic public with superior technology; Mailer points to the tomato sauce stains on their shirts and their weak tumescence. This is a tale told by an idiot, signifying the death of a president, and may be the only fictionalization to ever do that death justice.
What this novel has going for it is this: it is a perfectly scaled model of the workings of the American government. Other novelists (Pynchon and co.) imagine conspirators as cold, O'Brienesque shadow figures lording it over an idiotic public with superior technology; Mailer points to the tomato sauce stains on their shirts and their weak tumescence. This is a tale told by an idiot, signifying the death of a president, and may be the only fictionalization to ever do that death justice.
January 2, 2025
Na jednu stranu geniální román a na druhou stranu naprostá exhibice slov - chvílemi za 5/5 a pak 2/5… uberte 200 stran a je to na 4/5
May 10, 2015
This is a generational saga more than anything else, the story of Harry Hubbard and his relationship with his CIA mentor, the titular Harlot. It is, I think, a brilliant mess of a novel, not unlike the projects the Central Intelligence Agency has taken on covertly, unheard of and unspoken, in order to preserve the good graces and virtue of the United States. The main message, I think, is that one cannot fight evil unless they understand exactly what evil is and are willing to be evil , unprincipled, lacking in romanticized notions of goodness and fairness in order to combat any and all threats that approach our shores. It is messy work, in other words, and there is a liturgy here, something approaching a theological world view that places the agency and its agents in a context that represents an over specialized class of professional attempting to rationalize the vileness of their work by allusively equating their violence, lies and disruptions as serving the greater good.What especially intrigues about this novel is the foul premise that one cannot effectively fight evil unless they are able to become evil themselves, which is to say that the agents in play, visiting various bits of expensive and furtive skulluggery against enemies present and invisible, have to pay a solomn lip service to the virtues of American freedoms and the governing institutions that direct them, but who must be able to betray every moral principle they've sworn to uphold as a means of defending against the godless, the unbathed, the fearfully "other". Rather than have agents who are compartmentalized to the extent that they lie, cheat, steal and dispatch bad guys by day and watch TV and crosswords at night, we have instead characters who are at war with the lies they tell themselves.Within this is a paranoia that is made into a layered, convoluted, brooding world. Not a perfect novel, but a genuine work of literature none the less. I would venture that this is Mailer's best novel.
August 4, 2008
Wow, finally finished. 8 weeks in the making but it was worth every page.
Although this book is utterly boring in the "action" sense of the word, Mailer has a strange sense of making anything interesting and difficult to stop reading. The man could retype the phone book and it would be a hit.
I do find several things curious. The most prevalent being that I'm not quite sure why it was titled Harlot's Ghost, as it is that Harlot's character is not only fairly secondary despite his character's under girding carriage throughout the narrative, but he's not actually confirmed as being dead; as is implied in the very beginning of the book.
The most provocative plot throughout this epic and complex novel, though, is Hubbard's subversive relationship with Kittredge, as I'm sure Mailer intended; what with his more and more obviously waning libido (If anybody in recent memory spent more time talking about the sexual application of the least sexual of topics I'd like to see how). It's difficult to expect one to expatiate on the subject given that my edition clocks in at 1134 pages, (I'll leave that to good ol' Normy Norm), but I am certainly disapointed that Mailer didn't get around to fulfilling on his expressed intention of writing what would surely have been another epicly ameliorative continuation of this harrowing story. I suppose someone will have to address that for him posthumously.
Reader beware, the remarkably interesting beginning sees absolutely no fruition, simply a "To Be Continued". You don't find out if it's actually Harlot's body that washed up to shore, Harrick and Kittredge's affair never realizes itself and you certainly don't find out if Harlot was actually a double agent for the KGB; all of which can imaginably be figured from conjecture. But for you purists out there it will prove immensely disappointing.
Although this book is utterly boring in the "action" sense of the word, Mailer has a strange sense of making anything interesting and difficult to stop reading. The man could retype the phone book and it would be a hit.
I do find several things curious. The most prevalent being that I'm not quite sure why it was titled Harlot's Ghost, as it is that Harlot's character is not only fairly secondary despite his character's under girding carriage throughout the narrative, but he's not actually confirmed as being dead; as is implied in the very beginning of the book.
The most provocative plot throughout this epic and complex novel, though, is Hubbard's subversive relationship with Kittredge, as I'm sure Mailer intended; what with his more and more obviously waning libido (If anybody in recent memory spent more time talking about the sexual application of the least sexual of topics I'd like to see how). It's difficult to expect one to expatiate on the subject given that my edition clocks in at 1134 pages, (I'll leave that to good ol' Normy Norm), but I am certainly disapointed that Mailer didn't get around to fulfilling on his expressed intention of writing what would surely have been another epicly ameliorative continuation of this harrowing story. I suppose someone will have to address that for him posthumously.
Reader beware, the remarkably interesting beginning sees absolutely no fruition, simply a "To Be Continued". You don't find out if it's actually Harlot's body that washed up to shore, Harrick and Kittredge's affair never realizes itself and you certainly don't find out if Harlot was actually a double agent for the KGB; all of which can imaginably be figured from conjecture. But for you purists out there it will prove immensely disappointing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 27, 2014
L'uomo senza speCIAlit�! Non � un esplosione. E' un ammortizzatore, un materasso, talvolta un silenziatore. Il libro � la descrizione romanzata ovviamente incompleta ed episodica della CIAificazione della societ� e/o di come soggetti gi� CIAfilizzati trovino naturale impiegarsi presso l'Agenzia. Cio� CIAffiliarsi. http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/19... Alfa e Omega in lotta nella mente blurry dei protagonisti - tutti col loro bravo criptonimo - finch� "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad"! Un Bourne Revenge spesso senz'armi: la violenza � quasi tutta cerebrale, come il sesso del resto. Stupisce che i personaggi mangino, non essendo la loro paranoia riuscita ancora a trasferire la digestione nelle sinapsi. Gente del genere si trova anche in Libra di DeLillo e in American Tabloid/Sei pezzi da mille di Ellroy (ma in minor misura. Ellroy stesso adora Libra ben sapendo di esserne il contraltare). Immenso libro incompiuto ma rigorosamente per (pochi) adulti. In altri secoli sarebbe stata cultura iniziatica, teologia gesuitica, gnosi, alchimia, verbo per pochi. Oggi � pi� semplice - non se ne parla e non lo si ristampa. Se lo trovate acquistatelo, specie le pochissime copie in grande formato (per ridurlo almeno a 1033 pagine) Anni fa l'ho addirittura sottolineato come il breviario del curato di campagna. Tracklist: 100th Window - Massive Attack
January 25, 2011
The beginning of this book was a five-star spy mystery.
The end of this book was a three-star, overly detailed, kinda fictionalized portrait of the relations between Cuba and the US in the early 1960s.
It's like Norman Mailer started out writing a great, suspenseful story about some interesting characters, wrote a thousand pages, suddenly realized that he had no idea how to end that story, discovered that chronologically the story would include the Bay of Pigs/Cuban Missile Crisis/et al, decided that he had a lot to say about Cuba, and wrote a few thousand pages about those events and happened to include the characters from the first story.
But the book was also chock-a-block full of one superior hell of a lot of amusing expressions. I'll give it that.
Still wish I knew how that first story ended.
To be continued.
The end of this book was a three-star, overly detailed, kinda fictionalized portrait of the relations between Cuba and the US in the early 1960s.
It's like Norman Mailer started out writing a great, suspenseful story about some interesting characters, wrote a thousand pages, suddenly realized that he had no idea how to end that story, discovered that chronologically the story would include the Bay of Pigs/Cuban Missile Crisis/et al, decided that he had a lot to say about Cuba, and wrote a few thousand pages about those events and happened to include the characters from the first story.
But the book was also chock-a-block full of one superior hell of a lot of amusing expressions. I'll give it that.
Still wish I knew how that first story ended.
To be continued.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 27, 2021
Its a big fat book .... so prepare for a long read... or a concentrated reading period. An excellent book on intelligence services and intelligence matters. Without getting into books like Inside the Company: CIA Diary its probably the best you're going to find on the CIA. Its in my list of books that I return to every few years as the pleasure reading it again has not diminished. And thats always the sign of a good book.
December 10, 2014
When I read this book when it first came out, it directly inspired my curiosity about the cold war and then WWII. Rereading after many years, this book has held up just fine. Oh, there are some problems with tedium, but much less than I feared.
I'm still disappointed that Mailer never finished the second volume. His stance that after the Berlin Wall fell, it was no longer interesting just doesn't hold water.
I'm still disappointed that Mailer never finished the second volume. His stance that after the Berlin Wall fell, it was no longer interesting just doesn't hold water.
January 12, 2017
Un libro interesante para conocer los entresijos del funcionamiento de las agencias de inteligencia y de buena parte de los acontecimientos más notables de la época de la Guerra Fría. Pero por lo demás, un libro largo, muy largo, lento y escasamente ameno. No me arrepiento de haberlo leído, pero lo recomendaría con bastantes reservas. Interesante, pero pesado.
Reseña completa en http://cosasmiasjc.blogspot.com/2014/...
Reseña completa en http://cosasmiasjc.blogspot.com/2014/...
September 26, 2017
This book forever changed my mind on who killed Kennedy, along with Mark Lanes book Plausible Denial. This is a novel but... It is too close to the hard facts, not only on Kennedy but the Bay of Pigs and the wiretapping in East Berlin, by the CIA, who got caught in tunnels maintaining the equipment. It ends at midnight November 21 1963...
March 31, 2016
Very, very good.
Mailer has a great voice and he really outdoes himself.
Interesting and incredibly written.
Very long. So long, I don't want to talk about it any more.
Mailer has a great voice and he really outdoes himself.
Interesting and incredibly written.
Very long. So long, I don't want to talk about it any more.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 274 reviews