Harlot's Ghost
Harlot's Ghost is a novel by Norman Mailer, published by Random House in 1991. The book is a fictional chronicle of the Central Intelligence Agency. The characters are a mixture of real people and fictional figures. At over 1,300 pages, the book is Mailer's longest.
Summary
At first it appears to be the autobiography of Harry Hubbard, which is made up of anecdotes of his life and actions with the CIA, covert operations in Uruguay, the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Mafia in the 60s and the assassination of JFK. The very beginning of the book starts with Harry being told by a friend that his mentor Hugh Montague (a top level CIA officer) has either been assassinated or committed suicide on his boat. He then is told by his wife, Kittredge (a CIA member), that she has been unfaithful and is in love with another high level CIA intelligence officer. Under perceived threat of his own assassination by the CIA he escapes to Moscow. It is there that he rereads in a hotel room the dense manuscript of his life at the CIA which he has documented and kept secret over his career. At that point, the book really begins. It details the life of a CIA intelligence officer who has connections to the highest levels of the CIA. It raises basic questions about the fight against Communism and goes into the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban Missile Crisis and, perhaps most importantly, raises questions about the assassination of JFK and who was ultimately responsible.
Mailer had planned to write a sequel – Harlot's Grave – but other projects intervened and the sequel was never written. Harlot's Ghost ends with the words "To be continued".
References
External links
- New York Times Review of Harlot's Ghost
- v
- t
- e
- The Naked and the Dead
- Barbary Shore
- The Deer Park
- An American Dream
- The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer
- Why Are We in Vietnam?
- A Transit to Narcissus
- The Executioner's Song
- Of Women and Their Elegance
- Ancient Evenings
- Tough Guys Don't Dance
- Harlot's Ghost
- The Gospel According to the Son
- The Castle in the Forest
- The White Negro
- Advertisements for Myself
- "Superman Comes to the Supermarket"
- "In the Red Light"
- The Presidential Papers
- Cannibals and Christians
- The Bullfight
- The Armies of the Night
- The Idol and the Octopus
- Miami and the Siege of Chicago
- Of a Fire on the Moon
- King of the Hill
- The Prisoner of Sex
- Existential Errands
- St. George and The Godfather
- The Faith of Graffiti
- The Fight
- Genius and Lust
- Of a Small and Modest Malignancy, Wicked and Bristling with Dots
- Pieces and Pontifications
- The Spooky Art
- Why Are We At War?
- Marilyn: A Biography
- Oswald's Tale
- Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man
- Norman Mailer's Letters on An American Dream, 1963-1969
- The Selected Letters of Norman Mailer
- Beyond the Law
- Wild 90
- Maidstone
- Town Bloody Hall
- Tough Guys Don't Dance
- The Executioner's Song
- American Tragedy
- Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story
- Strawhead (play)
- The Deer Park (play)
- Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters) (poetry)
- Some Honorable Men (anthology)
- The Time of Our Time (anthology)
- Modest Gifts (poems and drawings)
- The Big Empty (conversations)
- On God (conversations)
- Lipton’s: A Marijuana Journal (journal)
adaptations
- The Naked and the Dead
- An American Dream
- Marilyn: The Untold Story
- Adele Morales (second wife)
- Jeanne Campbell (third wife)
- Beverly Bentley (fourth wife)
- Norris Church Mailer (wife)
- Kate Mailer (daughter)
- Michael Mailer (son)
- Stephen Mailer (son)
- John Buffalo Mailer (son)
- Norman Mailer Prize
- Stabbing of Adele Morales by Norman Mailer
- New York City: the 51st State
- In the Belly of the Beast
- J. Michael Lennon (biographer)
- The Norman Mailer Society
- Norman Mailer bibliography
- The Mailer Review
- River of Fundament