Harlot's Ghost: A Novel (Paperback)

by Norman Mailer (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Those who quail at the prospect of a 1400-page novel by the author of Ancient Evenings and Tough Guys Don't Dance need have no fear. Mailer's newest effort, a mammoth imagining of the CIA that puts all previous fictions about the Agency in the shade, reads like an express train. Never has he written more swiftly and surely, more vividly and with less existential clutter. A contemporary picaresque yarn, Harlot's Ghost bears more than a slight resemblance to those great 18th-century English novels that chronicle the coming-of-age of a young rogue with good connections. Harry Hubbard is a bright young man whose father and whose mentor, Hugh Montague (also known as Harlot), are both senior CIA figures and induct him into the Agency. Most of the book, after a melodramatic beginning, is one long flashback, Harry's autobiographical account of his early career--partly in his own words, partly in an exchange of letters with Harlot's beautiful, brilliant wife, Kittredge, whom Harry admires from afar and will one day steal. He is seen in training in the '50s under real-life figures like Allen Dulles and Dick Bissell, and with the martini-swigging, pistol-toting William Harvey at his first post in Berlin--where he meets Dix Butler, who becomes in a sense his nemesis. A quiet spell in Montevideo under Howard Hunt follows, then he goes to Washington, where he watches the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban missile crisis develop--and becomes the lover of President Kennedy's mistress. The book winds down with Kennedy's assassination and a sense of growing despair, only to conclude with a gnomic "To Be Continued." Whether or not there is really to be a sequel, Harlot's Ghost is entirely self-contained, and a bravura performance. In an author's note listing his voluminous sources and the relation of fictional to nonfictional characters, Mailer claims that good fiction "is more real, more nourishing to our sense of reality, than nonfiction." The book is an utterly convincing portrait of that strange, snobbish, macho, autocratic collection of brainy misfits who have played so large and often tragic a role in American history. BOMC main selection; first serial to Rolling Stone.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
To call Mailer's CIA novel a spy story would be like calling Moby Dick a whaling story. If you are seeking myriad details about how The Agency really operates, you will find them here, but Mailer has always sought the nuances that give facts their essential meaning, and that is what makes this book so much more than just another CIA expose. For Mailer's true purpose is to define that part of the American psyche that has spawned and sustains the CIA. It is a spirit (and note that this is a book more metaphysical than political) born of militant Christianity and buccaneering rapacity, of noblesse oblige and authoritarian devotion, a spirit believing itself turned in to God without worrying if it's heeding the devil. The dialectic here is Manicheanism more than Marxism, and--shades of Melville--the quest is one in which we may forfeit our souls. An immensely long but never laborious book, one where Mailer works compelling variations on his quintessential themes. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/90.
-Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1168 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (September 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345379659
• ISBN-13: 978-0345379658
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #450,692 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive epic story of the CIA, June 21, 2001

By	Christopher A. Smith (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This sprawling 1,000+ page epic about two generations of CIA officers is difficult to characterize: part history, part period piece, and part fiction. Mailier mixes the comings and goings of historical figures and real events with a well-developed cast of fictional characters in a way that reminds the reader of E.L.Doctorow's masterpiece Ragtime.

Harlot's Ghost impresses as an authentic and comprehensive glimpse inside the inner workings of the CIA. The book's strongest message is that this infamous organization of spooks and bogey-men is no more than the sum of it's parts - the officers and agents - and by giving us a view of their motivations and desires we understand a bit more about how and why the CIA does what it does.

The protagonist, Harry Hubbard, is a second generation CIA officer who bounces around the globe from assignment to assignment, managing to land in each hotspot long enough for us to see the Agency's role through his eyes as events unfold - from Cold War Berlin to the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Enjoyable though this novel is, not everything works. Hovering as a backdrop to all the action is the idea of deceit and duality: East vs. West, intelligence vs. counterintelligence, information vs. misinformation, the means vs. the ends, idealism vs. pragmatism. This theme is captured by the theory of Alpha and Omega - a theory developed by Kitterdge Montague, CIA research psychologist and love interest of Harry Hubbard. The theory, in brief, states that there are two fully formed and competing personalities trapped within every individual, and that the key to human nature is to understanding the relationship between these two personalities. In an early scene a soon-to-be-wed Kittredge offers an elegant explanation of this theory while flirting with Hubbard. The problem is that over the next thousand pages the same theory pops up every ten pages or so, until the reader feels beaten over the head with this particular bit of symbolism. Enough already. We get it.

But overall, this is an immensely enjoyable novel. Mailer creates realistic three-dimensional characters that mingle seamlessly with real historical figures and actual events. Mailer has taken on a hugely ambitious task and manages to pull it off. This is not only a definitive view of the CIA, but an excellent piece of literature as well. Through Hubbard's first person accounts, thoughts, and letters the reader experiences an amazing range of events and environments - from seedy Berlin safe-houses to luxurious Uruguayan villas to combat on the Cuban beachhead.

The book's thousand pages notwithstanding, there are huge questions which Mailer leaves unanswered. Harlot's Ghost would have benefited from a more aggressive editor, but my final analysis is that I'll be the first in line to slog through the sequel to learn the resolution to the questions that the book's "to be continued" ending leaves. Highly recommended.

Note: In the final pages Mailer includes a glossary of names, code-names, events, and places. Very useful for keeping track of the acronyms, aliases, and code-words. I didn't discover the glossary until I was a third through the book; don't make the same mistake.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A partly-failed book, better than most successes., August 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Harlot's Ghost (Hardcover)

No final review can be given of Harlot's Ghost since it is apparently only the first part of a continuing novel. Like The Deer Park and Ancient Evenings, this novel is alternately brilliant and frustrating. It is full of great writing (the mountain climbing sequences, for instance) yet also full of long passages that feel strangely lifeless and obligatory (the sections involving JFK are surprisingly muffled and unsuccessful). Mailer's style almost always revives when he has extended scenes to play out, but too much of the book passes in summary form, with drab overviews of months and years filling page after page. The epistolary sections between the narrator and his future wife also fall rather flat, and there are so many of them that they feel a bit lazy, as if Mailer were giving himself a rest from sustaining the usual level of the narrative. At the same time, the tentative and somewhat bland tone of much of this book seems to be deliberate, a set-up for the not-yet-published second half of the story. The narrator is still a young man when this volume of Harlot's Ghost ends, and there are strong suggestions that his general conservatism and dullness will give way to something more complex and interesting later. As far as I know, Mailer has given no precise idea of what form the novel's continuation will take, but this volume at least promises that a potential masterpiece is possible. If anyone knows more about the continuation and when it might appear, please tell me.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When will we see the sequel?, June 16, 1999

By A Customer

There are two espionage novels I love: A Perfect Spy by John La Carre' and Harlot's Ghost by Norman Mailer. To be continued...when?