Harlot's Ghost

"Harlot's Ghost" (1991), a fictional 1300-page chronicle of the CIA by Norman Mailer, was considered by the author to be one of his best novels. The characters are a mixture of real people and fictional figures; the logic of this mix is explained in Mailer's postscript to the novel.

Atmospheric and troubling, "Harlot's Ghost" exemplifies Mailer's skills as both a novelist and a chronicler. Although it should not be read as a factual account of the CIA's activities, it evokes the mood and methods of this organisation and the men who created it.

Summary

At first it appears to be the autobiography of Harry Hubbard, which is made up of anecdotes of his adventures in the CIA. The very beginning of the book starts with Harry being told by a friend that his mentor Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, has either been assassinated or committed suicide on his boat. He then is told by his wife, Kittredge, that she has been unfaithful and is in love with another man. Emotionally worn, he goes to Russia. It is there that he rereads the dense manuscript of his life at the CIA, whose working title is "The Game". At that point, the book really begins. We go through his life, including his relationship with his father and with his then-lover, Kittredge, and all the other people with whom he worked. The book appears to be many things: a thriller, a character study, a treatise on CIA life and its hardships...even a romance novel.

The book ends in 1963 with the words "To be continued," a pledge the author never fulfilled.

Reception

Although the novel was unfavorably received by most critics (e.g., Louis Menand, John Simon), a distinguished minority (e.g., Christopher Hitchens, Anthony Burgess, Wilfrid Sheed, Salman Rushdie and John W. Aldridge), considered it among Mailer's finest fictions, if not, as in the cases of Aldridge and Hitchens, his masterwork.