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Loading... Harlot's Ghost: A Novel (original 1991; edition 1992)by Norman Mailer
Work InformationHarlot's Ghost by Norman Mailer (1991)
   To read (2) No current Talk conversations about this book.  jjbinkc | Aug 27, 2023 |   archivomorero | Feb 13, 2023 | They differ, though, greatly in writing style: The Company is brutal in syntax and language; Harlot's Ghost is deeply intellectual and framed within the profound relationship between protagonist, Harrick Hubbard and Kittredge Montague. RonWelton | Apr 26, 2021 | The novel has moments of danger, intrigue, occasional boredom of routine CIA tasks, improbable hypotheses of historical events, and, for me, some real eye-openers of US and world policies at the time. Vivid portraits of Fidel Castro and Jack and Robert Kennedy. Of course, it didn't take just one sitting to finish this book, I had breaks for smaller books in between. And yet, the plot was strong enough for me to be able to keep it in memory throughout. (  )1  Clara53 | May 5, 2017 | ) dbsovereign | Jan 26, 2016 |
 From the little world of Encounter to the more encompassing schemes of James Angleton and William Casey, all of us have been slightly deranged by the work of this giant cultural and political construct. And now, with the unsolved and unpunished penumbra and personnel of Iran–Contra, we have fuel for more and later conspiracy theories. But as the Cold War at last abates, having so wasted our lives and energies, we can blink our opening eyes at the monsters engendered in the long sleep of reason. It is Mailer’s achievement to have summoned the ghosts of paranoia and conspiracy in order to demystify them, and in so doing to have raised realism to the level of fiction.  A book as massive as this enters one's life. Taking it up after some flimsy frippery of effete Europe, one recognizes that Tolstoy's ghost haunts America, and that Mailer, whose laying reputation is as great as that of a champion Rhode Island red, is the man to lay it. War and Peace was not too big to encompass the Napoleonic impact on Imperial Russia. Is perhaps Harlot's Ghost pretentious in supposing that the CIA has a comparable historical significance?... He was the right man to exalt the history of the CIA into something better than history. He is writing as well as he ever did, and his stamina is awesome. He reminds us, as Balzac and Dickens do, that the novel is more than diversion. Harlot's Ghost is to be read in the White House as well as in Langley, and it ought to pored over in the sancta of our own MI6. But it is for us, the lowly governed, as well. Slick the book certainly is not. But a page-turner it is for a great deal of the time, and none the worse for it. The best sequences in the book, all of which involve the CIA in action, require a certain breathlessness, as the operatives spin through their madcap motions faster than the speed of thought; as with the Red Queen in Alice this is the pace they have to maintain in spyland just to stay in the same place. Awards
Fiction.
Literature.
Thriller.
Historical Fiction.
HTML: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. No library descriptions found. |
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Wikipedia in English
This was my first exposure to Mailer. I was very impressed with his imagination, his story telling, his vocabulary, and his character development. He carried me along in ways that few authors have. I did fine with the novel until I reached about page 900 (80% of the book), when I started thinking about the end. But I stuck with it. And it's not unusual for me to put down a book without finishing it!
I do highly recommend that you read the author's afterword at some point before you put down the book. I jumped ahead and read it about half way through the book, and it was helpful with my grasp of what Mailer was doing with the characters, and especially why and how he chose to use people's real names in a book of fiction. (