Project Mailer - User contributions [en]

User:Amylhester

2020-10-05T05:14:22Z

Amylhester: cut extraneous

'''Amy Hester''' is a student editor in Dr. Lucas's Fall 2020 "Writing for Digital Media" class. A native of Middle Georgia, she is a senior at Middle Georgia State University pursuing a bachelor's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Professional and Technical Writing. She previously worked as a Quality Control specialist for a company that digitized military technical orders. Upon graduation, she plans to seek a career as a technical writer. Her hobbies and interests include writing fiction, reading urban fantasy novels, gardening, and cooking as many meals as possible in an Instant Pot.

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-05T05:08:56Z

Amylhester: /* Obituaries and Retrospectives */adding templates

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{{Byline|last=Holmes|first=Constance E.|last1=Wilson|first1=Kristine A.|note=Much of the following has been incorporated into ''[[NM:WD|Norman Mailer: Works and Days]]''.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08bib}}
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==Addenda through 2006==
===Primary===
====Letters====

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=10:5 |date=March 4, 1968 |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Leonid I. Brezhnev, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Violence in Oakland |location=10:9 |date=May 9, 1968 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/05/09/violence-in-oakland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=12:6 |date=March 27, 1969 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of telegram to Hon. U Thant, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Committee to Defend the Conspiracy |location=12:12 |date=June 19, 1969 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/06/19/the-committee-to-defend-the-conspiracy/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Ford’s Better Idea |location=19:11 & 12 |date=January 25, 1973 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/01/25/fords-better-idea/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Words for the Shah |location=24:19 |date=November 24, 1977 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1977/11/24/words-for-the-shah/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Open letter to the Prime Minister of Iran, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=In a Cuban Prison |location=25:19 |date=December 7, 1978 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1978/12/07/in-a-cuban-prison/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Alexandr Bogolovski |location=31:15 |date=October 11, 1984 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Mr. A. M. Rekunov, Procurator General of the USSR, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Arrests in Poland |location=33.13 |date=August 13, 1986 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1986/08/14/arrests-in-poland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Celebrating Mencken |location=37:4 |date=March 15, 1990 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/03/15/celebrating-mencken/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=President Clinton. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=An Urgent Appeal from Pen American Center |location=40:4 |date=February 11, 1993 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/02/11/an-urgent-appeal-from-pen-american-center/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=to Prime Minister Paul Keating et al. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Wei Jingsheng |location=43:3 |date=February 15, 1996 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/02/15/the-case-of-wei-jingsheng/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories. An open letter.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=JFK’s Assassination |location=50:20 |date=December 18, 2003 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2003/12/18/jfks-assassination/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Election and America’s Future |location=51:17 |date=November 4, 2004 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/11/04/the-election-and-americas-future/ |url-access=subscription |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Letter; one of a series solicited by the Editors.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject= Blocked |location=52:13 |date=August 11, 2005 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/08/11/blocked/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} As author of ''Oswald’s Tale'', with other signatories.

==2007==

===Primary===
====Books====
{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |author-mask=1 |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |date=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}

====Book Contributions====
{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contribution=Commentary |last=Regan |first=Ken |date=2007 |title=Knockout: The Art of Boxing |url= |location=San Rafael, CA |publisher=Insight Editions |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contributor-mask=1 |contribution=Introduction |last=Schiller |first=Lawrence |date=2007 |title=Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=Los Angles, CA |publisher=East End Editions KLS |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

====Interviews====


{{cite magazine |last=Binelli |first=Mark |date=May 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Rolling Stone |pages=3–17 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Foley |first=Dylan |date=January 28, 2007 |title=A Portrait of the Devil as a Young Man |url= |work=Star-Ledger |location=final ed. |page=6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Fox |first=Sue |date=July 8, 2007 |title=Even at 84, Norman Mailer Refuses to Pull His Punches |url=https://www.pressreader.com/uk/sunday-express-1070/20070708/282346855399714 |work=Sunday Express |location=UK first ed. |page=55 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Devilish Motives |url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/devilish-motives-20070120-gdp9x7.html |work=Sydney Morning Herald |location=Australia |access-date=2020-10-01 |page=30 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Nan |date= |title=Writing with the Devil |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/11/10/writing_with_the_devil/ |work=Boston Globe |location=Magazine |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kirschling |first=Gregory |date=January 19, 2007 |title=Tough Guys Don’t Quit |url= |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |issue=916 |page=48 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lee |first=Michael |title=The Devil in Norman Mailer |url=https://search.proquest.com/openview/5bff77fb5c089c0b3d810827ee4686c7/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=40852 |journal=Literary Review |volume=50 |issue=4 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=202–217 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Lennon |first=Michael |date=October 5, 2007 |title=The Rise of Mailerism |url=https://nymag.com/news/features/38961/ |magazine=New York |issue=40.36 |pages=24+ |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }} Mailer discusses ''On God''.

{{cite magazine |last=Llewellyn |first=Caro |author-mask= |title=The Lion in Winter: Norman Mailer Talks about Writing His First Novel in a Decade |url= |magazine=Weekend Australian |location=pre-prints ed. |date=March 31, 2007 |pages=1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Author at Home |url= |work=The Observer |location=England |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Miner |first=Colin |date=January 22, 2007 |title=Mailer on Bush, Obama & Writing |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-on-bush-obama-writing/47109/ |work=New York Sun |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |title=The Art of Fiction No. 193, Norman Mailer |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5775/the-art-of-fiction-no-193-norman-mailer |journal=The Paris Review |volume=49 |issue=181 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=44+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |author-mask=1 |title=Get Your Ass off My Pillow |url=https://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/get-your-ass-off-my-pillow/ |url-access=subscription |magazine=Harper’s Magazine |issue=315.1888 |date=September 2007 |pages=22–24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Pierleoni |first=Allen |date=February 7, 2007 |title=Now Age 84.... |url= |work=Sacramento Bee |location=metro final ed.: TK22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 2007 |title=Proust Questionnaire: Norman Mailer |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/proust_mailer200701 |magazine=Vanity Fair |issue=557 |page=166 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Rose |first=Daniel Asa |date=January 21, 2007 |title=In Conversation ... ; with Norman Mailer |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802000_pf.html |work=Washington Post |location=Final ed.: T07 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Santaro |first=Gene |title=The Sound and the Baby Führer |url=https://www.historynet.com/interview-sound-baby-fuhrer.htm |journal=World War II |volume=22 |issue=2 |date=May 2007 |pages=23–25 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Stoffman |first=Judy |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Novel Ideas about Hitler |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2007/01/28/mailers_novel_ideas_about_hitler.html |work=The Toronto Star |page=C04 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Wollheim |first=Richard |title=Living like Heroes |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/11/violence-hip-mailer-1961 |magazine=New Statesman |issue=137.4871 |date=November 19, 2007 |pages=62 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Abridged reprint of a 1961 interview promoting ''Advertisements for Myself''.

===Secondary===

====Essays, Articles, Book Chapters, and Dissertations====

{{cite news |author= |date=January 17, 2007 |title=Sex-Mad Mailer Enraged Rival |url=https://pagesix.com/2007/01/25/sex-mad-mailer-enraged-rival/ |work=New York Post |location=Page Six |page=12 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Article discussing Ralph Ellison’s attitude toward Mailer, according to Ellison’s biographer.

{{cite news |author=Bancroft, Collette |date=October 16, 2007 |title=A Man of Many Letters |url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/10/16/a-man-of-many-letters/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida 1E |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }} A look at Mailer and Mailer scholarship on the occasion of both the publication of ''On God'' and the launch of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite news |author=Beach, Patrick |date=December 23, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Memories about to Open at Ransom Center |url= |work=Austin American-Statesman |location=final ed. |page=J5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author=Bennett, Bruce |date=July 20, 2007 |title=Mailer at the Movies |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-at-the-movies/58850/ |work=New York Sun |location=11 |page= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Overview of Mailer’s films.

{{cite news |author=Brokaw, Leslie |date=September 16, 2007 |title=HFA Salutes Norman Mailer on Film |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2007/09/16/hfa_salutes_norman_mailer_on_film/ |work=Boston Globe |location=third ed. |page=N11 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Bufithis, Philip |date=2007 |title=''The Executioner’s Song'': A Life Beneath Our Conscience |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07bufi |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |edition=1 |location= |page=77-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=Burns |first=Paul C. |date=2007 |title=In Jesus in Twentieth-Century Literature, Art, and Movies |chapter=Transformation of Biblical Methods and Godhead in Norman Mailer’s Gospel |location=New York |publisher=Continuum |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Chaiken |first=Michael |title=The Master’s Mercurial Mistress: How Norman Mailer Courted Chaos 24 Frames per Second |journal=Film Comment |url=http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/25897522/the-masters-mercurial-mistress-how-norman-mailer-courted-chaos-24-frames-per-second |url-access=subscription |volume=43 |issue=4 |date=July 2007 |pages=36–42 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Crook |first=Zeba |date=January 2007 |title=Fictionalizing Jesus: Story and History in Two Recent Jesus Novels |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249573018_Fictionalizing_Jesus_Story_and_History_in_Two_Recent_Jesus_Novels |url-access=subscription |work=Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus |volume=5 |issue=1 |page=33-55 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |date=2007 |title=How Mailer Became ‘Mailer’: The Writer as Private and Public Character |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=118-31 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Duguid |first=Scott |date=2007 |title=The Addiction of Masculinity: Norman Mailer’s ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' and the Cultural Politics of Reaganism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619310 |url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=23-30 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Writers Remain a Robust Bunch |work=St. Petersburg Times |page=B1+ |location=Florida |access-date= |ref=harv }} Article about the continued productivity of aging “literary giants” Mailer, Updike, and Roth.

{{cite news |last=Goldfarb |first=Reuven |date=November 20, 2007 |title=The Jewish Mailer |url=https://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/the-jewish-mailer |work=Jerusalem Post |volume=14 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Gottlieb |first=Akiva |date=July 20, 2017 |title=Norman Mailer, Auteur |url=http://old.forward.com/articles/11164/norman-mailer-auteur-00143/index.html |work=Forward |location=B1+ |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Article on Mailer’s films, on the occasion of the New York exhibit “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

{{cite journal |last=Henderson |first=Cathy |last2=Oram |first2=Richard W. |last3=Schwartzburg |first3=Molly |last4=Hardy |first4=Molly |title=Mailer Takes on America: Images from the Ransom Center Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07hend |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=141-75 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Holmes |first=Constance E. |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |title=Norman Mailer: Supplemental Bibliography through 2006 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr06bib |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2007 |pages=234-60 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Houpt |first=Simon |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Still a Brawler at Heart |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/still-a-brawler-at-heart/article677847/ |work=Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=R4 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Howard |first=Gerald |title=Mailer Gets Hammered |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/books/review/Howard-t.html |work=New York Times Book Review |issue=late ed, final |date=August 2007 |pages=27 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Essay discussing Mailer’s films, focusing on ''Maidstone''.

{{cite journal |last=Howley |first=Ashton |title=Mailer Again: Heterophobia in ''Tough Guys Don't Dance'' |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=31-46 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=James |first=Clive |date=2007 |title=Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts |url= |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton |pages=409-413 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=J. C. |title=White Mischief |url= |journal=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |volume= |issue= |date=October 26, 2007 |pages=36 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Includes brief mention of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite magazine |last=Junod |first=Tom |date=January 2007 |title=The Last Man Standing |magazine=Esquire |volume=147 |issue=1|pages=108-133 |url=https://classic.esquire.com/article/2007/1/1/the-last-man-standing |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kachka |first=Boris |date=January 15, 2007 |title=Mr. Tenditious |url= |magazine=New York |volume=40 |issue=2 |pages=62 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Recaps Mailer’s history of responding negatively—even violently—to criticism.

{{cite journal |last=Kaufmann |first=Donald L. |date=Fall 2007 |title=An American Dream: The Singular Nightmare |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kauf |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=194-205 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Kennedy |first=William |date=Fall 2007 |title=Norman Mailer as Occasional Commentator in a Self-Interview and Memoir |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kenn |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=11-26 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Kriegel |first=Leonard |date=Fall 2007 |title=Mailer’s Hitler: Round One |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40211658|url-access=subscription |work=Sewanee Review |volume=115 |issue=4 |page=615-620 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=Fall 2007 |title=Gallery Talk: The Mailer Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07lenn |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=132-40 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |author-mask=1 |date=2007 |title=Norman Mailer: Novelist, Journalist, or Historian? |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619315|url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=91-103 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |editor-last=Lennon |editor-first=J. Michael |editor-mask=1 |date=Fall 2007 |title=‘A Series of Tragicomedies’: Mailer’s Letters on ''The Deer Park'', 1954–55 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07lenn1 |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=45-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

. . .

Long, Karen Haymon. “Mailer in Review.” ''Tampa Tribune'' 18 Nov 2007, final ed., Baylife: 1. Discusses the formation of the Mailer Society and the annual conference, focusing on Tampa-area members and the launch of the Mailer Review out of USF.

Lucid, Robert F. “[Boston State Hospital: The Summer of 1942].” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 27–33. Excerpt from incomplete authorized biography.

Masters, Brian. “So Are Some People Really Born Evil?” Daily Mail [London] 19 April 2007, first ed.: 14. Article discussing ''The Castle in the Forest'' in relation to an actual scientific study on evil and genetics.

McDonald, Brian. “Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s ''The Gospel According to the Son''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 78–90.

Meloy, Michael. ''Sex Fiends of the Fifties: Intersections of Violence, Sexuality, and Masculinity in the Work of Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Ken Kesey''. Diss. U of South Carolina, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3280339.

Middlebrook, Jonathan: “Five Notes toward a Reassessment of Norman Mailer.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 179–83.

Partridge, Jeffrey F. L. “''The Gospel According to the Son and Christian Belief''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 64–77.

Petigny, Alan.“Norman Mailer,‘The White Negro,’ and New Conceptions of the Self in Postwar America.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 184–93.

Rampton, David. “Plexed Artistry: The Formal Case for Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 47–63.

Rodwin, John G. "Fighters and Writers". ''The Mailer Review''. Fall 2008. 396-406.

Rollyson, Carl. “Mailer’s Other Career.” ''Village Voice'' 52.29 (18–24 Jul 2007): 68. On the occasion of the New York exhibit, “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

Rose, Daniel Asa. “Advertisements for a Gay Self.” ''New York'' 40.4 (5 Feb 2007): 9. Brief comment praising Mailer’s treatment of homosexuality in ''The Castle in the Forest''.

Ryan, James Emmett. “‘Insatiable as Good Old America’: Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Popular Criminality.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 17–22.

Scott, A.O. “Norman Mailer Unbound.” ''New York Times'' 20 Jul 2007, late ed. final, east coast: E1!. Discuss/reviews Mailer’s films in anticipation of a screening at Lincoln Center.

Severs, Jeffrey Frank. ''Reinventing Totalitarianism in the Postwar American Novel''. Diss. Harvard U, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3265089.

====Book Reviews====
=====Reviews of ''The Castle in the Forest''=====

{{cite magazine |last=Abell |first=Stephen |date=February 16, 2007 |title=The Anality of Evil |url= |magazine=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |pages=21–22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allen |first=Bruce |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer Asks: Who Made Hitler? |url= |work=News & Observer |location=final ed. |page=G5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allington |first=Patrick |date=May 12, 2007 |title=Devil’s Disciple |url= |work=Advertiser |location=Australia, state ed. |page=W10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Amidon |first=Stephen |date=February 4, 2007 |title=Portrait of a Monster |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/portrait-of-a-monster-nr77qrvvxqg |url-access=subscription |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=54 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Anderson |first=Don |date=April 7, 2007 |title=Devil of a Time |url= |work=Weekend Australian |location=Qld Review ed. |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Anshen |first=D. |title=An Enigmatic Development |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/485260/pdf |url-access=subscription |journal=American Book Review |volume=28 |issue=6 |date=September 2007 |page=18 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Arditti |first=Michael |date=February 16, 2007 |title=New Fiction |url= |work=Daily Mailer |location=London, first ed. |page=72 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{cite journal |author= |title=His Perfect Sense of the Other |url=https://newcriterion.com/issues/2007/2/ldquohis-perfect-sense-of-the-otherrdquo |journal=New Criterion |volume=25 |issue=6 |date=February 2007 |pages=1–2 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Little Hitler |url=https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2007/01/18/little-hitler |magazine=Economist |location=Books & Arts |page92= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=August 8, 2007 |title=Mailer Brings out the Devil in Hitler |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=21 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Digs into Hitler’s Childhood |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7040474 |work=Weekend Edition: All Things Considered |location=NPR |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Writes a Novel about Adolf Hitler’s Childhood |url= |magazine=Gleaner |location=New Brunswick |pages=C4 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

====Obituaries and Retrospectives====

{{cite news |last=Allen-Mills |first=Tony |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/norman-mailer-literary-rebeldies-zkhkhdbchfw |work=Sunday Times |location=London |pages=1+ |access-date=2020-10-01 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }} [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

{{cite news |last=Ambrose |first=Jay |date=November 25, 2007 |title=Remembering Mailer |url= |work=Knoxville News |location= |page=73 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Andriani |first=Lynn |date=November 19, 2007 |title=A Prolific Life to the End |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20071119.html |magazine=Publishers Weekly |location= |publisher= |access-date=2020-10-03 |url-access=subscription }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Literary Lion Sparked American Debate |url= |work=Daily Variety |agency=Associated Press |date=November 12, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Writers Remember Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |agency=Associated Press |date=November 13, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature |url= |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=20 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Baddiel |first=David |date=November 17, 2007 |title=For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bancroft |first=Colette |date=November 11, 2007 |title=‘He was Much More’ than a Writer |url= |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=1A |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Barnes |first=Bart |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Blustery Force in Life and Letters |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/norman-mailer-blustery-force-in-life-and-letters-dies-at-84/2019/01/24/56b92688-2031-11e9-9145-3f74070bbdb9_story.html |work=Washington Post |location= |page=A01 |access-date=2020-10-04 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Bernstein |first=Mashey |date=December 2007 |title=In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish Writer |url= |magazine=Deep South Jewish Voice |location= |publisher= |access-date= }}

{{cite news |last1=Blau |first1=Rosie |last2=Mulligan |first2=Martin |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Pulling No Punches to the End |url=https://www.ft.com/content/aa64fec6-9085-11dc-a6f2-0000779fd2ac |work=London Financial Times |location= |page=13 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyd |first=Herb |date=November 15, 2007 |title=When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer |url= |work=New York Amsterdam News |location= |page=1+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last1=Burke |first1=Cathy |last2=Venezia |first2=Todd |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer, 84, Dies |url=https://nypost.com/2007/11/11/literary-pug-original-hipster-mailer-84-dies/ |work=New York Post |location= |page=November 11, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date= November 12, 2007 |title=A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-brawler-who-never-pulled-a-punch-1.981221 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Calabrese |first=Erin |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women’ |url=https://nypost.com/2007/11/19/widow-defends-mailer-says-he-loved-women/ |work=New York Post |location= |page=14 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Campbell |first=James |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/nov/12/guardianobituaries.usa |work=Guardian |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Cappell |first=Ezra |date=November 16, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of the Book |url=https://forward.com/news/12032/norman-mailer-a-man-of-letters-inspired-by-the-pe-00800/ |work=Forward |location= |page=A1+ |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Clark |first=Roy Peter |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Two Minutes with Mailer |url=https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2007/two-minutes-with-mailer/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=1E |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Clarke |first=Toni |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84 |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/writer-norman-mailer-dies-at-84-1.981225 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Craig |first=Olga |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling |url=https://www.pressreader.com/canada/montreal-gazette/20071111/textview |work=Gazette |location=Montreal |page=A3 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Crosbie |first=Lynn |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/believe-it-this-was-the-man-who-loved-women/article726268/ |work=Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=R1 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Crossen |first=Cynthia |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody: 1948’s ‘The Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its Greatest Blessing |url= |work=Wall Street Journal Online |location= |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last1=Cryer |first1=Dan |last2=Jacobson |first2=Aileen |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon Dies |url= |work=Newsday |location= |page=A08 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized |url=https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2007/11/14/Heavyweight-Mailer-s-life-and-work-were-outsized/stories/200711140262 |work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |location= |page=B6 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish |url=https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/legendary-writer-with-particular-love-for-the-irish-26331219.html |work=Irish Independent |location= |page=unknown |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling |url= |work=Edmonton Journal |location= |page=A3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Mailer won pair of Pulitzers |url= |work=Variety |location= |page=55 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Mailer's Ghost |url=https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/41004/ |magazine=New York |location= |publisher= |date=November 26, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-02 }} [Note: Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.]

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.economist.com/obituary/2007/11/15/norman-mailer |work=Economist |location=US |page=103 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Sunday Independent |location=Ireland |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=53 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 13, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/norman-mailer-400006.html |work=Independent |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |location= |page=A12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Cincinnati Post |location= |page=C10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Norman Mailer, 84 |url= |magazine=Newsweek |location= |publisher= |date=December 31, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Obituary of Norman Mailer |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1569056/Norman-Mailer.html |work=Daily Telegraph |location=London |page2= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84 |url= |work=Providence Journal |location= |page=A6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{cite news |last=D’Alessio |first=Jeff |title=A Life Written and Lived on a Large Scale: Norman Mailer 1923–2007 |url= |journal=Atlanta Journal-Constitution |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page=A5 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Reactions from Atlanta residents on the life and death of Mailer.

{{cite magazine |last=Deignan |first=Tom |title=Mailer: More Irish than the Irish |url= |magazine=Irish Voice |volume=21 |issue=47 |date=November 21, 2007 |pages=11 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Demirel |first=Selçuk |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=18 |date=December 3, 2007 |page=8 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |title=The Nijinsky of Ambivalence |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=19 |date=December 10, 2007 |pages=48–52 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |author-mask=1 |title=The Un-generation |url= |work=Los Angeles Times |volume= |issue= |date=December 30, 2007 |page=R4 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Retrospective comparing the lives and careers of Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Grace Paley, who all died in 2007 at the age of 84.

. . .

{{cite magazine |last=Duggan |first=Keith |title=Two-Fisted Mailer Finally Counter Out |url= |magazine=Irish Times |volume= |issue= |date=November 7, 2007 |page=12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Epstein |first=Jason |title=Norman Mailer (1923–2007) |url= |magazine=New York Review of Books |volume=54 |issue=20 |date=December 20, 2007 |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Eyman |first=Scott |title=Mailer’s Works Made Deep Impression on Post-WWII Political, Cultural Landscape |url= |magazine=Palm Beach Post |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{Review|state=expanded}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007}}
[[Category:Bibliographies (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-05T04:05:51Z

Amylhester: /* Obituaries and Retrospectives */adding templates

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
{{MR02}}
{{Byline|last=Holmes|first=Constance E.|last1=Wilson|first1=Kristine A.|note=Much of the following has been incorporated into ''[[NM:WD|Norman Mailer: Works and Days]]''.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08bib}}
{{TOC right|width=25%}}
==Addenda through 2006==
===Primary===
====Letters====

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=10:5 |date=March 4, 1968 |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Leonid I. Brezhnev, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Violence in Oakland |location=10:9 |date=May 9, 1968 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/05/09/violence-in-oakland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=12:6 |date=March 27, 1969 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of telegram to Hon. U Thant, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Committee to Defend the Conspiracy |location=12:12 |date=June 19, 1969 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/06/19/the-committee-to-defend-the-conspiracy/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Ford’s Better Idea |location=19:11 & 12 |date=January 25, 1973 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/01/25/fords-better-idea/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Words for the Shah |location=24:19 |date=November 24, 1977 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1977/11/24/words-for-the-shah/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Open letter to the Prime Minister of Iran, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=In a Cuban Prison |location=25:19 |date=December 7, 1978 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1978/12/07/in-a-cuban-prison/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Alexandr Bogolovski |location=31:15 |date=October 11, 1984 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Mr. A. M. Rekunov, Procurator General of the USSR, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Arrests in Poland |location=33.13 |date=August 13, 1986 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1986/08/14/arrests-in-poland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Celebrating Mencken |location=37:4 |date=March 15, 1990 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/03/15/celebrating-mencken/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=President Clinton. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=An Urgent Appeal from Pen American Center |location=40:4 |date=February 11, 1993 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/02/11/an-urgent-appeal-from-pen-american-center/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=to Prime Minister Paul Keating et al. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Wei Jingsheng |location=43:3 |date=February 15, 1996 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/02/15/the-case-of-wei-jingsheng/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories. An open letter.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=JFK’s Assassination |location=50:20 |date=December 18, 2003 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2003/12/18/jfks-assassination/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Election and America’s Future |location=51:17 |date=November 4, 2004 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/11/04/the-election-and-americas-future/ |url-access=subscription |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Letter; one of a series solicited by the Editors.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject= Blocked |location=52:13 |date=August 11, 2005 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/08/11/blocked/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} As author of ''Oswald’s Tale'', with other signatories.

==2007==

===Primary===
====Books====
{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |author-mask=1 |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |date=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}

====Book Contributions====
{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contribution=Commentary |last=Regan |first=Ken |date=2007 |title=Knockout: The Art of Boxing |url= |location=San Rafael, CA |publisher=Insight Editions |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contributor-mask=1 |contribution=Introduction |last=Schiller |first=Lawrence |date=2007 |title=Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=Los Angles, CA |publisher=East End Editions KLS |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

====Interviews====


{{cite magazine |last=Binelli |first=Mark |date=May 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Rolling Stone |pages=3–17 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Foley |first=Dylan |date=January 28, 2007 |title=A Portrait of the Devil as a Young Man |url= |work=Star-Ledger |location=final ed. |page=6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Fox |first=Sue |date=July 8, 2007 |title=Even at 84, Norman Mailer Refuses to Pull His Punches |url=https://www.pressreader.com/uk/sunday-express-1070/20070708/282346855399714 |work=Sunday Express |location=UK first ed. |page=55 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Devilish Motives |url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/devilish-motives-20070120-gdp9x7.html |work=Sydney Morning Herald |location=Australia |access-date=2020-10-01 |page=30 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Nan |date= |title=Writing with the Devil |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/11/10/writing_with_the_devil/ |work=Boston Globe |location=Magazine |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kirschling |first=Gregory |date=January 19, 2007 |title=Tough Guys Don’t Quit |url= |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |issue=916 |page=48 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lee |first=Michael |title=The Devil in Norman Mailer |url=https://search.proquest.com/openview/5bff77fb5c089c0b3d810827ee4686c7/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=40852 |journal=Literary Review |volume=50 |issue=4 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=202–217 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Lennon |first=Michael |date=October 5, 2007 |title=The Rise of Mailerism |url=https://nymag.com/news/features/38961/ |magazine=New York |issue=40.36 |pages=24+ |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }} Mailer discusses ''On God''.

{{cite magazine |last=Llewellyn |first=Caro |author-mask= |title=The Lion in Winter: Norman Mailer Talks about Writing His First Novel in a Decade |url= |magazine=Weekend Australian |location=pre-prints ed. |date=March 31, 2007 |pages=1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Author at Home |url= |work=The Observer |location=England |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Miner |first=Colin |date=January 22, 2007 |title=Mailer on Bush, Obama & Writing |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-on-bush-obama-writing/47109/ |work=New York Sun |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |title=The Art of Fiction No. 193, Norman Mailer |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5775/the-art-of-fiction-no-193-norman-mailer |journal=The Paris Review |volume=49 |issue=181 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=44+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |author-mask=1 |title=Get Your Ass off My Pillow |url=https://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/get-your-ass-off-my-pillow/ |url-access=subscription |magazine=Harper’s Magazine |issue=315.1888 |date=September 2007 |pages=22–24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Pierleoni |first=Allen |date=February 7, 2007 |title=Now Age 84.... |url= |work=Sacramento Bee |location=metro final ed.: TK22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 2007 |title=Proust Questionnaire: Norman Mailer |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/proust_mailer200701 |magazine=Vanity Fair |issue=557 |page=166 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Rose |first=Daniel Asa |date=January 21, 2007 |title=In Conversation ... ; with Norman Mailer |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802000_pf.html |work=Washington Post |location=Final ed.: T07 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Santaro |first=Gene |title=The Sound and the Baby Führer |url=https://www.historynet.com/interview-sound-baby-fuhrer.htm |journal=World War II |volume=22 |issue=2 |date=May 2007 |pages=23–25 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Stoffman |first=Judy |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Novel Ideas about Hitler |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2007/01/28/mailers_novel_ideas_about_hitler.html |work=The Toronto Star |page=C04 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Wollheim |first=Richard |title=Living like Heroes |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/11/violence-hip-mailer-1961 |magazine=New Statesman |issue=137.4871 |date=November 19, 2007 |pages=62 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Abridged reprint of a 1961 interview promoting ''Advertisements for Myself''.

===Secondary===

====Essays, Articles, Book Chapters, and Dissertations====

{{cite news |author= |date=January 17, 2007 |title=Sex-Mad Mailer Enraged Rival |url=https://pagesix.com/2007/01/25/sex-mad-mailer-enraged-rival/ |work=New York Post |location=Page Six |page=12 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Article discussing Ralph Ellison’s attitude toward Mailer, according to Ellison’s biographer.

{{cite news |author=Bancroft, Collette |date=October 16, 2007 |title=A Man of Many Letters |url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/10/16/a-man-of-many-letters/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida 1E |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }} A look at Mailer and Mailer scholarship on the occasion of both the publication of ''On God'' and the launch of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite news |author=Beach, Patrick |date=December 23, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Memories about to Open at Ransom Center |url= |work=Austin American-Statesman |location=final ed. |page=J5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author=Bennett, Bruce |date=July 20, 2007 |title=Mailer at the Movies |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-at-the-movies/58850/ |work=New York Sun |location=11 |page= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Overview of Mailer’s films.

{{cite news |author=Brokaw, Leslie |date=September 16, 2007 |title=HFA Salutes Norman Mailer on Film |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2007/09/16/hfa_salutes_norman_mailer_on_film/ |work=Boston Globe |location=third ed. |page=N11 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Bufithis, Philip |date=2007 |title=''The Executioner’s Song'': A Life Beneath Our Conscience |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07bufi |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |edition=1 |location= |page=77-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=Burns |first=Paul C. |date=2007 |title=In Jesus in Twentieth-Century Literature, Art, and Movies |chapter=Transformation of Biblical Methods and Godhead in Norman Mailer’s Gospel |location=New York |publisher=Continuum |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Chaiken |first=Michael |title=The Master’s Mercurial Mistress: How Norman Mailer Courted Chaos 24 Frames per Second |journal=Film Comment |url=http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/25897522/the-masters-mercurial-mistress-how-norman-mailer-courted-chaos-24-frames-per-second |url-access=subscription |volume=43 |issue=4 |date=July 2007 |pages=36–42 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Crook |first=Zeba |date=January 2007 |title=Fictionalizing Jesus: Story and History in Two Recent Jesus Novels |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249573018_Fictionalizing_Jesus_Story_and_History_in_Two_Recent_Jesus_Novels |url-access=subscription |work=Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus |volume=5 |issue=1 |page=33-55 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |date=2007 |title=How Mailer Became ‘Mailer’: The Writer as Private and Public Character |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=118-31 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Duguid |first=Scott |date=2007 |title=The Addiction of Masculinity: Norman Mailer’s ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' and the Cultural Politics of Reaganism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619310 |url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=23-30 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Writers Remain a Robust Bunch |work=St. Petersburg Times |page=B1+ |location=Florida |access-date= |ref=harv }} Article about the continued productivity of aging “literary giants” Mailer, Updike, and Roth.

{{cite news |last=Goldfarb |first=Reuven |date=November 20, 2007 |title=The Jewish Mailer |url=https://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/the-jewish-mailer |work=Jerusalem Post |volume=14 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Gottlieb |first=Akiva |date=July 20, 2017 |title=Norman Mailer, Auteur |url=http://old.forward.com/articles/11164/norman-mailer-auteur-00143/index.html |work=Forward |location=B1+ |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Article on Mailer’s films, on the occasion of the New York exhibit “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

{{cite journal |last=Henderson |first=Cathy |last2=Oram |first2=Richard W. |last3=Schwartzburg |first3=Molly |last4=Hardy |first4=Molly |title=Mailer Takes on America: Images from the Ransom Center Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07hend |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=141-75 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Holmes |first=Constance E. |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |title=Norman Mailer: Supplemental Bibliography through 2006 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr06bib |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2007 |pages=234-60 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Houpt |first=Simon |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Still a Brawler at Heart |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/still-a-brawler-at-heart/article677847/ |work=Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=R4 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Howard |first=Gerald |title=Mailer Gets Hammered |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/books/review/Howard-t.html |work=New York Times Book Review |issue=late ed, final |date=August 2007 |pages=27 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Essay discussing Mailer’s films, focusing on ''Maidstone''.

{{cite journal |last=Howley |first=Ashton |title=Mailer Again: Heterophobia in ''Tough Guys Don't Dance'' |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=31-46 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=James |first=Clive |date=2007 |title=Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts |url= |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton |pages=409-413 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=J. C. |title=White Mischief |url= |journal=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |volume= |issue= |date=October 26, 2007 |pages=36 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Includes brief mention of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite magazine |last=Junod |first=Tom |date=January 2007 |title=The Last Man Standing |magazine=Esquire |volume=147 |issue=1|pages=108-133 |url=https://classic.esquire.com/article/2007/1/1/the-last-man-standing |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kachka |first=Boris |date=January 15, 2007 |title=Mr. Tenditious |url= |magazine=New York |volume=40 |issue=2 |pages=62 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Recaps Mailer’s history of responding negatively—even violently—to criticism.

{{cite journal |last=Kaufmann |first=Donald L. |date=Fall 2007 |title=An American Dream: The Singular Nightmare |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kauf |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=194-205 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Kennedy |first=William |date=Fall 2007 |title=Norman Mailer as Occasional Commentator in a Self-Interview and Memoir |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kenn |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=11-26 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Kriegel |first=Leonard |date=Fall 2007 |title=Mailer’s Hitler: Round One |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40211658|url-access=subscription |work=Sewanee Review |volume=115 |issue=4 |page=615-620 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=Fall 2007 |title=Gallery Talk: The Mailer Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07lenn |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=132-40 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |author-mask=1 |date=2007 |title=Norman Mailer: Novelist, Journalist, or Historian? |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619315|url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=91-103 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |editor-last=Lennon |editor-first=J. Michael |editor-mask=1 |date=Fall 2007 |title=‘A Series of Tragicomedies’: Mailer’s Letters on ''The Deer Park'', 1954–55 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07lenn1 |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=45-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

. . .

Long, Karen Haymon. “Mailer in Review.” ''Tampa Tribune'' 18 Nov 2007, final ed., Baylife: 1. Discusses the formation of the Mailer Society and the annual conference, focusing on Tampa-area members and the launch of the Mailer Review out of USF.

Lucid, Robert F. “[Boston State Hospital: The Summer of 1942].” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 27–33. Excerpt from incomplete authorized biography.

Masters, Brian. “So Are Some People Really Born Evil?” Daily Mail [London] 19 April 2007, first ed.: 14. Article discussing ''The Castle in the Forest'' in relation to an actual scientific study on evil and genetics.

McDonald, Brian. “Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s ''The Gospel According to the Son''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 78–90.

Meloy, Michael. ''Sex Fiends of the Fifties: Intersections of Violence, Sexuality, and Masculinity in the Work of Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Ken Kesey''. Diss. U of South Carolina, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3280339.

Middlebrook, Jonathan: “Five Notes toward a Reassessment of Norman Mailer.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 179–83.

Partridge, Jeffrey F. L. “''The Gospel According to the Son and Christian Belief''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 64–77.

Petigny, Alan.“Norman Mailer,‘The White Negro,’ and New Conceptions of the Self in Postwar America.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 184–93.

Rampton, David. “Plexed Artistry: The Formal Case for Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 47–63.

Rodwin, John G. "Fighters and Writers". ''The Mailer Review''. Fall 2008. 396-406.

Rollyson, Carl. “Mailer’s Other Career.” ''Village Voice'' 52.29 (18–24 Jul 2007): 68. On the occasion of the New York exhibit, “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

Rose, Daniel Asa. “Advertisements for a Gay Self.” ''New York'' 40.4 (5 Feb 2007): 9. Brief comment praising Mailer’s treatment of homosexuality in ''The Castle in the Forest''.

Ryan, James Emmett. “‘Insatiable as Good Old America’: Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Popular Criminality.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 17–22.

Scott, A.O. “Norman Mailer Unbound.” ''New York Times'' 20 Jul 2007, late ed. final, east coast: E1!. Discuss/reviews Mailer’s films in anticipation of a screening at Lincoln Center.

Severs, Jeffrey Frank. ''Reinventing Totalitarianism in the Postwar American Novel''. Diss. Harvard U, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3265089.

====Book Reviews====
=====Reviews of ''The Castle in the Forest''=====

{{cite magazine |last=Abell |first=Stephen |date=February 16, 2007 |title=The Anality of Evil |url= |magazine=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |pages=21–22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allen |first=Bruce |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer Asks: Who Made Hitler? |url= |work=News & Observer |location=final ed. |page=G5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allington |first=Patrick |date=May 12, 2007 |title=Devil’s Disciple |url= |work=Advertiser |location=Australia, state ed. |page=W10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Amidon |first=Stephen |date=February 4, 2007 |title=Portrait of a Monster |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/portrait-of-a-monster-nr77qrvvxqg |url-access=subscription |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=54 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Anderson |first=Don |date=April 7, 2007 |title=Devil of a Time |url= |work=Weekend Australian |location=Qld Review ed. |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Anshen |first=D. |title=An Enigmatic Development |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/485260/pdf |url-access=subscription |journal=American Book Review |volume=28 |issue=6 |date=September 2007 |page=18 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Arditti |first=Michael |date=February 16, 2007 |title=New Fiction |url= |work=Daily Mailer |location=London, first ed. |page=72 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{cite journal |author= |title=His Perfect Sense of the Other |url=https://newcriterion.com/issues/2007/2/ldquohis-perfect-sense-of-the-otherrdquo |journal=New Criterion |volume=25 |issue=6 |date=February 2007 |pages=1–2 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Little Hitler |url=https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2007/01/18/little-hitler |magazine=Economist |location=Books & Arts |page92= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=August 8, 2007 |title=Mailer Brings out the Devil in Hitler |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=21 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Digs into Hitler’s Childhood |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7040474 |work=Weekend Edition: All Things Considered |location=NPR |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Writes a Novel about Adolf Hitler’s Childhood |url= |magazine=Gleaner |location=New Brunswick |pages=C4 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

====Obituaries and Retrospectives====

{{cite news |last=Allen-Mills |first=Tony |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/norman-mailer-literary-rebeldies-zkhkhdbchfw |work=Sunday Times |location=London |pages=1+ |access-date=2020-10-01 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }} [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

{{cite news |last=Ambrose |first=Jay |date=November 25, 2007 |title=Remembering Mailer |url= |work=Knoxville News |location= |page=73 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Andriani |first=Lynn |date=November 19, 2007 |title=A Prolific Life to the End |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20071119.html |magazine=Publishers Weekly |location= |publisher= |access-date=2020-10-03 |url-access=subscription }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Literary Lion Sparked American Debate |url= |work=Daily Variety |agency=Associated Press |date=November 12, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Writers Remember Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |agency=Associated Press |date=November 13, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature |url= |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=20 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Baddiel |first=David |date=November 17, 2007 |title=For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bancroft |first=Colette |date=November 11, 2007 |title=‘He was Much More’ than a Writer |url= |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=1A |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Barnes |first=Bart |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Blustery Force in Life and Letters |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/norman-mailer-blustery-force-in-life-and-letters-dies-at-84/2019/01/24/56b92688-2031-11e9-9145-3f74070bbdb9_story.html |work=Washington Post |location= |page=A01 |access-date=2020-10-04 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Bernstein |first=Mashey |date=December 2007 |title=In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish Writer |url= |magazine=Deep South Jewish Voice |location= |publisher= |access-date= }}

{{cite news |last1=Blau |first1=Rosie |last2=Mulligan |first2=Martin |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Pulling No Punches to the End |url=https://www.ft.com/content/aa64fec6-9085-11dc-a6f2-0000779fd2ac |work=London Financial Times |location= |page=13 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyd |first=Herb |date=November 15, 2007 |title=When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer |url= |work=New York Amsterdam News |location= |page=1+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last1=Burke |first1=Cathy |last2=Venezia |first2=Todd |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer, 84, Dies |url=https://nypost.com/2007/11/11/literary-pug-original-hipster-mailer-84-dies/ |work=New York Post |location= |page=November 11, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date= November 12, 2007 |title=A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-brawler-who-never-pulled-a-punch-1.981221 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Calabrese |first=Erin |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women’ |url=https://nypost.com/2007/11/19/widow-defends-mailer-says-he-loved-women/ |work=New York Post |location= |page=14 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Campbell |first=James |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/nov/12/guardianobituaries.usa |work=Guardian |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Cappell |first=Ezra |date=November 16, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of the Book |url=https://forward.com/news/12032/norman-mailer-a-man-of-letters-inspired-by-the-pe-00800/ |work=Forward |location= |page=A1+ |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Clark |first=Roy Peter |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Two Minutes with Mailer |url=https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2007/two-minutes-with-mailer/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=1E |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Clarke |first=Toni |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84 |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/writer-norman-mailer-dies-at-84-1.981225 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized |url=https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2007/11/14/Heavyweight-Mailer-s-life-and-work-were-outsized/stories/200711140262 |work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |location= |page=B6 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish |url=https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/legendary-writer-with-particular-love-for-the-irish-26331219.html |work=Irish Independent |location= |page=unknown |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling |url= |work=Edmonton Journal |location= |page=A3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Mailer won pair of Pulitzers |url= |work=Variety |location= |page=55 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Mailer's Ghost |url=https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/41004/ |magazine=New York |location= |publisher= |date=November 26, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-02 }} [Note: Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.]

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.economist.com/obituary/2007/11/15/norman-mailer |work=Economist |location=US |page=103 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Sunday Independent |location=Ireland |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=53 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 13, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/norman-mailer-400006.html |work=Independent |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |location= |page=A12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Cincinnati Post |location= |page=C10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Norman Mailer, 84 |url= |magazine=Newsweek |location= |publisher= |date=December 31, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Obituary of Norman Mailer |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1569056/Norman-Mailer.html |work=Daily Telegraph |location=London |page2= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84 |url= |work=Providence Journal |location= |page=A6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

Craig, Olga. “A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling.” ''Gazette'' [Montreal] 11 Nov 2007, final ed.: A3.

Crosbie, Lynn. “Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women.” ''Globe and Mail'' [Canada] 12 Nov 2007: R1.

Crossen, Cynthia. “Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody: 1948’s ‘The
Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its
Greatest Blessing.” ''Wall Street Journal Online'' (15 Nov 2007). http://
www.wallstreetjournal.com.

Cryer, Dan and Aileen Jacobson. “Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon
Dies.” ''Newsday'' 11 Nov 2007, Nassau and Suffolk ed.: A08

. . .

{{cite news |last=D’Alessio |first=Jeff |title=A Life Written and Lived on a Large Scale: Norman Mailer 1923–2007 |url= |journal=Atlanta Journal-Constitution |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page=A5 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Reactions from Atlanta residents on the life and death of Mailer.

{{cite magazine |last=Deignan |first=Tom |title=Mailer: More Irish than the Irish |url= |magazine=Irish Voice |volume=21 |issue=47 |date=November 21, 2007 |pages=11 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Demirel |first=Selçuk |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=18 |date=December 3, 2007 |page=8 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |title=The Nijinsky of Ambivalence |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=19 |date=December 10, 2007 |pages=48–52 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |author-mask=1 |title=The Un-generation |url= |work=Los Angeles Times |volume= |issue= |date=December 30, 2007 |page=R4 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Retrospective comparing the lives and careers of Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Grace Paley, who all died in 2007 at the age of 84.

. . .

{{cite magazine |last=Duggan |first=Keith |title=Two-Fisted Mailer Finally Counter Out |url= |magazine=Irish Times |volume= |issue= |date=November 7, 2007 |page=12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Epstein |first=Jason |title=Norman Mailer (1923–2007) |url= |magazine=New York Review of Books |volume=54 |issue=20 |date=December 20, 2007 |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Eyman |first=Scott |title=Mailer’s Works Made Deep Impression on Post-WWII Political, Cultural Landscape |url= |magazine=Palm Beach Post |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{Review|state=expanded}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007}}
[[Category:Bibliographies (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-05T03:21:36Z

Amylhester: /* Obituaries and Retrospectives */adding templates

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{{Byline|last=Holmes|first=Constance E.|last1=Wilson|first1=Kristine A.|note=Much of the following has been incorporated into ''[[NM:WD|Norman Mailer: Works and Days]]''.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08bib}}
{{TOC right|width=25%}}
==Addenda through 2006==
===Primary===
====Letters====

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=10:5 |date=March 4, 1968 |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Leonid I. Brezhnev, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Violence in Oakland |location=10:9 |date=May 9, 1968 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/05/09/violence-in-oakland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=12:6 |date=March 27, 1969 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of telegram to Hon. U Thant, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Committee to Defend the Conspiracy |location=12:12 |date=June 19, 1969 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/06/19/the-committee-to-defend-the-conspiracy/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Ford’s Better Idea |location=19:11 & 12 |date=January 25, 1973 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/01/25/fords-better-idea/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Words for the Shah |location=24:19 |date=November 24, 1977 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1977/11/24/words-for-the-shah/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Open letter to the Prime Minister of Iran, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=In a Cuban Prison |location=25:19 |date=December 7, 1978 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1978/12/07/in-a-cuban-prison/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Alexandr Bogolovski |location=31:15 |date=October 11, 1984 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Mr. A. M. Rekunov, Procurator General of the USSR, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Arrests in Poland |location=33.13 |date=August 13, 1986 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1986/08/14/arrests-in-poland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Celebrating Mencken |location=37:4 |date=March 15, 1990 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/03/15/celebrating-mencken/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=President Clinton. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=An Urgent Appeal from Pen American Center |location=40:4 |date=February 11, 1993 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/02/11/an-urgent-appeal-from-pen-american-center/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=to Prime Minister Paul Keating et al. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Wei Jingsheng |location=43:3 |date=February 15, 1996 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/02/15/the-case-of-wei-jingsheng/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories. An open letter.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=JFK’s Assassination |location=50:20 |date=December 18, 2003 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2003/12/18/jfks-assassination/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Election and America’s Future |location=51:17 |date=November 4, 2004 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/11/04/the-election-and-americas-future/ |url-access=subscription |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Letter; one of a series solicited by the Editors.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject= Blocked |location=52:13 |date=August 11, 2005 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/08/11/blocked/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} As author of ''Oswald’s Tale'', with other signatories.

==2007==

===Primary===
====Books====
{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |author-mask=1 |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |date=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}

====Book Contributions====
{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contribution=Commentary |last=Regan |first=Ken |date=2007 |title=Knockout: The Art of Boxing |url= |location=San Rafael, CA |publisher=Insight Editions |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contributor-mask=1 |contribution=Introduction |last=Schiller |first=Lawrence |date=2007 |title=Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=Los Angles, CA |publisher=East End Editions KLS |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

====Interviews====


{{cite magazine |last=Binelli |first=Mark |date=May 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Rolling Stone |pages=3–17 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Foley |first=Dylan |date=January 28, 2007 |title=A Portrait of the Devil as a Young Man |url= |work=Star-Ledger |location=final ed. |page=6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Fox |first=Sue |date=July 8, 2007 |title=Even at 84, Norman Mailer Refuses to Pull His Punches |url=https://www.pressreader.com/uk/sunday-express-1070/20070708/282346855399714 |work=Sunday Express |location=UK first ed. |page=55 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Devilish Motives |url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/devilish-motives-20070120-gdp9x7.html |work=Sydney Morning Herald |location=Australia |access-date=2020-10-01 |page=30 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Nan |date= |title=Writing with the Devil |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/11/10/writing_with_the_devil/ |work=Boston Globe |location=Magazine |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kirschling |first=Gregory |date=January 19, 2007 |title=Tough Guys Don’t Quit |url= |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |issue=916 |page=48 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lee |first=Michael |title=The Devil in Norman Mailer |url=https://search.proquest.com/openview/5bff77fb5c089c0b3d810827ee4686c7/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=40852 |journal=Literary Review |volume=50 |issue=4 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=202–217 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Lennon |first=Michael |date=October 5, 2007 |title=The Rise of Mailerism |url=https://nymag.com/news/features/38961/ |magazine=New York |issue=40.36 |pages=24+ |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }} Mailer discusses ''On God''.

{{cite magazine |last=Llewellyn |first=Caro |author-mask= |title=The Lion in Winter: Norman Mailer Talks about Writing His First Novel in a Decade |url= |magazine=Weekend Australian |location=pre-prints ed. |date=March 31, 2007 |pages=1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Author at Home |url= |work=The Observer |location=England |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Miner |first=Colin |date=January 22, 2007 |title=Mailer on Bush, Obama & Writing |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-on-bush-obama-writing/47109/ |work=New York Sun |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |title=The Art of Fiction No. 193, Norman Mailer |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5775/the-art-of-fiction-no-193-norman-mailer |journal=The Paris Review |volume=49 |issue=181 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=44+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |author-mask=1 |title=Get Your Ass off My Pillow |url=https://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/get-your-ass-off-my-pillow/ |url-access=subscription |magazine=Harper’s Magazine |issue=315.1888 |date=September 2007 |pages=22–24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Pierleoni |first=Allen |date=February 7, 2007 |title=Now Age 84.... |url= |work=Sacramento Bee |location=metro final ed.: TK22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 2007 |title=Proust Questionnaire: Norman Mailer |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/proust_mailer200701 |magazine=Vanity Fair |issue=557 |page=166 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Rose |first=Daniel Asa |date=January 21, 2007 |title=In Conversation ... ; with Norman Mailer |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802000_pf.html |work=Washington Post |location=Final ed.: T07 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Santaro |first=Gene |title=The Sound and the Baby Führer |url=https://www.historynet.com/interview-sound-baby-fuhrer.htm |journal=World War II |volume=22 |issue=2 |date=May 2007 |pages=23–25 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Stoffman |first=Judy |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Novel Ideas about Hitler |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2007/01/28/mailers_novel_ideas_about_hitler.html |work=The Toronto Star |page=C04 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Wollheim |first=Richard |title=Living like Heroes |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/11/violence-hip-mailer-1961 |magazine=New Statesman |issue=137.4871 |date=November 19, 2007 |pages=62 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Abridged reprint of a 1961 interview promoting ''Advertisements for Myself''.

===Secondary===

====Essays, Articles, Book Chapters, and Dissertations====

{{cite news |author= |date=January 17, 2007 |title=Sex-Mad Mailer Enraged Rival |url=https://pagesix.com/2007/01/25/sex-mad-mailer-enraged-rival/ |work=New York Post |location=Page Six |page=12 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Article discussing Ralph Ellison’s attitude toward Mailer, according to Ellison’s biographer.

{{cite news |author=Bancroft, Collette |date=October 16, 2007 |title=A Man of Many Letters |url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/10/16/a-man-of-many-letters/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida 1E |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }} A look at Mailer and Mailer scholarship on the occasion of both the publication of ''On God'' and the launch of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite news |author=Beach, Patrick |date=December 23, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Memories about to Open at Ransom Center |url= |work=Austin American-Statesman |location=final ed. |page=J5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author=Bennett, Bruce |date=July 20, 2007 |title=Mailer at the Movies |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-at-the-movies/58850/ |work=New York Sun |location=11 |page= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Overview of Mailer’s films.

{{cite news |author=Brokaw, Leslie |date=September 16, 2007 |title=HFA Salutes Norman Mailer on Film |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2007/09/16/hfa_salutes_norman_mailer_on_film/ |work=Boston Globe |location=third ed. |page=N11 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Bufithis, Philip |date=2007 |title=''The Executioner’s Song'': A Life Beneath Our Conscience |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07bufi |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |edition=1 |location= |page=77-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=Burns |first=Paul C. |date=2007 |title=In Jesus in Twentieth-Century Literature, Art, and Movies |chapter=Transformation of Biblical Methods and Godhead in Norman Mailer’s Gospel |location=New York |publisher=Continuum |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Chaiken |first=Michael |title=The Master’s Mercurial Mistress: How Norman Mailer Courted Chaos 24 Frames per Second |journal=Film Comment |url=http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/25897522/the-masters-mercurial-mistress-how-norman-mailer-courted-chaos-24-frames-per-second |url-access=subscription |volume=43 |issue=4 |date=July 2007 |pages=36–42 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Crook |first=Zeba |date=January 2007 |title=Fictionalizing Jesus: Story and History in Two Recent Jesus Novels |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249573018_Fictionalizing_Jesus_Story_and_History_in_Two_Recent_Jesus_Novels |url-access=subscription |work=Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus |volume=5 |issue=1 |page=33-55 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |date=2007 |title=How Mailer Became ‘Mailer’: The Writer as Private and Public Character |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=118-31 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Duguid |first=Scott |date=2007 |title=The Addiction of Masculinity: Norman Mailer’s ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' and the Cultural Politics of Reaganism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619310 |url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=23-30 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Writers Remain a Robust Bunch |work=St. Petersburg Times |page=B1+ |location=Florida |access-date= |ref=harv }} Article about the continued productivity of aging “literary giants” Mailer, Updike, and Roth.

{{cite news |last=Goldfarb |first=Reuven |date=November 20, 2007 |title=The Jewish Mailer |url=https://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/the-jewish-mailer |work=Jerusalem Post |volume=14 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Gottlieb |first=Akiva |date=July 20, 2017 |title=Norman Mailer, Auteur |url=http://old.forward.com/articles/11164/norman-mailer-auteur-00143/index.html |work=Forward |location=B1+ |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Article on Mailer’s films, on the occasion of the New York exhibit “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

{{cite journal |last=Henderson |first=Cathy |last2=Oram |first2=Richard W. |last3=Schwartzburg |first3=Molly |last4=Hardy |first4=Molly |title=Mailer Takes on America: Images from the Ransom Center Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07hend |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=141-75 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Holmes |first=Constance E. |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |title=Norman Mailer: Supplemental Bibliography through 2006 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr06bib |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2007 |pages=234-60 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Houpt |first=Simon |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Still a Brawler at Heart |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/still-a-brawler-at-heart/article677847/ |work=Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=R4 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Howard |first=Gerald |title=Mailer Gets Hammered |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/books/review/Howard-t.html |work=New York Times Book Review |issue=late ed, final |date=August 2007 |pages=27 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Essay discussing Mailer’s films, focusing on ''Maidstone''.

{{cite journal |last=Howley |first=Ashton |title=Mailer Again: Heterophobia in ''Tough Guys Don't Dance'' |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=31-46 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=James |first=Clive |date=2007 |title=Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts |url= |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton |pages=409-413 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=J. C. |title=White Mischief |url= |journal=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |volume= |issue= |date=October 26, 2007 |pages=36 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Includes brief mention of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite magazine |last=Junod |first=Tom |date=January 2007 |title=The Last Man Standing |magazine=Esquire |volume=147 |issue=1|pages=108-133 |url=https://classic.esquire.com/article/2007/1/1/the-last-man-standing |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kachka |first=Boris |date=January 15, 2007 |title=Mr. Tenditious |url= |magazine=New York |volume=40 |issue=2 |pages=62 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Recaps Mailer’s history of responding negatively—even violently—to criticism.

{{cite journal |last=Kaufmann |first=Donald L. |date=Fall 2007 |title=An American Dream: The Singular Nightmare |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kauf |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=194-205 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Kennedy |first=William |date=Fall 2007 |title=Norman Mailer as Occasional Commentator in a Self-Interview and Memoir |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kenn |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=11-26 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Kriegel |first=Leonard |date=Fall 2007 |title=Mailer’s Hitler: Round One |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40211658|url-access=subscription |work=Sewanee Review |volume=115 |issue=4 |page=615-620 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=Fall 2007 |title=Gallery Talk: The Mailer Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07lenn |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=132-40 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |author-mask=1 |date=2007 |title=Norman Mailer: Novelist, Journalist, or Historian? |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619315|url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=91-103 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |editor-last=Lennon |editor-first=J. Michael |editor-mask=1 |date=Fall 2007 |title=‘A Series of Tragicomedies’: Mailer’s Letters on ''The Deer Park'', 1954–55 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07lenn1 |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=45-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

. . .

Long, Karen Haymon. “Mailer in Review.” ''Tampa Tribune'' 18 Nov 2007, final ed., Baylife: 1. Discusses the formation of the Mailer Society and the annual conference, focusing on Tampa-area members and the launch of the Mailer Review out of USF.

Lucid, Robert F. “[Boston State Hospital: The Summer of 1942].” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 27–33. Excerpt from incomplete authorized biography.

Masters, Brian. “So Are Some People Really Born Evil?” Daily Mail [London] 19 April 2007, first ed.: 14. Article discussing ''The Castle in the Forest'' in relation to an actual scientific study on evil and genetics.

McDonald, Brian. “Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s ''The Gospel According to the Son''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 78–90.

Meloy, Michael. ''Sex Fiends of the Fifties: Intersections of Violence, Sexuality, and Masculinity in the Work of Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Ken Kesey''. Diss. U of South Carolina, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3280339.

Middlebrook, Jonathan: “Five Notes toward a Reassessment of Norman Mailer.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 179–83.

Partridge, Jeffrey F. L. “''The Gospel According to the Son and Christian Belief''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 64–77.

Petigny, Alan.“Norman Mailer,‘The White Negro,’ and New Conceptions of the Self in Postwar America.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 184–93.

Rampton, David. “Plexed Artistry: The Formal Case for Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 47–63.

Rodwin, John G. "Fighters and Writers". ''The Mailer Review''. Fall 2008. 396-406.

Rollyson, Carl. “Mailer’s Other Career.” ''Village Voice'' 52.29 (18–24 Jul 2007): 68. On the occasion of the New York exhibit, “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

Rose, Daniel Asa. “Advertisements for a Gay Self.” ''New York'' 40.4 (5 Feb 2007): 9. Brief comment praising Mailer’s treatment of homosexuality in ''The Castle in the Forest''.

Ryan, James Emmett. “‘Insatiable as Good Old America’: Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Popular Criminality.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 17–22.

Scott, A.O. “Norman Mailer Unbound.” ''New York Times'' 20 Jul 2007, late ed. final, east coast: E1!. Discuss/reviews Mailer’s films in anticipation of a screening at Lincoln Center.

Severs, Jeffrey Frank. ''Reinventing Totalitarianism in the Postwar American Novel''. Diss. Harvard U, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3265089.

====Book Reviews====
=====Reviews of ''The Castle in the Forest''=====

{{cite magazine |last=Abell |first=Stephen |date=February 16, 2007 |title=The Anality of Evil |url= |magazine=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |pages=21–22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allen |first=Bruce |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer Asks: Who Made Hitler? |url= |work=News & Observer |location=final ed. |page=G5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allington |first=Patrick |date=May 12, 2007 |title=Devil’s Disciple |url= |work=Advertiser |location=Australia, state ed. |page=W10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Amidon |first=Stephen |date=February 4, 2007 |title=Portrait of a Monster |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/portrait-of-a-monster-nr77qrvvxqg |url-access=subscription |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=54 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Anderson |first=Don |date=April 7, 2007 |title=Devil of a Time |url= |work=Weekend Australian |location=Qld Review ed. |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Anshen |first=D. |title=An Enigmatic Development |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/485260/pdf |url-access=subscription |journal=American Book Review |volume=28 |issue=6 |date=September 2007 |page=18 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Arditti |first=Michael |date=February 16, 2007 |title=New Fiction |url= |work=Daily Mailer |location=London, first ed. |page=72 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{cite journal |author= |title=His Perfect Sense of the Other |url=https://newcriterion.com/issues/2007/2/ldquohis-perfect-sense-of-the-otherrdquo |journal=New Criterion |volume=25 |issue=6 |date=February 2007 |pages=1–2 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Little Hitler |url=https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2007/01/18/little-hitler |magazine=Economist |location=Books & Arts |page92= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=August 8, 2007 |title=Mailer Brings out the Devil in Hitler |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=21 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Digs into Hitler’s Childhood |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7040474 |work=Weekend Edition: All Things Considered |location=NPR |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Writes a Novel about Adolf Hitler’s Childhood |url= |magazine=Gleaner |location=New Brunswick |pages=C4 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

====Obituaries and Retrospectives====

{{cite news |last=Allen-Mills |first=Tony |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/norman-mailer-literary-rebeldies-zkhkhdbchfw |work=Sunday Times |location=London |pages=1+ |access-date=2020-10-01 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }} [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

{{cite news |last=Ambrose |first=Jay |date=November 25, 2007 |title=Remembering Mailer |url= |work=Knoxville News |location= |page=73 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Andriani |first=Lynn |date=November 19, 2007 |title=A Prolific Life to the End |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20071119.html |magazine=Publishers Weekly |location= |publisher= |access-date=2020-10-03 |url-access=subscription }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Literary Lion Sparked American Debate |url= |work=Daily Variety |agency=Associated Press |date=November 12, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Writers Remember Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |agency=Associated Press |date=November 13, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature |url= |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=20 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Baddiel |first=David |date=November 17, 2007 |title=For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bancroft |first=Colette |date=November 11, 2007 |title=‘He was Much More’ than a Writer |url= |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=1A |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Barnes |first=Bart |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Blustery Force in Life and Letters |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/norman-mailer-blustery-force-in-life-and-letters-dies-at-84/2019/01/24/56b92688-2031-11e9-9145-3f74070bbdb9_story.html |work=Washington Post |location= |page=A01 |access-date=2020-10-04 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Bernstein |first=Mashey |date=December 2007 |title=In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish Writer |url= |magazine=Deep South Jewish Voice |location= |publisher= |access-date= }}

{{cite news |last1=Blau |first1=Rosie |last2=Mulligan |first2=Martin |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Pulling No Punches to the End |url=https://www.ft.com/content/aa64fec6-9085-11dc-a6f2-0000779fd2ac |work=London Financial Times |location= |page=13 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Boyd |first=Herb |date=November 15, 2007 |title=When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer |url= |work=New York Amsterdam News |location= |page=1+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last1=Burke |first1=Cathy |last2=Venezia |first2=Todd |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer, 84, Dies |url=https://nypost.com/2007/11/11/literary-pug-original-hipster-mailer-84-dies/ |work=New York Post |location= |page=November 11, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-04 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date= November 12, 2007 |title=A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-brawler-who-never-pulled-a-punch-1.981221 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized |url=https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2007/11/14/Heavyweight-Mailer-s-life-and-work-were-outsized/stories/200711140262 |work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |location= |page=B6 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish |url=https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/legendary-writer-with-particular-love-for-the-irish-26331219.html |work=Irish Independent |location= |page=unknown |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling |url= |work=Edmonton Journal |location= |page=A3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Mailer won pair of Pulitzers |url= |work=Variety |location= |page=55 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Mailer's Ghost |url=https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/41004/ |magazine=New York |location= |publisher= |date=November 26, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-02 }} [Note: Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.]

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.economist.com/obituary/2007/11/15/norman-mailer |work=Economist |location=US |page=103 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Sunday Independent |location=Ireland |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=53 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 13, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/norman-mailer-400006.html |work=Independent |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |location= |page=A12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Cincinnati Post |location= |page=C10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Norman Mailer, 84 |url= |magazine=Newsweek |location= |publisher= |date=December 31, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Obituary of Norman Mailer |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1569056/Norman-Mailer.html |work=Daily Telegraph |location=London |page2= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84 |url= |work=Providence Journal |location= |page=A6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

Calabrese, Erin. “Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women.’” ''New York Post'' 19 Nov 2007, News: 14.

Campbell, James. “Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author.”
''Guardian'' [London] 12 Nov 2007, final ed.: 34.

Cappell, Ezra. “Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of
the Book.” ''Forward'' 16 Nov 2007: A1+.

Clark, Roy Peter. “Two Minutes with Mailer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 15 Nov 2007: 1E.

Clarke, Toni.“Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84.” ''Irish Times'' 12 Nov 2007: 10.

Craig, Olga. “A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling.” ''Gazette'' [Montreal] 11 Nov 2007, final ed.: A3.

Crosbie, Lynn. “Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women.” ''Globe and Mail'' [Canada] 12 Nov 2007: R1.

Crossen, Cynthia. “Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody: 1948’s ‘The
Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its
Greatest Blessing.” ''Wall Street Journal Online'' (15 Nov 2007). http://
www.wallstreetjournal.com.

Cryer, Dan and Aileen Jacobson. “Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon
Dies.” ''Newsday'' 11 Nov 2007, Nassau and Suffolk ed.: A08

. . .

{{cite news |last=D’Alessio |first=Jeff |title=A Life Written and Lived on a Large Scale: Norman Mailer 1923–2007 |url= |journal=Atlanta Journal-Constitution |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page=A5 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Reactions from Atlanta residents on the life and death of Mailer.

{{cite magazine |last=Deignan |first=Tom |title=Mailer: More Irish than the Irish |url= |magazine=Irish Voice |volume=21 |issue=47 |date=November 21, 2007 |pages=11 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Demirel |first=Selçuk |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=18 |date=December 3, 2007 |page=8 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |title=The Nijinsky of Ambivalence |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=19 |date=December 10, 2007 |pages=48–52 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |author-mask=1 |title=The Un-generation |url= |work=Los Angeles Times |volume= |issue= |date=December 30, 2007 |page=R4 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Retrospective comparing the lives and careers of Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Grace Paley, who all died in 2007 at the age of 84.

. . .

{{cite magazine |last=Duggan |first=Keith |title=Two-Fisted Mailer Finally Counter Out |url= |magazine=Irish Times |volume= |issue= |date=November 7, 2007 |page=12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Epstein |first=Jason |title=Norman Mailer (1923–2007) |url= |magazine=New York Review of Books |volume=54 |issue=20 |date=December 20, 2007 |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Eyman |first=Scott |title=Mailer’s Works Made Deep Impression on Post-WWII Political, Cultural Landscape |url= |magazine=Palm Beach Post |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{Review|state=expanded}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007}}
[[Category:Bibliographies (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-05T02:27:52Z

Amylhester: /* Obituaries and Retrospectives */add templates

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{{Working}}
{{MR02}}
{{Byline|last=Holmes|first=Constance E.|last1=Wilson|first1=Kristine A.|note=Much of the following has been incorporated into ''[[NM:WD|Norman Mailer: Works and Days]]''.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08bib}}
{{TOC right|width=25%}}
==Addenda through 2006==
===Primary===
====Letters====

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=10:5 |date=March 4, 1968 |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Leonid I. Brezhnev, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Violence in Oakland |location=10:9 |date=May 9, 1968 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/05/09/violence-in-oakland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=12:6 |date=March 27, 1969 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of telegram to Hon. U Thant, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Committee to Defend the Conspiracy |location=12:12 |date=June 19, 1969 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/06/19/the-committee-to-defend-the-conspiracy/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Ford’s Better Idea |location=19:11 & 12 |date=January 25, 1973 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/01/25/fords-better-idea/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Words for the Shah |location=24:19 |date=November 24, 1977 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1977/11/24/words-for-the-shah/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Open letter to the Prime Minister of Iran, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=In a Cuban Prison |location=25:19 |date=December 7, 1978 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1978/12/07/in-a-cuban-prison/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Alexandr Bogolovski |location=31:15 |date=October 11, 1984 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Mr. A. M. Rekunov, Procurator General of the USSR, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Arrests in Poland |location=33.13 |date=August 13, 1986 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1986/08/14/arrests-in-poland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Celebrating Mencken |location=37:4 |date=March 15, 1990 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/03/15/celebrating-mencken/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=President Clinton. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=An Urgent Appeal from Pen American Center |location=40:4 |date=February 11, 1993 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/02/11/an-urgent-appeal-from-pen-american-center/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=to Prime Minister Paul Keating et al. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Wei Jingsheng |location=43:3 |date=February 15, 1996 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/02/15/the-case-of-wei-jingsheng/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories. An open letter.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=JFK’s Assassination |location=50:20 |date=December 18, 2003 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2003/12/18/jfks-assassination/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Election and America’s Future |location=51:17 |date=November 4, 2004 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/11/04/the-election-and-americas-future/ |url-access=subscription |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Letter; one of a series solicited by the Editors.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject= Blocked |location=52:13 |date=August 11, 2005 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/08/11/blocked/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} As author of ''Oswald’s Tale'', with other signatories.

==2007==

===Primary===
====Books====
{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |author-mask=1 |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |date=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}

====Book Contributions====
{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contribution=Commentary |last=Regan |first=Ken |date=2007 |title=Knockout: The Art of Boxing |url= |location=San Rafael, CA |publisher=Insight Editions |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contributor-mask=1 |contribution=Introduction |last=Schiller |first=Lawrence |date=2007 |title=Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=Los Angles, CA |publisher=East End Editions KLS |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

====Interviews====


{{cite magazine |last=Binelli |first=Mark |date=May 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Rolling Stone |pages=3–17 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Foley |first=Dylan |date=January 28, 2007 |title=A Portrait of the Devil as a Young Man |url= |work=Star-Ledger |location=final ed. |page=6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Fox |first=Sue |date=July 8, 2007 |title=Even at 84, Norman Mailer Refuses to Pull His Punches |url=https://www.pressreader.com/uk/sunday-express-1070/20070708/282346855399714 |work=Sunday Express |location=UK first ed. |page=55 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Devilish Motives |url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/devilish-motives-20070120-gdp9x7.html |work=Sydney Morning Herald |location=Australia |access-date=2020-10-01 |page=30 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Nan |date= |title=Writing with the Devil |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/11/10/writing_with_the_devil/ |work=Boston Globe |location=Magazine |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kirschling |first=Gregory |date=January 19, 2007 |title=Tough Guys Don’t Quit |url= |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |issue=916 |page=48 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lee |first=Michael |title=The Devil in Norman Mailer |url=https://search.proquest.com/openview/5bff77fb5c089c0b3d810827ee4686c7/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=40852 |journal=Literary Review |volume=50 |issue=4 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=202–217 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Lennon |first=Michael |date=October 5, 2007 |title=The Rise of Mailerism |url=https://nymag.com/news/features/38961/ |magazine=New York |issue=40.36 |pages=24+ |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }} Mailer discusses ''On God''.

{{cite magazine |last=Llewellyn |first=Caro |author-mask= |title=The Lion in Winter: Norman Mailer Talks about Writing His First Novel in a Decade |url= |magazine=Weekend Australian |location=pre-prints ed. |date=March 31, 2007 |pages=1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Author at Home |url= |work=The Observer |location=England |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Miner |first=Colin |date=January 22, 2007 |title=Mailer on Bush, Obama & Writing |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-on-bush-obama-writing/47109/ |work=New York Sun |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |title=The Art of Fiction No. 193, Norman Mailer |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5775/the-art-of-fiction-no-193-norman-mailer |journal=The Paris Review |volume=49 |issue=181 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=44+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |author-mask=1 |title=Get Your Ass off My Pillow |url=https://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/get-your-ass-off-my-pillow/ |url-access=subscription |magazine=Harper’s Magazine |issue=315.1888 |date=September 2007 |pages=22–24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Pierleoni |first=Allen |date=February 7, 2007 |title=Now Age 84.... |url= |work=Sacramento Bee |location=metro final ed.: TK22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 2007 |title=Proust Questionnaire: Norman Mailer |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/proust_mailer200701 |magazine=Vanity Fair |issue=557 |page=166 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Rose |first=Daniel Asa |date=January 21, 2007 |title=In Conversation ... ; with Norman Mailer |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802000_pf.html |work=Washington Post |location=Final ed.: T07 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Santaro |first=Gene |title=The Sound and the Baby Führer |url=https://www.historynet.com/interview-sound-baby-fuhrer.htm |journal=World War II |volume=22 |issue=2 |date=May 2007 |pages=23–25 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Stoffman |first=Judy |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Novel Ideas about Hitler |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2007/01/28/mailers_novel_ideas_about_hitler.html |work=The Toronto Star |page=C04 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Wollheim |first=Richard |title=Living like Heroes |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/11/violence-hip-mailer-1961 |magazine=New Statesman |issue=137.4871 |date=November 19, 2007 |pages=62 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Abridged reprint of a 1961 interview promoting ''Advertisements for Myself''.

===Secondary===

====Essays, Articles, Book Chapters, and Dissertations====

{{cite news |author= |date=January 17, 2007 |title=Sex-Mad Mailer Enraged Rival |url=https://pagesix.com/2007/01/25/sex-mad-mailer-enraged-rival/ |work=New York Post |location=Page Six |page=12 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Article discussing Ralph Ellison’s attitude toward Mailer, according to Ellison’s biographer.

{{cite news |author=Bancroft, Collette |date=October 16, 2007 |title=A Man of Many Letters |url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/10/16/a-man-of-many-letters/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida 1E |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }} A look at Mailer and Mailer scholarship on the occasion of both the publication of ''On God'' and the launch of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite news |author=Beach, Patrick |date=December 23, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Memories about to Open at Ransom Center |url= |work=Austin American-Statesman |location=final ed. |page=J5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author=Bennett, Bruce |date=July 20, 2007 |title=Mailer at the Movies |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-at-the-movies/58850/ |work=New York Sun |location=11 |page= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Overview of Mailer’s films.

{{cite news |author=Brokaw, Leslie |date=September 16, 2007 |title=HFA Salutes Norman Mailer on Film |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2007/09/16/hfa_salutes_norman_mailer_on_film/ |work=Boston Globe |location=third ed. |page=N11 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Bufithis, Philip |date=2007 |title=''The Executioner’s Song'': A Life Beneath Our Conscience |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07bufi |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |edition=1 |location= |page=77-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=Burns |first=Paul C. |date=2007 |title=In Jesus in Twentieth-Century Literature, Art, and Movies |chapter=Transformation of Biblical Methods and Godhead in Norman Mailer’s Gospel |location=New York |publisher=Continuum |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Chaiken |first=Michael |title=The Master’s Mercurial Mistress: How Norman Mailer Courted Chaos 24 Frames per Second |journal=Film Comment |url=http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/25897522/the-masters-mercurial-mistress-how-norman-mailer-courted-chaos-24-frames-per-second |url-access=subscription |volume=43 |issue=4 |date=July 2007 |pages=36–42 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Crook |first=Zeba |date=January 2007 |title=Fictionalizing Jesus: Story and History in Two Recent Jesus Novels |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249573018_Fictionalizing_Jesus_Story_and_History_in_Two_Recent_Jesus_Novels |url-access=subscription |work=Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus |volume=5 |issue=1 |page=33-55 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |date=2007 |title=How Mailer Became ‘Mailer’: The Writer as Private and Public Character |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=118-31 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Duguid |first=Scott |date=2007 |title=The Addiction of Masculinity: Norman Mailer’s ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' and the Cultural Politics of Reaganism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619310 |url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=23-30 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Writers Remain a Robust Bunch |work=St. Petersburg Times |page=B1+ |location=Florida |access-date= |ref=harv }} Article about the continued productivity of aging “literary giants” Mailer, Updike, and Roth.

{{cite news |last=Goldfarb |first=Reuven |date=November 20, 2007 |title=The Jewish Mailer |url=https://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/the-jewish-mailer |work=Jerusalem Post |volume=14 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Gottlieb |first=Akiva |date=July 20, 2017 |title=Norman Mailer, Auteur |url=http://old.forward.com/articles/11164/norman-mailer-auteur-00143/index.html |work=Forward |location=B1+ |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Article on Mailer’s films, on the occasion of the New York exhibit “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

{{cite journal |last=Henderson |first=Cathy |last2=Oram |first2=Richard W. |last3=Schwartzburg |first3=Molly |last4=Hardy |first4=Molly |title=Mailer Takes on America: Images from the Ransom Center Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07hend |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=141-75 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Holmes |first=Constance E. |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |title=Norman Mailer: Supplemental Bibliography through 2006 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr06bib |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2007 |pages=234-60 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Houpt |first=Simon |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Still a Brawler at Heart |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/still-a-brawler-at-heart/article677847/ |work=Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=R4 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Howard |first=Gerald |title=Mailer Gets Hammered |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/books/review/Howard-t.html |work=New York Times Book Review |issue=late ed, final |date=August 2007 |pages=27 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Essay discussing Mailer’s films, focusing on ''Maidstone''.

{{cite journal |last=Howley |first=Ashton |title=Mailer Again: Heterophobia in ''Tough Guys Don't Dance'' |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=31-46 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=James |first=Clive |date=2007 |title=Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts |url= |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton |pages=409-413 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=J. C. |title=White Mischief |url= |journal=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |volume= |issue= |date=October 26, 2007 |pages=36 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Includes brief mention of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite magazine |last=Junod |first=Tom |date=January 2007 |title=The Last Man Standing |magazine=Esquire |volume=147 |issue=1|pages=108-133 |url=https://classic.esquire.com/article/2007/1/1/the-last-man-standing |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kachka |first=Boris |date=January 15, 2007 |title=Mr. Tenditious |url= |magazine=New York |volume=40 |issue=2 |pages=62 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Recaps Mailer’s history of responding negatively—even violently—to criticism.

{{cite journal |last=Kaufmann |first=Donald L. |date=Fall 2007 |title=An American Dream: The Singular Nightmare |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kauf |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=194-205 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Kennedy |first=William |date=Fall 2007 |title=Norman Mailer as Occasional Commentator in a Self-Interview and Memoir |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kenn |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=11-26 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Kriegel |first=Leonard |date=Fall 2007 |title=Mailer’s Hitler: Round One |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40211658|url-access=subscription |work=Sewanee Review |volume=115 |issue=4 |page=615-620 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=Fall 2007 |title=Gallery Talk: The Mailer Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07lenn |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=132-40 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |author-mask=1 |date=2007 |title=Norman Mailer: Novelist, Journalist, or Historian? |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619315|url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=91-103 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |editor-last=Lennon |editor-first=J. Michael |editor-mask=1 |date=Fall 2007 |title=‘A Series of Tragicomedies’: Mailer’s Letters on ''The Deer Park'', 1954–55 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07lenn1 |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=45-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

. . .

Long, Karen Haymon. “Mailer in Review.” ''Tampa Tribune'' 18 Nov 2007, final ed., Baylife: 1. Discusses the formation of the Mailer Society and the annual conference, focusing on Tampa-area members and the launch of the Mailer Review out of USF.

Lucid, Robert F. “[Boston State Hospital: The Summer of 1942].” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 27–33. Excerpt from incomplete authorized biography.

Masters, Brian. “So Are Some People Really Born Evil?” Daily Mail [London] 19 April 2007, first ed.: 14. Article discussing ''The Castle in the Forest'' in relation to an actual scientific study on evil and genetics.

McDonald, Brian. “Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s ''The Gospel According to the Son''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 78–90.

Meloy, Michael. ''Sex Fiends of the Fifties: Intersections of Violence, Sexuality, and Masculinity in the Work of Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Ken Kesey''. Diss. U of South Carolina, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3280339.

Middlebrook, Jonathan: “Five Notes toward a Reassessment of Norman Mailer.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 179–83.

Partridge, Jeffrey F. L. “''The Gospel According to the Son and Christian Belief''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 64–77.

Petigny, Alan.“Norman Mailer,‘The White Negro,’ and New Conceptions of the Self in Postwar America.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 184–93.

Rampton, David. “Plexed Artistry: The Formal Case for Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 47–63.

Rodwin, John G. "Fighters and Writers". ''The Mailer Review''. Fall 2008. 396-406.

Rollyson, Carl. “Mailer’s Other Career.” ''Village Voice'' 52.29 (18–24 Jul 2007): 68. On the occasion of the New York exhibit, “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

Rose, Daniel Asa. “Advertisements for a Gay Self.” ''New York'' 40.4 (5 Feb 2007): 9. Brief comment praising Mailer’s treatment of homosexuality in ''The Castle in the Forest''.

Ryan, James Emmett. “‘Insatiable as Good Old America’: Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Popular Criminality.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 17–22.

Scott, A.O. “Norman Mailer Unbound.” ''New York Times'' 20 Jul 2007, late ed. final, east coast: E1!. Discuss/reviews Mailer’s films in anticipation of a screening at Lincoln Center.

Severs, Jeffrey Frank. ''Reinventing Totalitarianism in the Postwar American Novel''. Diss. Harvard U, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3265089.

====Book Reviews====
=====Reviews of ''The Castle in the Forest''=====

{{cite magazine |last=Abell |first=Stephen |date=February 16, 2007 |title=The Anality of Evil |url= |magazine=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |pages=21–22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allen |first=Bruce |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer Asks: Who Made Hitler? |url= |work=News & Observer |location=final ed. |page=G5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allington |first=Patrick |date=May 12, 2007 |title=Devil’s Disciple |url= |work=Advertiser |location=Australia, state ed. |page=W10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Amidon |first=Stephen |date=February 4, 2007 |title=Portrait of a Monster |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/portrait-of-a-monster-nr77qrvvxqg |url-access=subscription |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=54 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Anderson |first=Don |date=April 7, 2007 |title=Devil of a Time |url= |work=Weekend Australian |location=Qld Review ed. |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Anshen |first=D. |title=An Enigmatic Development |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/485260/pdf |url-access=subscription |journal=American Book Review |volume=28 |issue=6 |date=September 2007 |page=18 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Arditti |first=Michael |date=February 16, 2007 |title=New Fiction |url= |work=Daily Mailer |location=London, first ed. |page=72 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{cite journal |author= |title=His Perfect Sense of the Other |url=https://newcriterion.com/issues/2007/2/ldquohis-perfect-sense-of-the-otherrdquo |journal=New Criterion |volume=25 |issue=6 |date=February 2007 |pages=1–2 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Little Hitler |url=https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2007/01/18/little-hitler |magazine=Economist |location=Books & Arts |page92= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=August 8, 2007 |title=Mailer Brings out the Devil in Hitler |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=21 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Digs into Hitler’s Childhood |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7040474 |work=Weekend Edition: All Things Considered |location=NPR |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Writes a Novel about Adolf Hitler’s Childhood |url= |magazine=Gleaner |location=New Brunswick |pages=C4 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

====Obituaries and Retrospectives====

{{cite news |last=Allen-Mills |first=Tony |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/norman-mailer-literary-rebeldies-zkhkhdbchfw |work=Sunday Times |location=London |pages=1+ |access-date=2020-10-01 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }} [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

{{cite news |last=Ambrose |first=Jay |date=November 25, 2007 |title=Remembering Mailer |url= |work=Knoxville News |location= |page=73 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Andriani |first=Lynn |date=November 19, 2007 |title=A Prolific Life to the End |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20071119.html |magazine=Publishers Weekly |location= |publisher= |access-date=2020-10-03 |url-access=subscription }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Literary Lion Sparked American Debate |url= |work=Daily Variety |agency=Associated Press |date=November 12, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Writers Remember Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |agency=Associated Press |date=November 13, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature |url= |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=20 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Baddiel |first=David |date=November 17, 2007 |title=For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Bancroft |first=Colette |date=November 11, 2007 |title=‘He was Much More’ than a Writer |url= |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida |page=1A |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Barnes |first=Bart |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Blustery Force in Life and Letters |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/norman-mailer-blustery-force-in-life-and-letters-dies-at-84/2019/01/24/56b92688-2031-11e9-9145-3f74070bbdb9_story.html |work=Washington Post |location= |page=A01 |access-date=2020-10-04 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date= November 12, 2007 |title=A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-brawler-who-never-pulled-a-punch-1.981221 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized |url=https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2007/11/14/Heavyweight-Mailer-s-life-and-work-were-outsized/stories/200711140262 |work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |location= |page=B6 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish |url=https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/legendary-writer-with-particular-love-for-the-irish-26331219.html |work=Irish Independent |location= |page=unknown |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling |url= |work=Edmonton Journal |location= |page=A3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Mailer won pair of Pulitzers |url= |work=Variety |location= |page=55 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Mailer's Ghost |url=https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/41004/ |magazine=New York |location= |publisher= |date=November 26, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-02 }} [Note: Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.]

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.economist.com/obituary/2007/11/15/norman-mailer |work=Economist |location=US |page=103 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Sunday Independent |location=Ireland |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=53 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 13, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/norman-mailer-400006.html |work=Independent |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |location= |page=A12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Cincinnati Post |location= |page=C10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Norman Mailer, 84 |url= |magazine=Newsweek |location= |publisher= |date=December 31, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Obituary of Norman Mailer |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1569056/Norman-Mailer.html |work=Daily Telegraph |location=London |page2= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84 |url= |work=Providence Journal |location= |page=A6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

Bernstein, Mashey. “In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish
Writer.” ''Deep South Jewish Voice'' 18.1 (Dec 2007): 100+.

Blau, Rosie and Martin Mulligan. “Pulling No Punches to the End.” ''London Financial Times'' 12 Nov 2007, U.S. ed.: 13.

Boyd, Herb. “When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer.” ''New York Amsterdam News'' 15 Nov 2007: 1+.

Burke, Cathy and Todd Venezia. “Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer,
84, Dies.” ''New York Post'' 11 Nov 2007, News: 7.

Calabrese, Erin. “Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women.’” ''New York Post'' 19 Nov 2007, News: 14.

Campbell, James. “Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author.”
''Guardian'' [London] 12 Nov 2007, final ed.: 34.

Cappell, Ezra. “Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of
the Book.” ''Forward'' 16 Nov 2007: A1+.

Clark, Roy Peter. “Two Minutes with Mailer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 15 Nov 2007: 1E.

Clarke, Toni.“Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84.” ''Irish Times'' 12 Nov 2007: 10.

Craig, Olga. “A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling.” ''Gazette'' [Montreal] 11 Nov 2007, final ed.: A3.

Crosbie, Lynn. “Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women.” ''Globe and Mail'' [Canada] 12 Nov 2007: R1.

Crossen, Cynthia. “Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody: 1948’s ‘The
Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its
Greatest Blessing.” ''Wall Street Journal Online'' (15 Nov 2007). http://
www.wallstreetjournal.com.

Cryer, Dan and Aileen Jacobson. “Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon
Dies.” ''Newsday'' 11 Nov 2007, Nassau and Suffolk ed.: A08

. . .

{{cite news |last=D’Alessio |first=Jeff |title=A Life Written and Lived on a Large Scale: Norman Mailer 1923–2007 |url= |journal=Atlanta Journal-Constitution |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page=A5 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Reactions from Atlanta residents on the life and death of Mailer.

{{cite magazine |last=Deignan |first=Tom |title=Mailer: More Irish than the Irish |url= |magazine=Irish Voice |volume=21 |issue=47 |date=November 21, 2007 |pages=11 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Demirel |first=Selçuk |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=18 |date=December 3, 2007 |page=8 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |title=The Nijinsky of Ambivalence |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=19 |date=December 10, 2007 |pages=48–52 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |author-mask=1 |title=The Un-generation |url= |work=Los Angeles Times |volume= |issue= |date=December 30, 2007 |page=R4 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Retrospective comparing the lives and careers of Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Grace Paley, who all died in 2007 at the age of 84.

. . .

{{cite magazine |last=Duggan |first=Keith |title=Two-Fisted Mailer Finally Counter Out |url= |magazine=Irish Times |volume= |issue= |date=November 7, 2007 |page=12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Epstein |first=Jason |title=Norman Mailer (1923–2007) |url= |magazine=New York Review of Books |volume=54 |issue=20 |date=December 20, 2007 |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Eyman |first=Scott |title=Mailer’s Works Made Deep Impression on Post-WWII Political, Cultural Landscape |url= |magazine=Palm Beach Post |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{Review|state=expanded}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007}}
[[Category:Bibliographies (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-03T21:26:14Z

Amylhester: /* Obituaries and Retrospectives */added templates

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
{{MR02}}
{{Byline|last=Holmes|first=Constance E.|last1=Wilson|first1=Kristine A.|note=Much of the following has been incorporated into ''[[NM:WD|Norman Mailer: Works and Days]]''.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08bib}}
{{TOC right|width=25%}}
==Addenda through 2006==
===Primary===
====Letters====

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=10:5 |date=March 4, 1968 |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Leonid I. Brezhnev, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Violence in Oakland |location=10:9 |date=May 9, 1968 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/05/09/violence-in-oakland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=12:6 |date=March 27, 1969 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of telegram to Hon. U Thant, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Committee to Defend the Conspiracy |location=12:12 |date=June 19, 1969 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/06/19/the-committee-to-defend-the-conspiracy/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Ford’s Better Idea |location=19:11 & 12 |date=January 25, 1973 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/01/25/fords-better-idea/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Words for the Shah |location=24:19 |date=November 24, 1977 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1977/11/24/words-for-the-shah/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Open letter to the Prime Minister of Iran, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=In a Cuban Prison |location=25:19 |date=December 7, 1978 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1978/12/07/in-a-cuban-prison/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Alexandr Bogolovski |location=31:15 |date=October 11, 1984 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Mr. A. M. Rekunov, Procurator General of the USSR, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Arrests in Poland |location=33.13 |date=August 13, 1986 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1986/08/14/arrests-in-poland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Celebrating Mencken |location=37:4 |date=March 15, 1990 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/03/15/celebrating-mencken/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=President Clinton. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=An Urgent Appeal from Pen American Center |location=40:4 |date=February 11, 1993 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/02/11/an-urgent-appeal-from-pen-american-center/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=to Prime Minister Paul Keating et al. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Wei Jingsheng |location=43:3 |date=February 15, 1996 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/02/15/the-case-of-wei-jingsheng/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories. An open letter.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=JFK’s Assassination |location=50:20 |date=December 18, 2003 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2003/12/18/jfks-assassination/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Election and America’s Future |location=51:17 |date=November 4, 2004 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/11/04/the-election-and-americas-future/ |url-access=subscription |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Letter; one of a series solicited by the Editors.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject= Blocked |location=52:13 |date=August 11, 2005 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/08/11/blocked/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} As author of ''Oswald’s Tale'', with other signatories.

==2007==

===Primary===
====Books====
{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |author-mask=1 |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |date=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}

====Book Contributions====
{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contribution=Commentary |last=Regan |first=Ken |date=2007 |title=Knockout: The Art of Boxing |url= |location=San Rafael, CA |publisher=Insight Editions |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contributor-mask=1 |contribution=Introduction |last=Schiller |first=Lawrence |date=2007 |title=Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=Los Angles, CA |publisher=East End Editions KLS |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

====Interviews====


{{cite magazine |last=Binelli |first=Mark |date=May 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Rolling Stone |pages=3–17 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Foley |first=Dylan |date=January 28, 2007 |title=A Portrait of the Devil as a Young Man |url= |work=Star-Ledger |location=final ed. |page=6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Fox |first=Sue |date=July 8, 2007 |title=Even at 84, Norman Mailer Refuses to Pull His Punches |url=https://www.pressreader.com/uk/sunday-express-1070/20070708/282346855399714 |work=Sunday Express |location=UK first ed. |page=55 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Devilish Motives |url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/devilish-motives-20070120-gdp9x7.html |work=Sydney Morning Herald |location=Australia |access-date=2020-10-01 |page=30 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Nan |date= |title=Writing with the Devil |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/11/10/writing_with_the_devil/ |work=Boston Globe |location=Magazine |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kirschling |first=Gregory |date=January 19, 2007 |title=Tough Guys Don’t Quit |url= |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |issue=916 |page=48 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lee |first=Michael |title=The Devil in Norman Mailer |url=https://search.proquest.com/openview/5bff77fb5c089c0b3d810827ee4686c7/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=40852 |journal=Literary Review |volume=50 |issue=4 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=202–217 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Lennon |first=Michael |date=October 5, 2007 |title=The Rise of Mailerism |url=https://nymag.com/news/features/38961/ |magazine=New York |issue=40.36 |pages=24+ |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }} Mailer discusses ''On God''.

{{cite magazine |last=Llewellyn |first=Caro |author-mask= |title=The Lion in Winter: Norman Mailer Talks about Writing His First Novel in a Decade |url= |magazine=Weekend Australian |location=pre-prints ed. |date=March 31, 2007 |pages=1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Author at Home |url= |work=The Observer |location=England |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Miner |first=Colin |date=January 22, 2007 |title=Mailer on Bush, Obama & Writing |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-on-bush-obama-writing/47109/ |work=New York Sun |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |title=The Art of Fiction No. 193, Norman Mailer |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5775/the-art-of-fiction-no-193-norman-mailer |journal=The Paris Review |volume=49 |issue=181 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=44+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |author-mask=1 |title=Get Your Ass off My Pillow |url=https://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/get-your-ass-off-my-pillow/ |url-access=subscription |magazine=Harper’s Magazine |issue=315.1888 |date=September 2007 |pages=22–24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Pierleoni |first=Allen |date=February 7, 2007 |title=Now Age 84.... |url= |work=Sacramento Bee |location=metro final ed.: TK22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 2007 |title=Proust Questionnaire: Norman Mailer |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/proust_mailer200701 |magazine=Vanity Fair |issue=557 |page=166 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Rose |first=Daniel Asa |date=January 21, 2007 |title=In Conversation ... ; with Norman Mailer |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802000_pf.html |work=Washington Post |location=Final ed.: T07 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Santaro |first=Gene |title=The Sound and the Baby Führer |url=https://www.historynet.com/interview-sound-baby-fuhrer.htm |journal=World War II |volume=22 |issue=2 |date=May 2007 |pages=23–25 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Stoffman |first=Judy |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Novel Ideas about Hitler |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2007/01/28/mailers_novel_ideas_about_hitler.html |work=The Toronto Star |page=C04 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Wollheim |first=Richard |title=Living like Heroes |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/11/violence-hip-mailer-1961 |magazine=New Statesman |issue=137.4871 |date=November 19, 2007 |pages=62 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Abridged reprint of a 1961 interview promoting ''Advertisements for Myself''.

===Secondary===

====Essays, Articles, Book Chapters, and Dissertations====

{{cite news |author= |date=January 17, 2007 |title=Sex-Mad Mailer Enraged Rival |url=https://pagesix.com/2007/01/25/sex-mad-mailer-enraged-rival/ |work=New York Post |location=Page Six |page=12 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Article discussing Ralph Ellison’s attitude toward Mailer, according to Ellison’s biographer.

{{cite news |author=Bancroft, Collette |date=October 16, 2007 |title=A Man of Many Letters |url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/10/16/a-man-of-many-letters/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida 1E |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }} A look at Mailer and Mailer scholarship on the occasion of both the publication of ''On God'' and the launch of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite news |author=Beach, Patrick |date=December 23, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Memories about to Open at Ransom Center |url= |work=Austin American-Statesman |location=final ed. |page=J5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author=Bennett, Bruce |date=July 20, 2007 |title=Mailer at the Movies |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-at-the-movies/58850/ |work=New York Sun |location=11 |page= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Overview of Mailer’s films.

{{cite news |author=Brokaw, Leslie |date=September 16, 2007 |title=HFA Salutes Norman Mailer on Film |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2007/09/16/hfa_salutes_norman_mailer_on_film/ |work=Boston Globe |location=third ed. |page=N11 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Bufithis, Philip |date=2007 |title=''The Executioner’s Song'': A Life Beneath Our Conscience |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07bufi |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |edition=1 |location= |page=77-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=Burns |first=Paul C. |date=2007 |title=In Jesus in Twentieth-Century Literature, Art, and Movies |chapter=Transformation of Biblical Methods and Godhead in Norman Mailer’s Gospel |location=New York |publisher=Continuum |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Chaiken |first=Michael |title=The Master’s Mercurial Mistress: How Norman Mailer Courted Chaos 24 Frames per Second |journal=Film Comment |url=http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/25897522/the-masters-mercurial-mistress-how-norman-mailer-courted-chaos-24-frames-per-second |url-access=subscription |volume=43 |issue=4 |date=July 2007 |pages=36–42 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Crook |first=Zeba |date=January 2007 |title=Fictionalizing Jesus: Story and History in Two Recent Jesus Novels |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249573018_Fictionalizing_Jesus_Story_and_History_in_Two_Recent_Jesus_Novels |url-access=subscription |work=Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus |volume=5 |issue=1 |page=33-55 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |date=2007 |title=How Mailer Became ‘Mailer’: The Writer as Private and Public Character |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=118-31 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Duguid |first=Scott |date=2007 |title=The Addiction of Masculinity: Norman Mailer’s ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' and the Cultural Politics of Reaganism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619310 |url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=23-30 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Writers Remain a Robust Bunch |work=St. Petersburg Times |page=B1+ |location=Florida |access-date= |ref=harv }} Article about the continued productivity of aging “literary giants” Mailer, Updike, and Roth.

{{cite news |last=Goldfarb |first=Reuven |date=November 20, 2007 |title=The Jewish Mailer |url=https://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/the-jewish-mailer |work=Jerusalem Post |volume=14 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Gottlieb |first=Akiva |date=July 20, 2017 |title=Norman Mailer, Auteur |url=http://old.forward.com/articles/11164/norman-mailer-auteur-00143/index.html |work=Forward |location=B1+ |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Article on Mailer’s films, on the occasion of the New York exhibit “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

{{cite journal |last=Henderson |first=Cathy |last2=Oram |first2=Richard W. |last3=Schwartzburg |first3=Molly |last4=Hardy |first4=Molly |title=Mailer Takes on America: Images from the Ransom Center Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07hend |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=141-75 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Holmes |first=Constance E. |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |title=Norman Mailer: Supplemental Bibliography through 2006 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr06bib |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2007 |pages=234-60 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Houpt |first=Simon |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Still a Brawler at Heart |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/still-a-brawler-at-heart/article677847/ |work=Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=R4 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Howard |first=Gerald |title=Mailer Gets Hammered |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/books/review/Howard-t.html |work=New York Times Book Review |issue=late ed, final |date=August 2007 |pages=27 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Essay discussing Mailer’s films, focusing on ''Maidstone''.

{{cite journal |last=Howley |first=Ashton |title=Mailer Again: Heterophobia in ''Tough Guys Don't Dance'' |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=31-46 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=James |first=Clive |date=2007 |title=Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts |url= |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton |pages=409-413 |ref=harv }}

. . .

J. C. “White Mischief.” ''TLS: Times Literary Supplement'' 26 Oct 2007: 36. Includes brief mention of ''Mailer Review''.

Junod, Tom. “The Last Man Standing.” ''Esquire'' 147.1 (Jan 2007): 108–133.

Kachka, Boris. “Mr. Tenditious.” ''New York'' 40.2 (15 Jan 2007): 62. Recaps Mailer’s history of responding negatively—even violently—to criticism.

Kaufmann, Donald L. “An American Dream: The Singular Nightmare.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 194–205.

Kennedy, William. “Norman Mailer as Occasional Commentator in a Self-Interview and Memoir.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 11–26.

Kriegel, Leonard. “Mailer’s Hitler: Round One.” ''Sewanee Review'' 115.4 (Fall 2007): 615–620.

Lennon, J. Michael. “Gallery Talk: The Mailer Archive.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 132–40.

———. “Norman Mailer: Novelist, Journalist, or Historian?” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 91–103.

———. (ed. and note): “‘A Series of Tragicomedies’: Mailer’s Letters on The Deer Park, 1954–55.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 45–79.

Long, Karen Haymon. “Mailer in Review.” ''Tampa Tribune'' 18 Nov 2007, final ed., Baylife: 1. Discusses the formation of the Mailer Society and the annual conference, focusing on Tampa-area members and the launch of the Mailer Review out of USF.

Lucid, Robert F. “[Boston State Hospital: The Summer of 1942].” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 27–33. Excerpt from incomplete authorized biography.

Masters, Brian. “So Are Some People Really Born Evil?” Daily Mail [London] 19 April 2007, first ed.: 14. Article discussing ''The Castle in the Forest'' in relation to an actual scientific study on evil and genetics.

McDonald, Brian. “Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s ''The Gospel According to the Son''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 78–90.

Meloy, Michael. ''Sex Fiends of the Fifties: Intersections of Violence, Sexuality, and Masculinity in the Work of Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Ken Kesey''. Diss. U of South Carolina, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3280339.

Middlebrook, Jonathan: “Five Notes toward a Reassessment of Norman Mailer.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 179–83.

Partridge, Jeffrey F. L. “''The Gospel According to the Son and Christian Belief''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 64–77.

Petigny, Alan.“Norman Mailer,‘The White Negro,’ and New Conceptions of the Self in Postwar America.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 184–93.

Rampton, David. “Plexed Artistry: The Formal Case for Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 47–63.

Rodwin, John G. "Fighters and Writers". ''The Mailer Review''. Fall 2008. 396-406.

Rollyson, Carl. “Mailer’s Other Career.” ''Village Voice'' 52.29 (18–24 Jul 2007): 68. On the occasion of the New York exhibit, “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

Rose, Daniel Asa. “Advertisements for a Gay Self.” ''New York'' 40.4 (5 Feb 2007): 9. Brief comment praising Mailer’s treatment of homosexuality in ''The Castle in the Forest''.

Ryan, James Emmett. “‘Insatiable as Good Old America’: Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Popular Criminality.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 17–22.

Scott, A.O. “Norman Mailer Unbound.” ''New York Times'' 20 Jul 2007, late ed. final, east coast: E1!. Discuss/reviews Mailer’s films in anticipation of a screening at Lincoln Center.

Severs, Jeffrey Frank. ''Reinventing Totalitarianism in the Postwar American Novel''. Diss. Harvard U, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3265089.

====Book Reviews====
=====Reviews of ''The Castle in the Forest''=====

{{cite magazine |last=Abell |first=Stephen |date=February 16, 2007 |title=The Anality of Evil |url= |magazine=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |pages=21–22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allen |first=Bruce |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer Asks: Who Made Hitler? |url= |work=News & Observer |location=final ed. |page=G5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allington |first=Patrick |date=May 12, 2007 |title=Devil’s Disciple |url= |work=Advertiser |location=Australia, state ed. |page=W10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Amidon |first=Stephen |date=February 4, 2007 |title=Portrait of a Monster |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/portrait-of-a-monster-nr77qrvvxqg |url-access=subscription |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=54 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Anderson |first=Don |date=April 7, 2007 |title=Devil of a Time |url= |work=Weekend Australian |location=Qld Review ed. |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Anshen |first=D. |title=An Enigmatic Development |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/485260/pdf |url-access=subscription |journal=American Book Review |volume=28 |issue=6 |date=September 2007 |page=18 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Arditti |first=Michael |date=February 16, 2007 |title=New Fiction |url= |work=Daily Mailer |location=London, first ed. |page=72 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{cite journal |author= |title=His Perfect Sense of the Other |url=https://newcriterion.com/issues/2007/2/ldquohis-perfect-sense-of-the-otherrdquo |journal=New Criterion |volume=25 |issue=6 |date=February 2007 |pages=1–2 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Little Hitler |url=https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2007/01/18/little-hitler |magazine=Economist |location=Books & Arts |page92= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=August 8, 2007 |title=Mailer Brings out the Devil in Hitler |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=21 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Digs into Hitler’s Childhood |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7040474 |work=Weekend Edition: All Things Considered |location=NPR |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Writes a Novel about Adolf Hitler’s Childhood |url= |magazine=Gleaner |location=New Brunswick |pages=C4 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

====Obituaries and Retrospectives====

{{cite news |last=Allen-Mills |first=Tony |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/norman-mailer-literary-rebeldies-zkhkhdbchfw |work=Sunday Times |location=London |pages=1+ |access-date=2020-10-01 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }} [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

{{cite news |last=Ambrose |first=Jay |date=November 25, 2007 |title=Remembering Mailer |url= |work=Knoxville News |location= |page=73 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Andriani |first=Lynn |date=November 19, 2007 |title=A Prolific Life to the End |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20071119.html |magazine=Publishers Weekly |location= |publisher= |access-date=2020-10-03 |url-access=subscription }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Literary Lion Sparked American Debate |url= |work=Daily Variety |agency=Associated Press |date=November 12, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |title=Writers Remember Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |agency=Associated Press |date=November 13, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature |url= |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=20 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date= November 12, 2007 |title=A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-brawler-who-never-pulled-a-punch-1.981221 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized |url=https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2007/11/14/Heavyweight-Mailer-s-life-and-work-were-outsized/stories/200711140262 |work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |location= |page=B6 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish |url=https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/legendary-writer-with-particular-love-for-the-irish-26331219.html |work=Irish Independent |location= |page=unknown |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling |url= |work=Edmonton Journal |location= |page=A3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Mailer won pair of Pulitzers |url= |work=Variety |location= |page=55 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Mailer's Ghost |url=https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/41004/ |magazine=New York |location= |publisher= |date=November 26, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-02 }} [Note: Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.]

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.economist.com/obituary/2007/11/15/norman-mailer |work=Economist |location=US |page=103 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Sunday Independent |location=Ireland |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=53 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 13, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/norman-mailer-400006.html |work=Independent |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |location= |page=A12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Cincinnati Post |location= |page=C10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Norman Mailer, 84 |url= |magazine=Newsweek |location= |publisher= |date=December 31, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Obituary of Norman Mailer |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1569056/Norman-Mailer.html |work=Daily Telegraph |location=London |page2= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84 |url= |work=Providence Journal |location= |page=A6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

Baddiel, David. “For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity.” ''Times'' [London] 17 Nov 2007: 3.

Bancroft, Colette. “‘He was Much More’ than a Writer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 11 Nov 2007, South Pinellas ed.: 1A.

Barnes, Bart. “A Blustery Force in Life and Letters.” ''Washington Post'' 11 Nov 2007, Met 2 Ed.: A01. [Note: Version of this article also printed elsewhere under different headlines.]

Bernstein, Mashey. “In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish
Writer.” ''Deep South Jewish Voice'' 18.1 (Dec 2007): 100+.

Blau, Rosie and Martin Mulligan. “Pulling No Punches to the End.” ''London Financial Times'' 12 Nov 2007, U.S. ed.: 13.

Boyd, Herb. “When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer.” ''New York Amsterdam News'' 15 Nov 2007: 1+.

Burke, Cathy and Todd Venezia. “Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer,
84, Dies.” ''New York Post'' 11 Nov 2007, News: 7.

Calabrese, Erin. “Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women.’” ''New York Post'' 19 Nov 2007, News: 14.

Campbell, James. “Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author.”
''Guardian'' [London] 12 Nov 2007, final ed.: 34.

Cappell, Ezra. “Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of
the Book.” ''Forward'' 16 Nov 2007: A1+.

Clark, Roy Peter. “Two Minutes with Mailer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 15 Nov 2007: 1E.

Clarke, Toni.“Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84.” ''Irish Times'' 12 Nov 2007: 10.

Craig, Olga. “A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling.” ''Gazette'' [Montreal] 11 Nov 2007, final ed.: A3.

Crosbie, Lynn. “Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women.” ''Globe and Mail'' [Canada] 12 Nov 2007: R1.

Crossen, Cynthia. “Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody: 1948’s ‘The
Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its
Greatest Blessing.” ''Wall Street Journal Online'' (15 Nov 2007). http://
www.wallstreetjournal.com.

Cryer, Dan and Aileen Jacobson. “Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon
Dies.” ''Newsday'' 11 Nov 2007, Nassau and Suffolk ed.: A08

. . .

{{cite news |last=D’Alessio |first=Jeff |title=A Life Written and Lived on a Large Scale: Norman Mailer 1923–2007 |url= |journal=Atlanta Journal-Constitution |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page=A5 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Reactions from Atlanta residents on the life and death of Mailer.

{{cite magazine |last=Deignan |first=Tom |title=Mailer: More Irish than the Irish |url= |magazine=Irish Voice |volume=21 |issue=47 |date=November 21, 2007 |pages=11 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Demirel |first=Selçuk |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=18 |date=December 3, 2007 |page=8 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |title=The Nijinsky of Ambivalence |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=19 |date=December 10, 2007 |pages=48–52 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |author-mask=1 |title=The Un-generation |url= |work=Los Angeles Times |volume= |issue= |date=December 30, 2007 |page=R4 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Retrospective comparing the lives and careers of Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Grace Paley, who all died in 2007 at the age of 84.

. . .

{{Review|state=expanded}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007}}
[[Category:Bibliographies (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-03T19:53:48Z

Amylhester: /* Obituaries and Retrospectives */adding templates

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{{Byline|last=Holmes|first=Constance E.|last1=Wilson|first1=Kristine A.|note=Much of the following has been incorporated into ''[[NM:WD|Norman Mailer: Works and Days]]''.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08bib}}
{{TOC right|width=25%}}
==Addenda through 2006==
===Primary===
====Letters====

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=10:5 |date=March 4, 1968 |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Leonid I. Brezhnev, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Violence in Oakland |location=10:9 |date=May 9, 1968 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/05/09/violence-in-oakland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=12:6 |date=March 27, 1969 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of telegram to Hon. U Thant, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Committee to Defend the Conspiracy |location=12:12 |date=June 19, 1969 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/06/19/the-committee-to-defend-the-conspiracy/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Ford’s Better Idea |location=19:11 & 12 |date=January 25, 1973 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/01/25/fords-better-idea/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Words for the Shah |location=24:19 |date=November 24, 1977 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1977/11/24/words-for-the-shah/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Open letter to the Prime Minister of Iran, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=In a Cuban Prison |location=25:19 |date=December 7, 1978 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1978/12/07/in-a-cuban-prison/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Alexandr Bogolovski |location=31:15 |date=October 11, 1984 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Mr. A. M. Rekunov, Procurator General of the USSR, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Arrests in Poland |location=33.13 |date=August 13, 1986 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1986/08/14/arrests-in-poland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Celebrating Mencken |location=37:4 |date=March 15, 1990 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/03/15/celebrating-mencken/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=President Clinton. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=An Urgent Appeal from Pen American Center |location=40:4 |date=February 11, 1993 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/02/11/an-urgent-appeal-from-pen-american-center/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=to Prime Minister Paul Keating et al. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Wei Jingsheng |location=43:3 |date=February 15, 1996 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/02/15/the-case-of-wei-jingsheng/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories. An open letter.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=JFK’s Assassination |location=50:20 |date=December 18, 2003 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2003/12/18/jfks-assassination/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Election and America’s Future |location=51:17 |date=November 4, 2004 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/11/04/the-election-and-americas-future/ |url-access=subscription |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Letter; one of a series solicited by the Editors.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject= Blocked |location=52:13 |date=August 11, 2005 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/08/11/blocked/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} As author of ''Oswald’s Tale'', with other signatories.

==2007==

===Primary===
====Books====
{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |author-mask=1 |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |date=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}

====Book Contributions====
{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contribution=Commentary |last=Regan |first=Ken |date=2007 |title=Knockout: The Art of Boxing |url= |location=San Rafael, CA |publisher=Insight Editions |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contributor-mask=1 |contribution=Introduction |last=Schiller |first=Lawrence |date=2007 |title=Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=Los Angles, CA |publisher=East End Editions KLS |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

====Interviews====


{{cite magazine |last=Binelli |first=Mark |date=May 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Rolling Stone |pages=3–17 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Foley |first=Dylan |date=January 28, 2007 |title=A Portrait of the Devil as a Young Man |url= |work=Star-Ledger |location=final ed. |page=6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Fox |first=Sue |date=July 8, 2007 |title=Even at 84, Norman Mailer Refuses to Pull His Punches |url=https://www.pressreader.com/uk/sunday-express-1070/20070708/282346855399714 |work=Sunday Express |location=UK first ed. |page=55 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Devilish Motives |url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/devilish-motives-20070120-gdp9x7.html |work=Sydney Morning Herald |location=Australia |access-date=2020-10-01 |page=30 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Nan |date= |title=Writing with the Devil |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/11/10/writing_with_the_devil/ |work=Boston Globe |location=Magazine |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kirschling |first=Gregory |date=January 19, 2007 |title=Tough Guys Don’t Quit |url= |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |issue=916 |page=48 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lee |first=Michael |title=The Devil in Norman Mailer |url=https://search.proquest.com/openview/5bff77fb5c089c0b3d810827ee4686c7/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=40852 |journal=Literary Review |volume=50 |issue=4 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=202–217 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Lennon |first=Michael |date=October 5, 2007 |title=The Rise of Mailerism |url=https://nymag.com/news/features/38961/ |magazine=New York |issue=40.36 |pages=24+ |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }} Mailer discusses ''On God''.

{{cite magazine |last=Llewellyn |first=Caro |author-mask= |title=The Lion in Winter: Norman Mailer Talks about Writing His First Novel in a Decade |url= |magazine=Weekend Australian |location=pre-prints ed. |date=March 31, 2007 |pages=1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Author at Home |url= |work=The Observer |location=England |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Miner |first=Colin |date=January 22, 2007 |title=Mailer on Bush, Obama & Writing |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-on-bush-obama-writing/47109/ |work=New York Sun |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |title=The Art of Fiction No. 193, Norman Mailer |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5775/the-art-of-fiction-no-193-norman-mailer |journal=The Paris Review |volume=49 |issue=181 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=44+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |author-mask=1 |title=Get Your Ass off My Pillow |url=https://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/get-your-ass-off-my-pillow/ |url-access=subscription |magazine=Harper’s Magazine |issue=315.1888 |date=September 2007 |pages=22–24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Pierleoni |first=Allen |date=February 7, 2007 |title=Now Age 84.... |url= |work=Sacramento Bee |location=metro final ed.: TK22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 2007 |title=Proust Questionnaire: Norman Mailer |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/proust_mailer200701 |magazine=Vanity Fair |issue=557 |page=166 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Rose |first=Daniel Asa |date=January 21, 2007 |title=In Conversation ... ; with Norman Mailer |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802000_pf.html |work=Washington Post |location=Final ed.: T07 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Santaro |first=Gene |title=The Sound and the Baby Führer |url=https://www.historynet.com/interview-sound-baby-fuhrer.htm |journal=World War II |volume=22 |issue=2 |date=May 2007 |pages=23–25 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Stoffman |first=Judy |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Novel Ideas about Hitler |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2007/01/28/mailers_novel_ideas_about_hitler.html |work=The Toronto Star |page=C04 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Wollheim |first=Richard |title=Living like Heroes |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/11/violence-hip-mailer-1961 |magazine=New Statesman |issue=137.4871 |date=November 19, 2007 |pages=62 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Abridged reprint of a 1961 interview promoting ''Advertisements for Myself''.

===Secondary===

====Essays, Articles, Book Chapters, and Dissertations====

{{cite news |author= |date=January 17, 2007 |title=Sex-Mad Mailer Enraged Rival |url=https://pagesix.com/2007/01/25/sex-mad-mailer-enraged-rival/ |work=New York Post |location=Page Six |page=12 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Article discussing Ralph Ellison’s attitude toward Mailer, according to Ellison’s biographer.

{{cite news |author=Bancroft, Collette |date=October 16, 2007 |title=A Man of Many Letters |url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/10/16/a-man-of-many-letters/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida 1E |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }} A look at Mailer and Mailer scholarship on the occasion of both the publication of ''On God'' and the launch of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite news |author=Beach, Patrick |date=December 23, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Memories about to Open at Ransom Center |url= |work=Austin American-Statesman |location=final ed. |page=J5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author=Bennett, Bruce |date=July 20, 2007 |title=Mailer at the Movies |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-at-the-movies/58850/ |work=New York Sun |location=11 |page= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Overview of Mailer’s films.

{{cite news |author=Brokaw, Leslie |date=September 16, 2007 |title=HFA Salutes Norman Mailer on Film |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2007/09/16/hfa_salutes_norman_mailer_on_film/ |work=Boston Globe |location=third ed. |page=N11 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Bufithis, Philip |date=2007 |title=''The Executioner’s Song'': A Life Beneath Our Conscience |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07bufi |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |edition=1 |location= |page=77-79 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=Burns |first=Paul C. |date=2007 |title=In Jesus in Twentieth-Century Literature, Art, and Movies |chapter=Transformation of Biblical Methods and Godhead in Norman Mailer’s Gospel |location=New York |publisher=Continuum |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Chaiken |first=Michael |title=The Master’s Mercurial Mistress: How Norman Mailer Courted Chaos 24 Frames per Second |journal=Film Comment |url=http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/25897522/the-masters-mercurial-mistress-how-norman-mailer-courted-chaos-24-frames-per-second |url-access=subscription |volume=43 |issue=4 |date=July 2007 |pages=36–42 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Crook |first=Zeba |date=January 2007 |title=Fictionalizing Jesus: Story and History in Two Recent Jesus Novels |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249573018_Fictionalizing_Jesus_Story_and_History_in_Two_Recent_Jesus_Novels |url-access=subscription |work=Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus |volume=5 |issue=1 |page=33-55 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |date=2007 |title=How Mailer Became ‘Mailer’: The Writer as Private and Public Character |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick |work=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=118-31 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Duguid |first=Scott |date=2007 |title=The Addiction of Masculinity: Norman Mailer’s ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' and the Cultural Politics of Reaganism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619310 |url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |page=23-30 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Writers Remain a Robust Bunch |work=St. Petersburg Times |page=B1+ |location=Florida |access-date= |ref=harv }} Article about the continued productivity of aging “literary giants” Mailer, Updike, and Roth.

{{cite news |last=Goldfarb |first=Reuven |date=November 20, 2007 |title=The Jewish Mailer |url=https://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/the-jewish-mailer |work=Jerusalem Post |volume=14 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Gottlieb |first=Akiva |date=July 20, 2017 |title=Norman Mailer, Auteur |url=http://old.forward.com/articles/11164/norman-mailer-auteur-00143/index.html |work=Forward |location=B1+ |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Article on Mailer’s films, on the occasion of the New York exhibit “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

{{cite journal |last=Henderson |first=Cathy |last2=Oram |first2=Richard W. |last3=Schwartzburg |first3=Molly |last4=Hardy |first4=Molly |title=Mailer Takes on America: Images from the Ransom Center Archive |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07hend |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=141-75 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Holmes |first=Constance E. |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |title=Norman Mailer: Supplemental Bibliography through 2006 |url=https://prmlr.us/mr06bib |journal=Mailer Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=Fall 2007 |pages=234-60 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Houpt |first=Simon |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Still a Brawler at Heart |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/still-a-brawler-at-heart/article677847/ |work=Globe and Mail |location=Canada |page=R4 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Howard |first=Gerald |title=Mailer Gets Hammered |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/books/review/Howard-t.html |work=New York Times Book Review |issue=late ed, final |date=August 2007 |pages=27 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }} Essay discussing Mailer’s films, focusing on ''Maidstone''.

{{cite journal |last=Howley |first=Ashton |title=Mailer Again: Heterophobia in ''Tough Guys Don't Dance'' |url= |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=2007 |pages=31-46 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=James |first=Clive |date=2007 |title=Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts |url= |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton |pages=409-413 |ref=harv }}

. . .

J. C. “White Mischief.” ''TLS: Times Literary Supplement'' 26 Oct 2007: 36. Includes brief mention of ''Mailer Review''.

Junod, Tom. “The Last Man Standing.” ''Esquire'' 147.1 (Jan 2007): 108–133.

Kachka, Boris. “Mr. Tenditious.” ''New York'' 40.2 (15 Jan 2007): 62. Recaps Mailer’s history of responding negatively—even violently—to criticism.

Kaufmann, Donald L. “An American Dream: The Singular Nightmare.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 194–205.

Kennedy, William. “Norman Mailer as Occasional Commentator in a Self-Interview and Memoir.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 11–26.

Kriegel, Leonard. “Mailer’s Hitler: Round One.” ''Sewanee Review'' 115.4 (Fall 2007): 615–620.

Lennon, J. Michael. “Gallery Talk: The Mailer Archive.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 132–40.

———. “Norman Mailer: Novelist, Journalist, or Historian?” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 91–103.

———. (ed. and note): “‘A Series of Tragicomedies’: Mailer’s Letters on The Deer Park, 1954–55.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 45–79.

Long, Karen Haymon. “Mailer in Review.” ''Tampa Tribune'' 18 Nov 2007, final ed., Baylife: 1. Discusses the formation of the Mailer Society and the annual conference, focusing on Tampa-area members and the launch of the Mailer Review out of USF.

Lucid, Robert F. “[Boston State Hospital: The Summer of 1942].” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 27–33. Excerpt from incomplete authorized biography.

Masters, Brian. “So Are Some People Really Born Evil?” Daily Mail [London] 19 April 2007, first ed.: 14. Article discussing ''The Castle in the Forest'' in relation to an actual scientific study on evil and genetics.

McDonald, Brian. “Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s ''The Gospel According to the Son''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 78–90.

Meloy, Michael. ''Sex Fiends of the Fifties: Intersections of Violence, Sexuality, and Masculinity in the Work of Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Ken Kesey''. Diss. U of South Carolina, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3280339.

Middlebrook, Jonathan: “Five Notes toward a Reassessment of Norman Mailer.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 179–83.

Partridge, Jeffrey F. L. “''The Gospel According to the Son and Christian Belief''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 64–77.

Petigny, Alan.“Norman Mailer,‘The White Negro,’ and New Conceptions of the Self in Postwar America.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 184–93.

Rampton, David. “Plexed Artistry: The Formal Case for Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 47–63.

Rodwin, John G. "Fighters and Writers". ''The Mailer Review''. Fall 2008. 396-406.

Rollyson, Carl. “Mailer’s Other Career.” ''Village Voice'' 52.29 (18–24 Jul 2007): 68. On the occasion of the New York exhibit, “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

Rose, Daniel Asa. “Advertisements for a Gay Self.” ''New York'' 40.4 (5 Feb 2007): 9. Brief comment praising Mailer’s treatment of homosexuality in ''The Castle in the Forest''.

Ryan, James Emmett. “‘Insatiable as Good Old America’: Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Popular Criminality.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 17–22.

Scott, A.O. “Norman Mailer Unbound.” ''New York Times'' 20 Jul 2007, late ed. final, east coast: E1!. Discuss/reviews Mailer’s films in anticipation of a screening at Lincoln Center.

Severs, Jeffrey Frank. ''Reinventing Totalitarianism in the Postwar American Novel''. Diss. Harvard U, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3265089.

====Book Reviews====
=====Reviews of ''The Castle in the Forest''=====

{{cite magazine |last=Abell |first=Stephen |date=February 16, 2007 |title=The Anality of Evil |url= |magazine=TLS: Times Literary Supplement |pages=21–22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allen |first=Bruce |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer Asks: Who Made Hitler? |url= |work=News & Observer |location=final ed. |page=G5 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Allington |first=Patrick |date=May 12, 2007 |title=Devil’s Disciple |url= |work=Advertiser |location=Australia, state ed. |page=W10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Amidon |first=Stephen |date=February 4, 2007 |title=Portrait of a Monster |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/portrait-of-a-monster-nr77qrvvxqg |url-access=subscription |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=54 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Anderson |first=Don |date=April 7, 2007 |title=Devil of a Time |url= |work=Weekend Australian |location=Qld Review ed. |page=10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Anshen |first=D. |title=An Enigmatic Development |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/485260/pdf |url-access=subscription |journal=American Book Review |volume=28 |issue=6 |date=September 2007 |page=18 |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Arditti |first=Michael |date=February 16, 2007 |title=New Fiction |url= |work=Daily Mailer |location=London, first ed. |page=72 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{cite journal |author= |title=His Perfect Sense of the Other |url=https://newcriterion.com/issues/2007/2/ldquohis-perfect-sense-of-the-otherrdquo |journal=New Criterion |volume=25 |issue=6 |date=February 2007 |pages=1–2 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Little Hitler |url=https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2007/01/18/little-hitler |magazine=Economist |location=Books & Arts |page92= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=August 8, 2007 |title=Mailer Brings out the Devil in Hitler |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=21 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Digs into Hitler’s Childhood |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7040474 |work=Weekend Edition: All Things Considered |location=NPR |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 27, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer Writes a Novel about Adolf Hitler’s Childhood |url= |magazine=Gleaner |location=New Brunswick |pages=C4 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

====Obituaries and Retrospectives====

{{cite news |last=Allen-Mills |first=Tony |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/norman-mailer-literary-rebeldies-zkhkhdbchfw |work=Sunday Times |location=London |pages=1+ |access-date=2020-10-01 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }} [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature |url= |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=20 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date= November 12, 2007 |title=A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-brawler-who-never-pulled-a-punch-1.981221 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized |url=https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2007/11/14/Heavyweight-Mailer-s-life-and-work-were-outsized/stories/200711140262 |work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |location= |page=B6 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish |url=https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/legendary-writer-with-particular-love-for-the-irish-26331219.html |work=Irish Independent |location= |page=unknown |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling |url= |work=Edmonton Journal |location= |page=A3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Mailer won pair of Pulitzers |url= |work=Variety |location= |page=55 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Mailer's Ghost |url=https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/41004/ |magazine=New York |location= |publisher= |date=November 26, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-02 }} [Note: Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.]

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.economist.com/obituary/2007/11/15/norman-mailer |work=Economist |location=US |page=103 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Sunday Independent |location=Ireland |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=53 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 13, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/norman-mailer-400006.html |work=Independent |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |location= |page=A12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Cincinnati Post |location= |page=C10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Norman Mailer, 84 |url= |magazine=Newsweek |location= |publisher= |date=December 31, 2007 |access-date= }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Obituary of Norman Mailer |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1569056/Norman-Mailer.html |work=Daily Telegraph |location=London |page2= |access-date=2020-10-03 |ref=harv }}

. . .

“Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84.” ''Providence Journal'' 11 Nov 2007: A6.

Ambrose, Jay. “Remembering Mailer.” ''Knoxville News Sentinel'' 25 Nov 2007: 73.

Andriani, Lynn. “A Prolific Life to the End.” ''Publishers Weekly'' 254.56 (19 Nov 2007): 8.

Associated Press. “Literary Lion Sparked American Debate.” ''Daily Variety'' 12 Nov 2007: 2.

———. “Writers Remember Mailer.” ''Times Union'' 13 Nov 2007, one star ed.: E5. Comments on Mailer by New York authors and journalists, on the occasion of his death.

Baddiel, David. “For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity.” ''Times'' [London] 17 Nov 2007: 3.

Bancroft, Colette. “‘He was Much More’ than a Writer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 11 Nov 2007, South Pinellas ed.: 1A.

Barnes, Bart. “A Blustery Force in Life and Letters.” ''Washington Post'' 11 Nov 2007, Met 2 Ed.: A01. [Note: Version of this article also printed elsewhere under different headlines.]

Bernstein, Mashey. “In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish
Writer.” ''Deep South Jewish Voice'' 18.1 (Dec 2007): 100+.

Blau, Rosie and Martin Mulligan. “Pulling No Punches to the End.” ''London Financial Times'' 12 Nov 2007, U.S. ed.: 13.

Boyd, Herb. “When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer.” ''New York Amsterdam News'' 15 Nov 2007: 1+.

Burke, Cathy and Todd Venezia. “Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer,
84, Dies.” ''New York Post'' 11 Nov 2007, News: 7.

Calabrese, Erin. “Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women.’” ''New York Post'' 19 Nov 2007, News: 14.

Campbell, James. “Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author.”
''Guardian'' [London] 12 Nov 2007, final ed.: 34.

Cappell, Ezra. “Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of
the Book.” ''Forward'' 16 Nov 2007: A1+.

Clark, Roy Peter. “Two Minutes with Mailer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 15 Nov 2007: 1E.

Clarke, Toni.“Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84.” ''Irish Times'' 12 Nov 2007: 10.

Craig, Olga. “A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling.” ''Gazette'' [Montreal] 11 Nov 2007, final ed.: A3.

Crosbie, Lynn. “Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women.” ''Globe and Mail'' [Canada] 12 Nov 2007: R1.

Crossen, Cynthia. “Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody: 1948’s ‘The
Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its
Greatest Blessing.” ''Wall Street Journal Online'' (15 Nov 2007). http://
www.wallstreetjournal.com.

Cryer, Dan and Aileen Jacobson. “Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon
Dies.” ''Newsday'' 11 Nov 2007, Nassau and Suffolk ed.: A08

. . .

{{cite news |last=D’Alessio |first=Jeff |title=A Life Written and Lived on a Large Scale: Norman Mailer 1923–2007 |url= |journal=Atlanta Journal-Constitution |volume= |issue= |date=November 11, 2007 |page=A5 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Reactions from Atlanta residents on the life and death of Mailer.

{{cite magazine |last=Deignan |first=Tom |title=Mailer: More Irish than the Irish |url= |magazine=Irish Voice |volume=21 |issue=47 |date=November 21, 2007 |pages=11 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Demirel |first=Selçuk |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=18 |date=December 3, 2007 |page=8 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |title=The Nijinsky of Ambivalence |url= |magazine=Nation |volume=285 |issue=19 |date=December 10, 2007 |pages=48–52 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |author-mask=1 |title=The Un-generation |url= |work=Los Angeles Times |volume= |issue= |date=December 30, 2007 |page=R4 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Retrospective comparing the lives and careers of Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Grace Paley, who all died in 2007 at the age of 84.

. . .

{{Review|state=expanded}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007}}
[[Category:Bibliographies (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-02T23:10:08Z

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{{Byline|last=Holmes|first=Constance E.|last1=Wilson|first1=Kristine A.|note=Much of the following has been incorporated into ''[[NM:WD|Norman Mailer: Works and Days]]''.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08bib}}
{{TOC right|width=25%}}
==Addenda through 2006==
===Primary===
====Letters====

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=10:5 |date=March 4, 1968 |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Leonid I. Brezhnev, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Violence in Oakland |location=10:9 |date=May 9, 1968 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/05/09/violence-in-oakland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=12:6 |date=March 27, 1969 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of telegram to Hon. U Thant, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Committee to Defend the Conspiracy |location=12:12 |date=June 19, 1969 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/06/19/the-committee-to-defend-the-conspiracy/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Ford’s Better Idea |location=19:11 & 12 |date=January 25, 1973 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/01/25/fords-better-idea/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Words for the Shah |location=24:19 |date=November 24, 1977 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1977/11/24/words-for-the-shah/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Open letter to the Prime Minister of Iran, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=In a Cuban Prison |location=25:19 |date=December 7, 1978 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1978/12/07/in-a-cuban-prison/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Alexandr Bogolovski |location=31:15 |date=October 11, 1984 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Mr. A. M. Rekunov, Procurator General of the USSR, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Arrests in Poland |location=33.13 |date=August 13, 1986 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1986/08/14/arrests-in-poland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Celebrating Mencken |location=37:4 |date=March 15, 1990 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/03/15/celebrating-mencken/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=President Clinton. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=An Urgent Appeal from Pen American Center |location=40:4 |date=February 11, 1993 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/02/11/an-urgent-appeal-from-pen-american-center/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=to Prime Minister Paul Keating et al. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Wei Jingsheng |location=43:3 |date=February 15, 1996 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/02/15/the-case-of-wei-jingsheng/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories. An open letter.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=JFK’s Assassination |location=50:20 |date=December 18, 2003 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2003/12/18/jfks-assassination/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Election and America’s Future |location=51:17 |date=November 4, 2004 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/11/04/the-election-and-americas-future/ |url-access=subscription |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Letter; one of a series solicited by the Editors.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject= Blocked |location=52:13 |date=August 11, 2005 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/08/11/blocked/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} As author of ''Oswald’s Tale'', with other signatories.

==2007==

===Primary===
====Books====
{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |author-mask=1 |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |date=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}

====Book Contributions====
{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contribution=Commentary |last=Regan |first=Ken |date=2007 |title=Knockout: The Art of Boxing |url= |location=San Rafael, CA |publisher=Insight Editions |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contributor-mask=1 |contribution=Introduction |last=Schiller |first=Lawrence |date=2007 |title=Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=Los Angles, CA |publisher=East End Editions KLS |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

====Interviews====


{{cite magazine |last=Binelli |first=Mark |date=May 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Rolling Stone |pages=3–17 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Foley |first=Dylan |date=January 28, 2007 |title=A Portrait of the Devil as a Young Man |url= |work=Star-Ledger |location=final ed. |page=6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Fox |first=Sue |date=July 8, 2007 |title=Even at 84, Norman Mailer Refuses to Pull His Punches |url=https://www.pressreader.com/uk/sunday-express-1070/20070708/282346855399714 |work=Sunday Express |location=UK first ed. |page=55 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Devilish Motives |url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/devilish-motives-20070120-gdp9x7.html |work=Sydney Morning Herald |location=Australia |access-date=2020-10-01 |page=30 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Nan |date= |title=Writing with the Devil |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/11/10/writing_with_the_devil/ |work=Boston Globe |location=Magazine |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kirschling |first=Gregory |date=January 19, 2007 |title=Tough Guys Don’t Quit |url= |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |issue=916 |page=48 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lee |first=Michael |title=The Devil in Norman Mailer |url=https://search.proquest.com/openview/5bff77fb5c089c0b3d810827ee4686c7/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=40852 |journal=Literary Review |volume=50 |issue=4 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=202–217 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Lennon |first=Michael |date=October 5, 2007 |title=The Rise of Mailerism |url=https://nymag.com/news/features/38961/ |magazine=New York |issue=40.36 |pages=24+ |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }} Mailer discusses ''On God''.

{{cite magazine |last=Llewellyn |first=Caro |author-mask= |title=The Lion in Winter: Norman Mailer Talks about Writing His First Novel in a Decade |url= |magazine=Weekend Australian |location=pre-prints ed. |date=March 31, 2007 |pages=1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Author at Home |url= |work=The Observer |location=England |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Miner |first=Colin |date=January 22, 2007 |title=Mailer on Bush, Obama & Writing |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-on-bush-obama-writing/47109/ |work=New York Sun |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |title=The Art of Fiction No. 193, Norman Mailer |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5775/the-art-of-fiction-no-193-norman-mailer |journal=The Paris Review |volume=49 |issue=181 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=44+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |author-mask=1 |title=Get Your Ass off My Pillow |url=https://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/get-your-ass-off-my-pillow/ |url-access=subscription |magazine=Harper’s Magazine |issue=315.1888 |date=September 2007 |pages=22–24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Pierleoni |first=Allen |date=February 7, 2007 |title=Now Age 84.... |url= |work=Sacramento Bee |location=metro final ed.: TK22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 2007 |title=Proust Questionnaire: Norman Mailer |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/proust_mailer200701 |magazine=Vanity Fair |issue=557 |page=166 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Rose |first=Daniel Asa |date=January 21, 2007 |title=In Conversation ... ; with Norman Mailer |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802000_pf.html |work=Washington Post |location=Final ed.: T07 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Santaro |first=Gene |title=The Sound and the Baby Führer |url=https://www.historynet.com/interview-sound-baby-fuhrer.htm |journal=World War II |volume=22 |issue=2 |date=May 2007 |pages=23–25 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Stoffman |first=Judy |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Novel Ideas about Hitler |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2007/01/28/mailers_novel_ideas_about_hitler.html |work=The Toronto Star |page=C04 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Wollheim |first=Richard |title=Living like Heroes |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/11/violence-hip-mailer-1961 |magazine=New Statesman |issue=137.4871 |date=November 19, 2007 |pages=62 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Abridged reprint of a 1961 interview promoting ''Advertisements for Myself''.

===Secondary===

====Essays, Articles, Book Chapters, and Dissertations====

{{cite news |author= |date=January 17, 2007 |title=Sex-Mad Mailer Enraged Rival |url=https://pagesix.com/2007/01/25/sex-mad-mailer-enraged-rival/ |work=New York Post |location=Page Six |page=12 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Article discussing Ralph Ellison’s attitude toward Mailer, according to Ellison’s biographer.

{{cite news |author=Bancroft, Collette |date=October 16, 2007 |title=A Man of Many Letters |url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/10/16/a-man-of-many-letters/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida 1E |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }} A look at Mailer and Mailer scholarship on the occasion of both the publication of ''On God'' and the launch of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite news |author=Beach, Patrick |date=December 23, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Memories about to Open at Ransom Center |url= |work=Austin American-Statesman |location=final ed.: J5 |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author=Bennett, Bruce |date=July 20, 2007 |title=Mailer at the Movies |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-at-the-movies/58850/ |work=New York Sun |location=11 |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }} Overview of Mailer’s films.

{{cite news |author=Brokaw, Leslie |date=September 16, 2007 |title=HFA Salutes Norman Mailer on Film |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2007/09/16/hfa_salutes_norman_mailer_on_film/ |work=Boston Globe |location=third ed.: N11 |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Bufithis, Philip |date=Fall 2007 |title=''The Executioner’s Song'': A Life Beneath Our Conscience |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07bufi |work=Mailer Review |location=1.1 |page=77-79 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=Burns |first=Paul C. |date=2007 |title=In Jesus in Twentieth-Century Literature, Art, and Movies |chapter=Transformation of Biblical Methods and Godhead in Norman Mailer’s Gospel |location=New York |publisher=Continuum |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Chaiken |first=Michael |title=The Master’s Mercurial Mistress: How Norman Mailer Courted Chaos 24 Frames per Second |url=http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/25897522/the-masters-mercurial-mistress-how-norman-mailer-courted-chaos-24-frames-per-second |url-access=subscription |issue=43.4 |date=July-August 2007 |pages=36–42 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Crook, Zeba |date=January 2007 |title=Fictionalizing Jesus: Story and History in Two Recent Jesus Novels |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07bufi |work=Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus |location=5.1 |page=33-55 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Dickstein, Morris |date=Fall 2007 |title=How Mailer Became ‘Mailer’: The Writer as Private and Public Character |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick |work=Mailer Review |location=1.1 |page=118-31 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Duguid, Scott |date=2007 |title=The Addiction of Masculinity: Norman Mailer’s ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' and the Cultural Politics of Reaganism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619310 |url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |location=30.1 |page=23-30 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

Freeman, John. “Writers Remain a Robust Bunch.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 28 Jan 2007: 1E. Article about the continued productivity of aging “literary giants” Mailer, Updike, and Roth.

Gottlieb, Akiva. “Norman Mailer, Auteur.” ''Forward'' 20 Jul 2007: B1+. Article on Mailer’s films, on the occasion of the New York exhibit “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

James, Clive. “Norman Mailer.” In ''Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts''. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 409–413.

Goldfarb, Reuven. “The Jewish Mailer.” Jerusalem Post 20 Nov 2007: 14. Henderson, Cathy, Richard W. Oram, Molly Schwartzburg, and Molly Hardy.
“Mailer Takes on America: Images from the Ransom Center Archive.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 141–75.

Holmes, Constance E. and J. Michael Lennon.“Norman Mailer: Supplemental Bibliography through 2006.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 234–60.

Houpt, Simon. “Still a Brawler at Heart.” ''Globe and Mail'' [Canada] 27 Jan 2007: R4.

Howard, Gerald. “Mailer Gets Hammered.” ''New York Times Book Review'' 26 Aug 2007, late ed. final: 27. Essay discussing Mailer’s films, focusing on ''Maidstone''.

Howley, Ashton. “Mailer Again: Heterophobia in ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 31–46.

J. C. “White Mischief.” ''TLS: Times Literary Supplement'' 26 Oct 2007: 36. Includes brief mention of ''Mailer Review''.

Junod, Tom. “The Last Man Standing.” ''Esquire'' 147.1 (Jan 2007): 108–133.

Kachka, Boris. “Mr. Tenditious.” ''New York'' 40.2 (15 Jan 2007): 62. Recaps Mailer’s history of responding negatively—even violently—to criticism.

Kaufmann, Donald L. “An American Dream: The Singular Nightmare.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 194–205.

Kennedy, William. “Norman Mailer as Occasional Commentator in a Self-Interview and Memoir.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 11–26.

Kriegel, Leonard. “Mailer’s Hitler: Round One.” ''Sewanee Review'' 115.4 (Fall 2007): 615–620.

Lennon, J. Michael. “Gallery Talk: The Mailer Archive.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 132–40.

———. “Norman Mailer: Novelist, Journalist, or Historian?” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 91–103.

———. (ed. and note): “‘A Series of Tragicomedies’: Mailer’s Letters on The Deer Park, 1954–55.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 45–79.

Long, Karen Haymon. “Mailer in Review.” ''Tampa Tribune'' 18 Nov 2007, final ed., Baylife: 1. Discusses the formation of the Mailer Society and the annual conference, focusing on Tampa-area members and the launch of the Mailer Review out of USF.

Lucid, Robert F. “[Boston State Hospital: The Summer of 1942].” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 27–33. Excerpt from incomplete authorized biography.

Masters, Brian. “So Are Some People Really Born Evil?” Daily Mail [London] 19 April 2007, first ed.: 14. Article discussing ''The Castle in the Forest'' in relation to an actual scientific study on evil and genetics.

McDonald, Brian. “Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s ''The Gospel According to the Son''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 78–90.

Meloy, Michael. ''Sex Fiends of the Fifties: Intersections of Violence, Sexuality, and Masculinity in the Work of Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Ken Kesey''. Diss. U of South Carolina, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3280339.

Middlebrook, Jonathan: “Five Notes toward a Reassessment of Norman Mailer.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 179–83.

Partridge, Jeffrey F. L. “''The Gospel According to the Son and Christian Belief''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 64–77.

Petigny, Alan.“Norman Mailer,‘The White Negro,’ and New Conceptions of the Self in Postwar America.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 184–93.

Rampton, David. “Plexed Artistry: The Formal Case for Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 47–63.

Rodwin, John G. "Fighters and Writers". ''The Mailer Review''. Fall 2008. 396-406.

Rollyson, Carl. “Mailer’s Other Career.” ''Village Voice'' 52.29 (18–24 Jul 2007): 68. On the occasion of the New York exhibit, “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

Rose, Daniel Asa. “Advertisements for a Gay Self.” ''New York'' 40.4 (5 Feb 2007): 9. Brief comment praising Mailer’s treatment of homosexuality in ''The Castle in the Forest''.

Ryan, James Emmett. “‘Insatiable as Good Old America’: Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Popular Criminality.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 17–22.

Scott, A.O. “Norman Mailer Unbound.” ''New York Times'' 20 Jul 2007, late ed. final, east coast: E1!. Discuss/reviews Mailer’s films in anticipation of a screening at Lincoln Center.

Severs, Jeffrey Frank. ''Reinventing Totalitarianism in the Postwar American Novel''. Diss. Harvard U, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3265089.

====Book Reviews====

{{cite journal |author= |title=His Perfect Sense of the Other |url=https://newcriterion.com/issues/2007/2/ldquohis-perfect-sense-of-the-otherrdquo |journal=New Criterion |volume=25 |issue=6 |date=February 2007 |pages=1–2 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''The Castle in the Forest''.

. . .

====Obituaries and Retrospectives====

{{cite news |last=Allen-Mills |first=Tony |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/norman-mailer-literary-rebeldies-zkhkhdbchfw |work=Sunday Times |location=London |pages=1+ |access-date=2020-10-01 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }} [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature |url= |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=20 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date= November 12, 2007 |title=A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-brawler-who-never-pulled-a-punch-1.981221 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized |url=https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2007/11/14/Heavyweight-Mailer-s-life-and-work-were-outsized/stories/200711140262 |work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |location= |page=B6 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish |url=https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/legendary-writer-with-particular-love-for-the-irish-26331219.html |work=Irish Independent |location= |page=unknown |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling |url= |work=Edmonton Journal |location= |page=A3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Mailer won pair of Pulitzers |url= |work=Variety |location= |page=55 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Mailer's Ghost |url=https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/41004/ |magazine=New York |location= |publisher= |date=November 26, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-02 }} [Note: Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.]

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.economist.com/obituary/2007/11/15/norman-mailer |work=Economist |location=US |page=103 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Sunday Independent |location=Ireland |page=unknown |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=53 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 13, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/norman-mailer-400006.html |work=Independent |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times Union |location= |page=A12 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Cincinnati Post |location= |page=C10 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
. . .

“Norman Mailer, 84.” ''Newsweek'' 151.1 (31 Dec 2007): 106.

“Obituary of Norman Mailer.” ''Daily Telegraph'' [London] 12 Nov 2007: 25.

“Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84.” ''Providence Journal'' 11 Nov 2007: A6.

Ambrose, Jay. “Remembering Mailer.” ''Knoxville News Sentinel'' 25 Nov 2007: 73.

Andriani, Lynn. “A Prolific Life to the End.” ''Publishers Weekly'' 254.56 (19 Nov 2007): 8.

Associated Press. “Literary Lion Sparked American Debate.” ''Daily Variety'' 12 Nov 2007: 2.

———. “Writers Remember Mailer.” ''Times Union'' 13 Nov 2007, one star ed.: E5. Comments on Mailer by New York authors and journalists, on the occasion of his death.

Baddiel, David. “For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity.” ''Times'' [London] 17 Nov 2007: 3.

Bancroft, Colette. “‘He was Much More’ than a Writer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 11 Nov 2007, South Pinellas ed.: 1A.

Barnes, Bart. “A Blustery Force in Life and Letters.” ''Washington Post'' 11 Nov 2007, Met 2 Ed.: A01. [Note: Version of this article also printed elsewhere under different headlines.]

Bernstein, Mashey. “In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish
Writer.” ''Deep South Jewish Voice'' 18.1 (Dec 2007): 100+.

Blau, Rosie and Martin Mulligan. “Pulling No Punches to the End.” ''London Financial Times'' 12 Nov 2007, U.S. ed.: 13.

Boyd, Herb. “When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer.” ''New York Amsterdam News'' 15 Nov 2007: 1+.

Burke, Cathy and Todd Venezia. “Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer,
84, Dies.” ''New York Post'' 11 Nov 2007, News: 7.

Calabrese, Erin. “Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women.’” ''New York Post'' 19 Nov 2007, News: 14.

Campbell, James. “Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author.”
''Guardian'' [London] 12 Nov 2007, final ed.: 34.

Cappell, Ezra. “Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of
the Book.” ''Forward'' 16 Nov 2007: A1+.

Clark, Roy Peter. “Two Minutes with Mailer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 15 Nov 2007: 1E.

Clarke, Toni.“Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84.” ''Irish Times'' 12 Nov 2007: 10.

Craig, Olga. “A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling.” ''Gazette'' [Montreal] 11 Nov 2007, final ed.: A3.

Crosbie, Lynn. “Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women.” ''Globe and Mail'' [Canada] 12 Nov 2007: R1.

Crossen, Cynthia. “Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody: 1948’s ‘The
Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its
Greatest Blessing.” ''Wall Street Journal Online'' (15 Nov 2007). http://
www.wallstreetjournal.com.

Cryer, Dan and Aileen Jacobson. “Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon
Dies.” ''Newsday'' 11 Nov 2007, Nassau and Suffolk ed.: A08

{{cite journal |last=D’Alessio |first=Jeff |title=A Life Written and Lived on a Large Scale: Norman Mailer 1923–2007 |url= |journal=Atlanta Journal-Constitution |volume= |issue= |date=11 Nov 2007 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=
Deignan |first=Tom |title=Mailer: More Irish than the Irish |url= |journal=Irish Voice |volume=21 |issue=47 |date=Nov 2007 |pages=21–27 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Demirel |first=Selçuk |title=Norman Mailer |url= |journal=Nation |volume=285 |issue=18 |date=3 Dec 2007 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |title=The Nijinsky of Ambivalence |url= |journal=Nation |volume=285 |issue=19 |date=10 Dec 2007 |pages=48-52 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |authormask=1 |title=The Un-generation |url= |journal=Los Angeles Times |volume= |issue= |date=30 Dec 2007 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{Review|state=expanded}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007}}
[[Category:Bibliographies (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-02T21:40:45Z

Amylhester: /* Obituaries and Retrospectives */adding templates

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
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{{Byline|last=Holmes|first=Constance E.|last1=Wilson|first1=Kristine A.|note=Much of the following has been incorporated into ''[[NM:WD|Norman Mailer: Works and Days]]''.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08bib}}
{{TOC right|width=25%}}
==Addenda through 2006==
===Primary===
====Letters====

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=10:5 |date=March 4, 1968 |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Leonid I. Brezhnev, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Violence in Oakland |location=10:9 |date=May 9, 1968 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/05/09/violence-in-oakland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Protest |location=12:6 |date=March 27, 1969 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of telegram to Hon. U Thant, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Committee to Defend the Conspiracy |location=12:12 |date=June 19, 1969 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/06/19/the-committee-to-defend-the-conspiracy/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Ford’s Better Idea |location=19:11 & 12 |date=January 25, 1973 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/01/25/fords-better-idea/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Words for the Shah |location=24:19 |date=November 24, 1977 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1977/11/24/words-for-the-shah/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Open letter to the Prime Minister of Iran, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=In a Cuban Prison |location=25:19 |date=December 7, 1978 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1978/12/07/in-a-cuban-prison/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Alexandr Bogolovski |location=31:15 |date=October 11, 1984 |url= |accessdate= |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Copy of letter to Mr. A. M. Rekunov, Procurator General of the USSR, with other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Arrests in Poland |location=33.13 |date=August 13, 1986 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1986/08/14/arrests-in-poland/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=Celebrating Mencken |location=37:4 |date=March 15, 1990 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/03/15/celebrating-mencken/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=President Clinton. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=An Urgent Appeal from Pen American Center |location=40:4 |date=February 11, 1993 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/02/11/an-urgent-appeal-from-pen-american-center/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=to Prime Minister Paul Keating et al. ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Case of Wei Jingsheng |location=43:3 |date=February 15, 1996 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/02/15/the-case-of-wei-jingsheng/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories. An open letter.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=JFK’s Assassination |location=50:20 |date=December 18, 2003 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2003/12/18/jfks-assassination/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} With other signatories.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject=The Election and America’s Future |location=51:17 |date=November 4, 2004 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/11/04/the-election-and-americas-future/ |url-access=subscription |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} Letter; one of a series solicited by the Editors.

{{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |recipient=the Editors, ''New York Review of Books'' |subject= Blocked |location=52:13 |date=August 11, 2005 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/08/11/blocked/ |accessdate=2020-10-01 |author-mask=1 |ref=harv }} As author of ''Oswald’s Tale'', with other signatories.

==2007==

===Primary===
====Books====
{{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |author-mask=1 |last2=Lennon |first2=J. Michael |date=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}

====Book Contributions====
{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contribution=Commentary |last=Regan |first=Ken |date=2007 |title=Knockout: The Art of Boxing |url= |location=San Rafael, CA |publisher=Insight Editions |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |contributor-last=Mailer |contributor-first=Norman |contributor-mask=1 |contribution=Introduction |last=Schiller |first=Lawrence |date=2007 |title=Marilyn Monroe |url= |location=Los Angles, CA |publisher=East End Editions KLS |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

====Interviews====


{{cite magazine |last=Binelli |first=Mark |date=May 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |magazine=Rolling Stone |pages=3–17 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Foley |first=Dylan |date=January 28, 2007 |title=A Portrait of the Devil as a Young Man |url= |work=Star-Ledger |location=final ed. |page=6 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Fox |first=Sue |date=July 8, 2007 |title=Even at 84, Norman Mailer Refuses to Pull His Punches |url=https://www.pressreader.com/uk/sunday-express-1070/20070708/282346855399714 |work=Sunday Express |location=UK first ed. |page=55 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Freeman |first=John |date=January 20, 2007 |title=Devilish Motives |url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/devilish-motives-20070120-gdp9x7.html |work=Sydney Morning Herald |location=Australia |access-date=2020-10-01 |page=30 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Nan |date= |title=Writing with the Devil |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/11/10/writing_with_the_devil/ |work=Boston Globe |location=Magazine |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Kirschling |first=Gregory |date=January 19, 2007 |title=Tough Guys Don’t Quit |url= |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |issue=916 |page=48 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Lee |first=Michael |title=The Devil in Norman Mailer |url=https://search.proquest.com/openview/5bff77fb5c089c0b3d810827ee4686c7/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=40852 |journal=Literary Review |volume=50 |issue=4 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=202–217 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Lennon |first=Michael |date=October 5, 2007 |title=The Rise of Mailerism |url=https://nymag.com/news/features/38961/ |magazine=New York |issue=40.36 |pages=24+ |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }} Mailer discusses ''On God''.

{{cite magazine |last=Llewellyn |first=Caro |author-mask= |title=The Lion in Winter: Norman Mailer Talks about Writing His First Novel in a Decade |url= |magazine=Weekend Australian |location=pre-prints ed. |date=March 31, 2007 |pages=1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Author at Home |url= |work=The Observer |location=England |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Miner |first=Colin |date=January 22, 2007 |title=Mailer on Bush, Obama & Writing |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-on-bush-obama-writing/47109/ |work=New York Sun |page=15 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |title=The Art of Fiction No. 193, Norman Mailer |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5775/the-art-of-fiction-no-193-norman-mailer |journal=The Paris Review |volume=49 |issue=181 |date=Summer 2007 |pages=44+ |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=O’Hagan |first=Andrew |author-mask=1 |title=Get Your Ass off My Pillow |url=https://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/get-your-ass-off-my-pillow/ |url-access=subscription |magazine=Harper’s Magazine |issue=315.1888 |date=September 2007 |pages=22–24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Pierleoni |first=Allen |date=February 7, 2007 |title=Now Age 84.... |url= |work=Sacramento Bee |location=metro final ed.: TK22 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |date=January 2007 |title=Proust Questionnaire: Norman Mailer |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/proust_mailer200701 |magazine=Vanity Fair |issue=557 |page=166 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Rose |first=Daniel Asa |date=January 21, 2007 |title=In Conversation ... ; with Norman Mailer |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802000_pf.html |work=Washington Post |location=Final ed.: T07 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Santaro |first=Gene |title=The Sound and the Baby Führer |url=https://www.historynet.com/interview-sound-baby-fuhrer.htm |journal=World War II |volume=22 |issue=2 |date=May 2007 |pages=23–25 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |last=Stoffman |first=Judy |date=January 28, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Novel Ideas about Hitler |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2007/01/28/mailers_novel_ideas_about_hitler.html |work=The Toronto Star |page=C04 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Wollheim |first=Richard |title=Living like Heroes |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/11/violence-hip-mailer-1961 |magazine=New Statesman |issue=137.4871 |date=November 19, 2007 |pages=62 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Abridged reprint of a 1961 interview promoting ''Advertisements for Myself''.

===Secondary===

====Essays, Articles, Book Chapters, and Dissertations====

{{cite news |author= |date=January 17, 2007 |title=Sex-Mad Mailer Enraged Rival |url=https://pagesix.com/2007/01/25/sex-mad-mailer-enraged-rival/ |work=New York Post |location=Page Six |page=12 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Article discussing Ralph Ellison’s attitude toward Mailer, according to Ellison’s biographer.

{{cite news |author=Bancroft, Collette |date=October 16, 2007 |title=A Man of Many Letters |url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/10/16/a-man-of-many-letters/ |work=St. Petersburg Times |location=Florida 1E |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }} A look at Mailer and Mailer scholarship on the occasion of both the publication of ''On God'' and the launch of ''Mailer Review''.

{{cite news |author=Beach, Patrick |date=December 23, 2007 |title=Mailer’s Memories about to Open at Ransom Center |url= |work=Austin American-Statesman |location=final ed.: J5 |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author=Bennett, Bruce |date=July 20, 2007 |title=Mailer at the Movies |url=https://www.nysun.com/arts/mailer-at-the-movies/58850/ |work=New York Sun |location=11 |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }} Overview of Mailer’s films.

{{cite news |author=Brokaw, Leslie |date=September 16, 2007 |title=HFA Salutes Norman Mailer on Film |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2007/09/16/hfa_salutes_norman_mailer_on_film/ |work=Boston Globe |location=third ed.: N11 |page= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Bufithis, Philip |date=Fall 2007 |title=''The Executioner’s Song'': A Life Beneath Our Conscience |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07bufi |work=Mailer Review |location=1.1 |page=77-79 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=Burns |first=Paul C. |date=2007 |title=In Jesus in Twentieth-Century Literature, Art, and Movies |chapter=Transformation of Biblical Methods and Godhead in Norman Mailer’s Gospel |location=New York |publisher=Continuum |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |last=Chaiken |first=Michael |title=The Master’s Mercurial Mistress: How Norman Mailer Courted Chaos 24 Frames per Second |url=http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/25897522/the-masters-mercurial-mistress-how-norman-mailer-courted-chaos-24-frames-per-second |url-access=subscription |issue=43.4 |date=July-August 2007 |pages=36–42 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Crook, Zeba |date=January 2007 |title=Fictionalizing Jesus: Story and History in Two Recent Jesus Novels |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07bufi |work=Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus |location=5.1 |page=33-55 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Dickstein, Morris |date=Fall 2007 |title=How Mailer Became ‘Mailer’: The Writer as Private and Public Character |url=https://prmlr.us/mr07dick |work=Mailer Review |location=1.1 |page=118-31 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |author=Duguid, Scott |date=2007 |title=The Addiction of Masculinity: Norman Mailer’s ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' and the Cultural Politics of Reaganism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4619310 |url-access=subscription |work=Journal of Modern Literature |location=30.1 |page=23-30 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

Freeman, John. “Writers Remain a Robust Bunch.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 28 Jan 2007: 1E. Article about the continued productivity of aging “literary giants” Mailer, Updike, and Roth.

Gottlieb, Akiva. “Norman Mailer, Auteur.” ''Forward'' 20 Jul 2007: B1+. Article on Mailer’s films, on the occasion of the New York exhibit “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

James, Clive. “Norman Mailer.” In ''Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts''. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 409–413.

Goldfarb, Reuven. “The Jewish Mailer.” Jerusalem Post 20 Nov 2007: 14. Henderson, Cathy, Richard W. Oram, Molly Schwartzburg, and Molly Hardy.
“Mailer Takes on America: Images from the Ransom Center Archive.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 141–75.

Holmes, Constance E. and J. Michael Lennon.“Norman Mailer: Supplemental Bibliography through 2006.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 234–60.

Houpt, Simon. “Still a Brawler at Heart.” ''Globe and Mail'' [Canada] 27 Jan 2007: R4.

Howard, Gerald. “Mailer Gets Hammered.” ''New York Times Book Review'' 26 Aug 2007, late ed. final: 27. Essay discussing Mailer’s films, focusing on ''Maidstone''.

Howley, Ashton. “Mailer Again: Heterophobia in ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 31–46.

J. C. “White Mischief.” ''TLS: Times Literary Supplement'' 26 Oct 2007: 36. Includes brief mention of ''Mailer Review''.

Junod, Tom. “The Last Man Standing.” ''Esquire'' 147.1 (Jan 2007): 108–133.

Kachka, Boris. “Mr. Tenditious.” ''New York'' 40.2 (15 Jan 2007): 62. Recaps Mailer’s history of responding negatively—even violently—to criticism.

Kaufmann, Donald L. “An American Dream: The Singular Nightmare.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 194–205.

Kennedy, William. “Norman Mailer as Occasional Commentator in a Self-Interview and Memoir.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 11–26.

Kriegel, Leonard. “Mailer’s Hitler: Round One.” ''Sewanee Review'' 115.4 (Fall 2007): 615–620.

Lennon, J. Michael. “Gallery Talk: The Mailer Archive.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 132–40.

———. “Norman Mailer: Novelist, Journalist, or Historian?” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 91–103.

———. (ed. and note): “‘A Series of Tragicomedies’: Mailer’s Letters on The Deer Park, 1954–55.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 45–79.

Long, Karen Haymon. “Mailer in Review.” ''Tampa Tribune'' 18 Nov 2007, final ed., Baylife: 1. Discusses the formation of the Mailer Society and the annual conference, focusing on Tampa-area members and the launch of the Mailer Review out of USF.

Lucid, Robert F. “[Boston State Hospital: The Summer of 1942].” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 27–33. Excerpt from incomplete authorized biography.

Masters, Brian. “So Are Some People Really Born Evil?” Daily Mail [London] 19 April 2007, first ed.: 14. Article discussing ''The Castle in the Forest'' in relation to an actual scientific study on evil and genetics.

McDonald, Brian. “Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the ‘Very Jewish Jesus’ of Norman Mailer’s ''The Gospel According to the Son''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 78–90.

Meloy, Michael. ''Sex Fiends of the Fifties: Intersections of Violence, Sexuality, and Masculinity in the Work of Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Ken Kesey''. Diss. U of South Carolina, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3280339.

Middlebrook, Jonathan: “Five Notes toward a Reassessment of Norman Mailer.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 179–83.

Partridge, Jeffrey F. L. “''The Gospel According to the Son and Christian Belief''.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 64–77.

Petigny, Alan.“Norman Mailer,‘The White Negro,’ and New Conceptions of the Self in Postwar America.” ''Mailer Review'' 1.1 (Fall 2007): 184–93.

Rampton, David. “Plexed Artistry: The Formal Case for Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 47–63.

Rodwin, John G. "Fighters and Writers". ''The Mailer Review''. Fall 2008. 396-406.

Rollyson, Carl. “Mailer’s Other Career.” ''Village Voice'' 52.29 (18–24 Jul 2007): 68. On the occasion of the New York exhibit, “The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer.”

Rose, Daniel Asa. “Advertisements for a Gay Self.” ''New York'' 40.4 (5 Feb 2007): 9. Brief comment praising Mailer’s treatment of homosexuality in ''The Castle in the Forest''.

Ryan, James Emmett. “‘Insatiable as Good Old America’: Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Popular Criminality.” ''Journal of Modern Literature'' 30.1 (2007): 17–22.

Scott, A.O. “Norman Mailer Unbound.” ''New York Times'' 20 Jul 2007, late ed. final, east coast: E1!. Discuss/reviews Mailer’s films in anticipation of a screening at Lincoln Center.

Severs, Jeffrey Frank. ''Reinventing Totalitarianism in the Postwar American Novel''. Diss. Harvard U, 2007. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007. AAT 3265089.

====Book Reviews====

{{cite journal |author= |title=His Perfect Sense of the Other |url=https://newcriterion.com/issues/2007/2/ldquohis-perfect-sense-of-the-otherrdquo |journal=New Criterion |volume=25 |issue=6 |date=February 2007 |pages=1–2 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''The Castle in the Forest''.

. . .

====Obituaries and Retrospectives====

{{cite news |last=Allen-Mills |first=Tony |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/norman-mailer-literary-rebeldies-zkhkhdbchfw |work=Sunday Times |location=London |pages=1+ |access-date=2020-10-01 |url-access=subscription |ref=harv }} [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature |url= |work=Sunday Times |location=London |page=20 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date= November 12, 2007 |title=A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-brawler-who-never-pulled-a-punch-1.981221 |work=Irish Times |location= |page=10 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 14, 2007 |title=Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized |url=https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2007/11/14/Heavyweight-Mailer-s-life-and-work-were-outsized/stories/200711140262 |work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |location= |page=B6 |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish |url=https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/legendary-writer-with-particular-love-for-the-irish-26331219.html |work=Irish Independent |location= |page=unknown |access-date=2020-10-01 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling |url= |work=Edmonton Journal |location= |page=A3 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 19, 2007 |title=Mailer won pair of Pulitzers |url= |work=Variety |location= |page=55 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite magazine |author= |title=Mailer's Ghost |url=https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/41004/ |magazine=New York |location= |publisher= |date=November 26, 2007 |access-date=2020-10-02 }} [Note: Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.]

{{cite news |author= |date=November 15, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.economist.com/obituary/2007/11/15/norman-mailer |work=Economist |location=US |page=103 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Sunday Independent |location=Ireland |page=unknown |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |work=Times |location=London |page=53 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite news |author= |date=November 13, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/norman-mailer-400006.html |work=Independent |location=London |page=34 |access-date=2020-10-02 |ref=harv }}

. . .

“Norman Mailer.” ''Times Union'' 15 Nov 2007, one star ed.: A12.

“Norman Mailer, 1923–2007.” ''Cincinnati Post'' 12 Nov 2007: C10.

“Norman Mailer, 84.” ''Newsweek'' 151.1 (31 Dec 2007): 106.

“Obituary of Norman Mailer.” ''Daily Telegraph'' [London] 12 Nov 2007: 25.

“Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84.” ''Providence Journal'' 11 Nov 2007: A6.

Ambrose, Jay. “Remembering Mailer.” ''Knoxville News Sentinel'' 25 Nov 2007: 73.

Andriani, Lynn. “A Prolific Life to the End.” ''Publishers Weekly'' 254.56 (19 Nov 2007): 8.

Associated Press. “Literary Lion Sparked American Debate.” ''Daily Variety'' 12 Nov 2007: 2.

———. “Writers Remember Mailer.” ''Times Union'' 13 Nov 2007, one star ed.: E5. Comments on Mailer by New York authors and journalists, on the occasion of his death.

Baddiel, David. “For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity.” ''Times'' [London] 17 Nov 2007: 3.

Bancroft, Colette. “‘He was Much More’ than a Writer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 11 Nov 2007, South Pinellas ed.: 1A.

Barnes, Bart. “A Blustery Force in Life and Letters.” ''Washington Post'' 11 Nov 2007, Met 2 Ed.: A01. [Note: Version of this article also printed elsewhere under different headlines.]

Bernstein, Mashey. “In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish
Writer.” ''Deep South Jewish Voice'' 18.1 (Dec 2007): 100+.

Blau, Rosie and Martin Mulligan. “Pulling No Punches to the End.” ''London Financial Times'' 12 Nov 2007, U.S. ed.: 13.

Boyd, Herb. “When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer.” ''New York Amsterdam News'' 15 Nov 2007: 1+.

Burke, Cathy and Todd Venezia. “Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer,
84, Dies.” ''New York Post'' 11 Nov 2007, News: 7.

Calabrese, Erin. “Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women.’” ''New York Post'' 19 Nov 2007, News: 14.

Campbell, James. “Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author.”
''Guardian'' [London] 12 Nov 2007, final ed.: 34.

Cappell, Ezra. “Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of
the Book.” ''Forward'' 16 Nov 2007: A1+.

Clark, Roy Peter. “Two Minutes with Mailer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 15 Nov 2007: 1E.

Clarke, Toni.“Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84.” ''Irish Times'' 12 Nov 2007: 10.

Craig, Olga. “A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling.” ''Gazette'' [Montreal] 11 Nov 2007, final ed.: A3.

Crosbie, Lynn. “Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women.” ''Globe and Mail'' [Canada] 12 Nov 2007: R1.

Crossen, Cynthia. “Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody: 1948’s ‘The
Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its
Greatest Blessing.” ''Wall Street Journal Online'' (15 Nov 2007). http://
www.wallstreetjournal.com.

Cryer, Dan and Aileen Jacobson. “Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon
Dies.” ''Newsday'' 11 Nov 2007, Nassau and Suffolk ed.: A08

{{cite journal |last=D’Alessio |first=Jeff |title=A Life Written and Lived on a Large Scale: Norman Mailer 1923–2007 |url= |journal=Atlanta Journal-Constitution |volume= |issue= |date=11 Nov 2007 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=
Deignan |first=Tom |title=Mailer: More Irish than the Irish |url= |journal=Irish Voice |volume=21 |issue=47 |date=Nov 2007 |pages=21–27 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Demirel |first=Selçuk |title=Norman Mailer |url= |journal=Nation |volume=285 |issue=18 |date=3 Dec 2007 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |title=The Nijinsky of Ambivalence |url= |journal=Nation |volume=285 |issue=19 |date=10 Dec 2007 |pages=48-52 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

{{cite journal |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |authormask=1 |title=The Un-generation |url= |journal=Los Angeles Times |volume= |issue= |date=30 Dec 2007 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}

. . .

{{Review|state=expanded}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007}}
[[Category:Bibliographies (MR)]]

User:Amylhester

2020-10-01T17:31:32Z

Amylhester: rearranging/rewording

'''Amy Hester''' is a student editor in Dr. Lucas's Fall 2020 "Writing for Digital Media" class. A native of Middle Georgia, she is currently a senior at Middle Georgia State University pursuing a bachelor's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Professional and Technical Writing. While she is currently a stay-at-home mom, she previously worked as a Quality Control specialist for a company that digitized technical orders for the US Air Force. Upon graduation, she hopes to return to that field as a technical writer. Her hobbies and interests include writing fiction, reading urban fantasy novels, gardening, and cooking as many meals as possible in an Instant Pot.

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-01T17:02:31Z

Amylhester: /* Obituaries and Retrospectives */ adding templates

Talk:The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-01T16:13:31Z

Amylhester:

==Editors needed to finish==
{{Reply to|AMurray|Amylhester|BriJames‎|CCross‎‎|CDucharme|ChristinaPinkston|Eswilliams|KHunter|KJordan|Jmjackson‎|JPerkins|Jrdavisjr‎‎|JREubanks‎|JSheppard|MSanders|MWiggins‎}} This Bibliography for remains incomplete. Please let’s work as a class to finish up our task: to remediate the [[The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008|entire issue]]. (Download the [https://discourse.grlucas.net/t/not-quite-finished-with-remediation/533 PDF in the forum].) Of course editors who help here get extra consideration in evaluation. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 06:57, 30 September 2020 (EDT)

==Templates Needed==
{{Reply to|AMurray|Amylhester|BriJames‎|CCross‎‎|CDucharme|ChristinaPinkston|Eswilliams|KHunter|KJordan|Jmjackson‎|JPerkins|Jrdavisjr‎‎|JREubanks‎|JSheppard|MSanders|MWiggins‎}} Thanks for beginning to work on this. However, I added templates to several of the entries, and my edits were removed. We need to be using [[The Mailer Review/Volunteer/Remediating Articles#Works Cited|templates like we would in a “Works Cited” section]] of an article, please. The sooner we get this done, the quicker we can move on to our next project. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:21, 1 October 2020 (EDT)

Oh, and I am putting off evaluation for this project until we are finished with the bibliography. I would strongly advise ''everyone'' to help get the bib finished—especially if you had a lot of assistance remediating your article or maybe have a lower grade or two on this project. Thanks for all your good work, folks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:35, 1 October 2020 (EDT)

==Questions==
{{Reply to|Grlucas}} One of the publications I looked up for a URL has changed names since the bibliography was written (the masthead reads Independent.ie instead of Irish Independent at the website). They have also added an author to the article where there was none before. Do I reflect both of these changes in the bibliography entry? Thanks! [[User:Amylhester|Amylhester]] ([[User talk:Amylhester|talk]]) 12:13, 1 October 2020 (EDT)

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-10-01T16:02:42Z

Amylhester: /* Obituaries and Retrospectives */converting entries to templates

User:Amylhester

2020-10-01T00:57:34Z

Amylhester:

Amy is a native of Middle Georgia who graduated from Warner Robins High School. She is a student editor in Dr. Lucas's Fall 2020 "Writing for Digital Media" class. She is also a senior at MGA pursuing a bachelor's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Professional and Technical Writing. She has been a stay-at-home mom for fifteen years, but previously she worked as a Quality Control Tech for a company that digitized Technical Orders for the US Air Force. Her hobbies and interests include writing fiction, reading urban fantasy novels, gardening, and cooking as many meals as possible in an Instant Pot.

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007

2020-09-30T19:39:46Z

Amylhester: /* Obituaries and Retrospectives */posted text for pp. 535-537

User:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-30T19:36:29Z

Amylhester: fix spacing

“The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature.” ''Sunday Times'' [London] 11 Nov 2007: 20.

“A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch.” ''Irish Times'' 12 Nov 2007: 10.

“Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized.” ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' 14 Nov 2007: B6.

“Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish.” ''Irish Independent'' 12 Nov 2007: page unknown.

“A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling.” ''Edmonton Journal'' 11 Nov 2007, final ed.: A3.

“Mailer won pair of Pulitzers.” ''Variety'' 409.1 (19–25 Nov 2007): 55.

“Mailer’s Ghost.” ''New York'' 40.42 (26 Nov 2007): 32. Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Economist'', US ed. 385.8555 (17 Nov 2007): 103.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Sunday Independent'' [Ireland] 11 Nov 2007: page unknown.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Times'' [London] 12 Nov 2007: 53.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Independent'' [London] 13 Nov 2007, first ed.: 34.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Times Union'' 15 Nov 2007, one star ed.: A12.

“Norman Mailer, 1923–2007.” ''Cincinnati Post'' 12 Nov 2007: C10.

“Norman Mailer, 84.” ''Newsweek'' 151.1 (31 Dec 2007): 106.

“Obituary of Norman Mailer.” ''Daily Telegraph'' [London] 12 Nov 2007: 25.

“Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84.” ''Providence Journal'' 11 Nov 2007: A6.

Allen-Mills, Tony. “Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies.” ''Sunday Times''
[London] 11 Nov 2007: 1+. [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

Ambrose, Jay. “Remembering Mailer.” ''Knoxville News Sentinel'' 25 Nov 2007: 73.

Andriani, Lynn. “A Prolific Life to the End.” ''Publishers Weekly'' 254.56 (19 Nov 2007): 8.

Associated Press. “Literary Lion Sparked American Debate.” ''Daily Variety'' 12 Nov 2007: 2.

———. “Writers Remember Mailer.” ''Times Union'' 13 Nov 2007, one star ed.: E5. Comments on Mailer by New York authors and journalists, on the occasion of his death.

Baddiel, David. “For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity.” ''Times'' [London] 17 Nov 2007: 3.

Bancroft, Colette. “‘He was Much More’ than a Writer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 11 Nov 2007, South Pinellas ed.: 1A.

Barnes, Bart. “A Blustery Force in Life and Letters.” ''Washington Post'' 11 Nov 2007, Met 2 Ed.: A01. [Note: Version of this article also printed elsewhere under different headlines.]

Bernstein, Mashey. “In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish
Writer.” ''Deep South Jewish Voice'' 18.1 (Dec 2007): 100+.

Blau, Rosie and Martin Mulligan. “Pulling No Punches to the End.” ''London Financial Times'' 12 Nov 2007, U.S. ed.: 13.

Boyd, Herb. “When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer.” ''New York Amsterdam News'' 15 Nov 2007: 1+.

Burke, Cathy and Todd Venezia. “Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer,
84, Dies.” ''New York Post'' 11 Nov 2007, News: 7.

Calabrese, Erin. “Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women.’” ''New York Post'' 19 Nov 2007, News: 14.

Campbell, James. “Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author.”
''Guardian'' [London] 12 Nov 2007, final ed.: 34.

Cappell, Ezra. “Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of
the Book.” ''Forward'' 16 Nov 2007: A1+.

Clark, Roy Peter. “Two Minutes with Mailer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 15 Nov 2007: 1E.

Clarke, Toni.“Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84.” ''Irish Times'' 12 Nov 2007: 10.

Craig, Olga. “A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling.” ''Gazette'' [Montreal] 11 Nov 2007, final ed.: A3.

Crosbie, Lynn. “Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women.” ''Globe and Mail'' [Canada] 12 Nov 2007: R1.

Crossen, Cynthia. “Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody: 1948’s ‘The
Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its
Greatest Blessing.” ''Wall Street Journal Online'' (15 Nov 2007). http://
www.wallstreetjournal.com.

Cryer, Dan and Aileen Jacobson. “Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon
Dies.” ''Newsday'' 11 Nov 2007, Nassau and Suffolk ed.: A08

User:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-30T19:32:29Z

Amylhester: fix typo

“The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature.” ''Sunday Times'' [London] 11 Nov 2007: 20.

“A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch.” ''Irish Times'' 12 Nov 2007: 10.

“Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized.” ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' 14 Nov 2007: B6.

“Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish.” ''Irish Independent'' 12 Nov 2007: page unknown.

“A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling.” ''Edmonton Journal'' 11 Nov 2007, final ed.: A3.

“Mailer won pair of Pulitzers.” ''Variety'' 409.1 (19–25 Nov 2007): 55.

“Mailer’s Ghost.” ''New York'' 40.42 (26 Nov 2007): 32. Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Economist'', US ed. 385.8555 (17 Nov 2007): 103.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Sunday Independent'' [Ireland] 11 Nov 2007: page unknown.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Times'' [London] 12 Nov 2007: 53.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Independent'' [London] 13 Nov 2007, first ed.: 34.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Times Union'' 15 Nov 2007, one star ed.: A12.

“Norman Mailer, 1923–2007.” ''Cincinnati Post'' 12 Nov 2007: C10.

“Norman Mailer, 84.” ''Newsweek'' 151.1 (31 Dec 2007): 106.

“Obituary of Norman Mailer.” ''Daily Telegraph'' [London] 12 Nov 2007: 25.

“Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84.” ''Providence Journal'' 11 Nov 2007: A6.

Allen-Mills, Tony. “Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies.” ''Sunday Times''
[London] 11 Nov 2007: 1+. [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

Ambrose, Jay. “Remembering Mailer.” ''Knoxville News Sentinel'' 25 Nov 2007: 73.

Andriani, Lynn. “A Prolific Life to the End.” ''Publishers Weekly'' 254.56 (19 Nov 2007): 8.

Associated Press. “Literary Lion Sparked American Debate.” ''Daily Variety'' 12 Nov 2007: 2.

———. “Writers Remember Mailer.” ''Times Union'' 13 Nov 2007, one star ed.: E5. Comments on Mailer by New York authors and journalists, on the occasion of his death.

Baddiel, David. “For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity.” ''Times'' [London] 17 Nov 2007: 3.

Bancroft, Colette. “‘He was Much More’ than a Writer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 11 Nov 2007, South Pinellas ed.: 1A.

Barnes, Bart. “A Blustery Force in Life and Letters.” ''Washington Post'' 11 Nov 2007, Met 2 Ed.: A01. [Note: Version of this article also printed elsewhere under different headlines.]

Bernstein, Mashey. “In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish
Writer.” ''Deep South Jewish Voice'' 18.1 (Dec 2007): 100+.

Blau, Rosie and Martin Mulligan. “Pulling No Punches to the End.” ''London Financial Times'' 12 Nov 2007, U.S. ed.: 13.

Boyd, Herb. “When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer.” ''New York Amsterdam News'' 15 Nov 2007: 1+.

Burke, Cathy and Todd Venezia. “Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer,
84, Dies.” ''New York Post'' 11 Nov 2007, News: 7.

Calabrese, Erin. “Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women.’ ” ''New
York Post'' 19 Nov 2007, News: 14.

Campbell, James. “Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author.”
''Guardian'' [London] 12 Nov 2007, final ed.: 34.

Cappell, Ezra. “Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of
the Book.” ''Forward'' 16 Nov 2007: A1+.

Clark, Roy Peter. “Two Minutes with Mailer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 15 Nov 2007: 1E.

Clarke, Toni.“Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84.” ''Irish Times'' 12 Nov 2007: 10.

Craig, Olga. “A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling.” ''Gazette'' [Montreal] 11 Nov 2007, final ed.: A3.

Crosbie, Lynn. “Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women.” ''Globe and
Mail'' [Canada] 12 Nov 2007: R1.

Crossen, Cynthia. “Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody: 1948’s ‘The
Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its
Greatest Blessing.” ''Wall Street Journal Online'' (15 Nov 2007). http://
www.wallstreetjournal.com.

Cryer, Dan and Aileen Jacobson. “Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon
Dies.” ''Newsday'' 11 Nov 2007, Nassau and Suffolk ed.: A08

User:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-30T19:25:57Z

Amylhester: cleanup

“The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature.” ''Sunday Times'' [London] 11 Nov 2007: 20.

“A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch.” ''Irish Times'' 12 Nov 2007: 10.

“Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized.” ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' 14 Nov 2007: B6.

“Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish.” ''Irish Independent'' 12 Nov 2007: page unknown.

“A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling.” ''Edmonton Journal'' 11 Nov 2007, final ed.: A3.

“Mailer won pair of Pulitzers.” ''Variety'' 409.1 (19–25 Nov 2007): 55.

“Mailer’s Ghost.” ''New York'' 40.42 (26 Nov 2007): 32. Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Economist'', US ed. 385.8555 (17 Nov 2007): 103.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Sunday Independent'' [Ireland] 11 Nov 2007: page unknown.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Times'' [London] 12 Nov 2007: 53.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Independent'' [London] 13 Nov 2007, first ed.: 34.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Times Union'' 15 Nov 2007, one star ed.: A12.

“Norman Mailer, 1923–2007.” ''Cincinnati Post'' 12 Nov 2007: C10.

“Norman Mailer, 84.” ''Newsweek'' 151.1 (31 Dec 2007): 106.

“Obituary of Norman Mailer.” ''Daily Telegraph'' [London] 12 Nov 2007: 25.

“Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84.” ''Providence Journal'' 11 Nov 2007: A6.

Allen-Mills, Tony. “Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies.” ''Sunday Times''
[London] 11 Nov 2007: 1+. [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

Ambrose, Jay. “Remembering Mailer.” ''Knoxville News Sentinel'' 25 Nov 2007: 73.

Andriani, Lynn. “A Prolific Life to the End.” ''Publishers Weekly'' 254.56 (19 Nov 2007): 8.

Associated Press. “Literary Lion Sparked American Debate.” ''Daily Variety'' 12 Nov 2007: 2.

———. “Writers Remember Mailer.” ''Times Union'' 13 Nov 2007, one star ed.: E5. Comments on Mailer by New York authors and journalists, on the occasion of his death.

Baddiel, David. “For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity.” ''Times'' [London] 17 Nov 2007: 3.

Bancroft, Colette. “‘He was Much More’ than a Writer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 11 Nov 2007, South Pinellas ed.: 1A.

Barnes, Bart. “A Blustery Force in Life and Letters.” ''Washington Post'' 11 Nov 2007, Met 2 Ed.: A01. [Note: Version of this article also printed elsewhere under different headlines.]

Bernstein, Mashey. “In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish
Writer.” ''Deep South Jewish Voice'' 18.1 (Dec 2007): 100+.

Blau, Rosie and Martin Mulligan. “Pulling No Punches to the End.” ''London
Financial Times'' 12 Nov 2007, U.S. ed.: 13.

Boyd, Herb. “When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer.” ''New York Amsterdam News'' 15 Nov 2007: 1+.

Burke, Cathy and Todd Venezia. “Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer,
84, Dies.” ''New York Post'' 11 Nov 2007, News: 7.

Calabrese, Erin. “Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women.’ ” ''New
York Post'' 19 Nov 2007, News: 14.

Campbell, James. “Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author.”
''Guardian'' [London] 12 Nov 2007, final ed.: 34.

Cappell, Ezra. “Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of
the Book.” ''Forward'' 16 Nov 2007: A1+.

Clark, Roy Peter. “Two Minutes with Mailer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 15 Nov 2007: 1E.

Clarke, Toni.“Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84.” ''Irish Times'' 12 Nov 2007: 10.

Craig, Olga. “A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling.” ''Gazette'' [Montreal] 11 Nov 2007, final ed.: A3.

Crosbie, Lynn. “Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women.” ''Globe and
Mail'' [Canada] 12 Nov 2007: R1.

Crossen, Cynthia. “Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody: 1948’s ‘The
Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its
Greatest Blessing.” ''Wall Street Journal Online'' (15 Nov 2007). http://
www.wallstreetjournal.com.

Cryer, Dan and Aileen Jacobson. “Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon
Dies.” ''Newsday'' 11 Nov 2007, Nassau and Suffolk ed.: A08

User:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-30T19:13:18Z

Amylhester:

“The Bad Boy of U.S. Literature.” ''Sunday Times'' [London] 11 Nov 2007: 20.

“A Brawler who Never Pulled a Punch.” ''Irish Times'' 12 Nov 2007: 10.

“Heavyweight: Mailer’s Life and Work Were Outsized.” ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' 14 Nov 2007: B6.

“Legendary Writer with Particular Love for the Irish.” ''Irish Independent'' 12 Nov 2007: page unknown.

“A Life of Writing, Boozing and Brawling.” ''Edmonton Journal'' 11 Nov 2007, final ed.: A3.

“Mailer won pair of Pulitzers.” ''Variety'' 409.1 (19–25 Nov 2007): 55.

“Mailer’s Ghost.” ''New York'' 40.42 (26 Nov 2007): 32. Revisits the seven covers of ''New York Magazine'' that have featured Mailer, either as author or subject.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Economist'', US ed. 385.8555 (17 Nov 2007): 103.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Sunday Independent'' [Ireland] 11 Nov 2007: page unknown.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Times'' [London] 12 Nov 2007: 53.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Independent'' [London] 13 Nov 2007, first ed.: 34.

“Norman Mailer.” ''Times Union'' 15 Nov 2007, one star ed.: A12.

“Norman Mailer, 1923–2007.” ''Cincinnati Post'' 12 Nov 2007: C10.

“Norman Mailer, 84.” ''Newsweek'' 151.1 (31 Dec 2007): 106.

“Obituary of Norman Mailer.” ''Daily Telegraph'' [London] 12 Nov 2007: 25.

“Pulitzer Prize Author Norman Mailer Dies at 84.” ''Providence Journal'' 11 Nov 2007: A6.

Allen-Mills, Tony. “Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies.” ''Sunday Times''
[London] 11 Nov 2007: 1+. [Note: Also printed in the ''Australian'' under a different headline.]

Ambrose, Jay. “Remembering Mailer.” ''Knoxville News Sentinel'' 25 Nov 2007: 73.

Andriani, Lynn. “A Prolific Life to the End.” ''Publishers Weekly'' 254.56 (19 Nov 2007): 8.

Associated Press. “Literary Lion Sparked American Debate.” ''Daily Variety'' 12 Nov 2007: 2.

———. “Writers Remember Mailer.” ''Times Union'' 13 Nov 2007, one star ed.: E5. Comments on Mailer by New York authors and journalists, on the occasion of his death.

Baddiel, David. “For Norman Mailer, Authenticity was all about Masculinity.” ''Times'' [London] 17 Nov 2007: 3.

Bancroft, Colette. “‘He was Much More’ than a Writer.” ''St. Petersburg Times'' [Florida] 11 Nov 2007, South Pinellas ed.: 1A.

Barnes, Bart. “A Blustery Force in Life and Letters.” ''Washington Post'' 11 Nov 2007, Met 2 Ed.: A01. [Note: Version of this article also printed elsewhere under different headlines.]

Bernstein, Mashey. “In Different Way, Norman Mailer was a Deeply Jewish
Writer.” ''Deep South Jewish Voice'' 18.1 (Dec 2007): 100+.

Blau, Rosie and Martin Mulligan. “Pulling No Punches to the End.” ''London
Financial Times'' 12 Nov 2007, U.S. ed.: 13.

Boyd, Herb. “When James Baldwin Met Norman Mailer.” ''New York Amsterdam News'' 15 Nov 2007: 1+.

Burke, Cathy and Todd Venezia. “Literary Pug and Original Hipster Mailer,
84, Dies.” ''New York Post'' 11 Nov 2007, News: 7.

Calabrese, Erin. “Widow Defends Mailer, Says He ‘Loved Women.’ ” ''New
York Post'' 19 Nov 2007, News: 14.
Campbell, James. “Norman Mailer: Pugnacious Journalist and Author.”
Guardian @London# 12 Nov 2007, final ed.: 34.
Cappell, Ezra. “Norman Mailer: A Man of Letters Inspired by the People of
the Book.” Forward 16 Nov 2007: A1!.
Clark, Roy Peter. “Two Minutes with Mailer.” St. Petersburg Times @Florida#
15 Nov 2007: 1E.
Clarke, Toni.“Writer Norman Mailer dies at 84.” Irish Times 12 Nov 2007: 10.
Craig, Olga. “A Life of Books, Bars, Brawling.” Gazette @Montreal# 11 Nov
2007, final ed.: A3.
Crosbie, Lynn. “Believe it: This was the Man who Loved Women.”Globe and
Mail @Canada# 12 Nov 2007: R1.
Crossen, Cynthia.“Readback: When Normal Mailer Was Nobody:1948’s ‘The
Naked and the Dead’ Was Written Before He Was Famous, And That Is Its
Greatest Blessing.” Wall Street Journal Online ~15 Nov 2007!. http://
www.wallstreetjournal.com.
Cryer, Dan and Aileen Jacobson.“Norman Mailer 1923–2007: A Literary Icon
Dies.” Newsday 11 Nov 2007, Nassau and Suffolk ed.: A08

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer, Metaphysician at Work

2020-09-30T03:53:02Z

Amylhester: corrected typos

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{{MR02}}
{{Quote box|title=''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''|By [[Norman Mailer]] with [[J. Michael Lennon]] New York: Random House, 2007 265 pp. Cloth $26.95|align=right|width=25%}}
{{Byline|last=Sipiora|first=Phillip|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08sipi}}
{{start|[[w:Peter Allen|Peter Allen]]’s striking song,}} “Everything Old Is New Again,” reminds me of Norman {{NM}}’s final book, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''. Allen’s lyrics call attention to the cyclical and circular nature of human experience, the necessity of returning to core principles that inform the conscious and subconscious seminal beliefs of an artist: “Don’t throw the past away / You might need it some rainy day / Dreams can come true again / When everything old is new again.” In an obverse way, ''On God'' may be read as a rearticulation—a synoptic and aggressive synthesis—of decades of Mailer’s thinking, speculating, and interrogating—all coming together in a work shaded by eschatological nuances.

Mailer has long been known for his search for order,<ref>In 1971, Robert Merrill wrote a dissertation, “A Fondness for Order: The Achievement of Norman Mailer.” (U of Chicago). He later wrote ''Norman Mailer'' (1978) and ''Norman Mailer Revisited'' (1992), both books in Twayne’s United States Authors Series (New York: Twayne Publishers).</ref> for a driving interest in examining explanatory systems that offer glimpses and shreds of insight into human experience, with a continual awareness, at least implicitly and usually explicitly, of their ultimate insufficiencies. In explaining his motivation for this book, Mailer emphasizes the importance of order: “Where does my desire for order come from? Not only do we humans have a fundamental desire for order, we have an obvious tendency as well toward disorder—a true conflict between order and disorder. So I say it may be worth the attempt to search such questions.” A search that, by its very nature, is ultimately futile.

It is hardly innovative to point out Mailer’s long-held interest in metaphysics, defined as the domain of ontology (being ''qua'' being). ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]'', for example, is rife with explorations of the strategic importance of human relationships and their role in defining the quality of characters’ characters. Mailer has been regarded for decades as an “existential” writer. Yet his existential vision takes him far beyond human, inter-subjective and intra-subjective issues. Mailer’s metaphysics, well within philosophical tradition, has always reflected a quest into the nature and context of “reality,” particularly non-material entities. It is primarily metaphysical because it pursues an interrogative avenue of analysis, unlike, say, the scientific method. As a metaphysician, Mailer is not concerned with the issue of verification. His investigation is avowedly in the realm of speculation and hypothesis. Through self-reflexive speculation, Mailer attempts not to “capture” revelation, but to explore and articulate subjective theological possibilities: “All I say here may indeed be no more than a projection of my own egotistical preferences.” Most readers familiar with Mailer’s ''oeuvre'' would find this statement neither surprising nor irrelevant.

Mailer’s philosophical, speculative impulses come into play precisely because the inherited theological legacy has been too rigid in its adherence to a doctrine of the Deity as omnipotent and omniscient: “I think that’s where the philosophical trouble begins: the idea that God is All-Good and All-Powerful.” Mailer considers God an Artist, an anthropomorphic entity, who is part of a tripartite structure of forces in play: God, the Devil, and humans. God has some power, of course, but is not omnipotent. He knows much but not everything. Mailer’s metaphysical reasoning concludes that these forces are in perpetual conflict. Mailer sums up these forces as always and already in conflict, as if they were characters in a novel: “But my argument is that it has become a contest among three protagonists.” Humans vacillate between God and the devil, choosing sides at various moments and remaining independent at other times.

One of the more interesting dimensions of Mailer’s speculations is his rejection of the common belief that individuals are judged and given infinite punishment (or reward) for finite behavior: “I’m not interested in absolute moral judgments, eternal Heaven, eternal Hell—to the contrary. Just think of what it means to be a good man or a bad one. What, after all, is the measure of the difference?” Mailer is nothing if not firmly rooted in the critical importance of reason, and it is through his powers of intense intellection that he approaches cosmology. Mailer understands faith and its universal stature, but it is not a major force in his metaphysics. Interestingly, Mailer believes in reincarnation, although he has always spoken of it in an ironic manner, perhaps as if treating something ironically protects against the drawing of fallacious inferences. In Mailer’s projections, there is always an element of doubt, skepticism, even cynicism. Mailer’s tonal reservations, however, do not diminish the fervor of his intuitions. Life is a continual state of metamorphosis. In this context, Mailer is reminiscent of Aristotle, who in his ''[[w:Rhetoric (Aristotle)|Art of Rhetoric]]'' defines rhetoric as an “ability,” “capacity,” or “potential.” Mailer’s metaphysical exploration of cosmology deals with the art and act of what “might be,” in sharp contrast to revelatory theological doctrine—rejected by Mailer—that is fundamentally assertive rather than speculative.

Mailer reminds readers that his tentative tenets are to be taken with the same sense of caution and limitation that he brings to his inquiry: “All right—we are going to be reincarnated. Whether we know what our reincarnation will be, I doubt it. I expect it will be full of surprises, most unforeseen. Some, given out vanity, are likely to seem outrageously warped.” The circumspection that characterizes ''On God'' reveals Mailer to be not only a metaphysician, but also a deft rhetorician in the classical (and best) sense of the term. “I believe,” he says “the soul is a gift from God.” The choice of “belief” as a critical, recurring term in his cosmology is strategically important. Ancient rhetoric is built upon the principle of belief or appeal (''pistis/eis''), often loosely translated as “proofs,” but not to be confused with scientific verification. As James Kinneavy persuasively argues,<ref>{{cite book |last=Kinneavy |first=James L. |date=1987 |title=Greek Rhetorical Origins of Christian Faith |url= |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}</ref> belief/''pistis'' is a cornerstone of the Christian concept of faith in the New Testament and derives from Greek rhetoric, which was taught at Greek schools attended by the gospel writers and probably Christ Himself. Mailer is surely aware of the rich nuances of “belief” and, I suspect, uses the term precisely because of its rich resonance of historical importance in philosophy, rhetoric, and theology.

Mailer’s portrait of God is idiosyncratically singular. The designation of God as Artist emphasizes His creativity ''and'' His limitations. Yet Mailer’s God is described metaphorically in a number of professional roles. He is a technical specialist, proficient in applied science: “God is certainly an engineer. An engineer would see it all in terms of future construction.” Indeed, Mailer’s Deity is described as infused with all-too-human qualities: “It isn’t that God is only fighting the Devil. He’s also debating within Himself or Herself what the next proper course might be.” Mailer’s God clearly does not know the future—He exists in a contingent cosmos. As Mailer asks, “Why must a god be independent of time?” And He is limited in the goals He can pursue. Mailer states, “God’s energies are limited.” It is difficult not to come away from reading ''On God'' without an acute sense of anthropomorphism in Mailer’s version of God, portrayed as a being who can be overwhelmed by events. God, like humans, is capable of growth: “God, too, is always looking to become wiser.” God is in a continual state of self-discovery, like us: “What, after all, is God’s relationship to evil? Is He trying to discover more about it? May it be that God doesn’t comprehend Evil that well?” Unquestionably, traditional theological norms are aggressively challenged.

A number of fascinating questions are posed by Mailer. For example: “Given the number of people exterminated in a day during the Holocaust, the number of souls arriving in tumult, is it possible they became too great in number for God to measure with calm and justice?” We are not sure if this question is a real one or a rhetorical one. Mailer’s complex sense of irony often interweaves the grammatical with the rhetorical, creating questions that might profitably be read as both rhetorical and grammatical, without a stain of contradiction.

Mailer’s writings have always placed a high priority on ethics. Indeed, for Mailer, God is characterized, in part, by His moral qualities (''[[w:sine qua non|sine qua non]]''): “God is not only an element in existence but a moral presence.” Yet Mailer’s sense of ethics do not reside in formal codes or rigid allegiance to doctrinal obligations to do what is “absolutely right,” but rather ethics in the sense of commitment to consider the moral implications (and obligations) of one’s actions: “[E]thics is not a system of rules . . . not something you can etch in stone. Ethics is a sensitivity to the moment and the thought: ‘This is probably better to do than that.{{' "}} The ancient Greeks had a term for this kind of situational circumstance: ''kairos'' (seeking the opportune time or moment to speak or act). Mailer calls attention to this notion of special time through the ethical act.

Does ''On God'' provide insight into “how to think” or “how to live”? Is there a cosmological prescription woven into these many layers of intensive, reflective thought? I would say yes. Mailer explores his vision of God (and all else) within the acknowledged limits of his intellectual powers. He provides a model for his readers. There is an analytical imperative in his metaphysical speculations: Use your God-given intellectual talents to explore the mysteries that have forever beguiled and enchanted humankind. ''On God'' reveals Mailer as an intensely interrogative persona, a role he clearly relishes and promotes: “[T]he purpose of life may be to find higher and better questions.” A mind that strives to remain continuously in inquiry is an exemplary model—and a strategic motif in this stimulating treatise.

===References===
{{Reflist}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norman Mailer, Metaphysician at Work}}
[[Category:Book Reviews (MR)]]

User:Amylhester

2020-09-30T03:44:08Z

Amylhester:

Amy is a native of Middle Georgia who graduated from Warner Robins High School. She is a student in Dr. Lucas's Fall 2020 "Writing for Digital Media" class. She is also a senior at MGA pursuing a bachelor's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Professional and Technical Writing. She has been a stay-at-home mom for fifteen years, but previously she worked as a Quality Control Tech for a company that digitized Technical Orders for the US Air Force. Her hobbies and interests include writing fiction, reading urban fantasy novels, gardening, and cooking as many meals as possible in an Instant Pot.

User:Amylhester

2020-09-30T03:41:14Z

Amylhester: Created page with " Amy is a native of Middle Georgia who graduated from Warner Robins High School. She is currently a senior at MGA pursuing a bachelor's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies wit..."

Amy is a native of Middle Georgia who graduated from Warner Robins High School. She is currently a senior at MGA pursuing a bachelor's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Professional and Technical Writing. She has been a stay-at-home mom for fifteen years. Previously she worked as a Quality Control Tech for a company that digitized Technical Orders for the US Air Force. Her hobbies and interests include writing fiction, reading urban fantasy novels, gardening, and cooking as many meals as possible in an Instant Pot.

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Fighters and Writers

2020-09-24T18:24:36Z

Amylhester: typos - added missing spaces after punctuation, removed unnecessary hyphen

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{{Byline|last=Rodwan Jr.|first=John G.|abstract=A banner hanging on a wall at Gleason’s Gym testifies to boxing’s enduring appeal for writers. Norman Mailer and José Torres (light heavyweight champion and author) were friends, and Mailer admitted to providing editorial aid to the fighter, who did give the novelist some boxing pointers. Mailer did share his friend’s views about pugilistic trickery. In his 1975 account of the Ali-Foreman fight, Mailer explicitly invokes the D’Amato-Torres philosophy, a key component of which is that skilled boxers can block or evade any punch they can see coming.
|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08rodw}}

{{cquote|At Corinth two temples stood side by side, the temple of Violence and the temple of Necessity.|author=Albert Camus|source=“The Minotaur” (1939)}}

{{dc|dc=A| banner hanging on a wall}} at [[w:Gleason’s Gym|Gleason’s Gym]] testifies to boxing’s enduring appeal for writers. The Brooklyn boxing institution takes its motto—“Now, whoever has courage and a strong and collected spirit in his breast let him come forward, lace on the gloves and put up his hands”—from Virgil. From antiquity to the present, writers have been fascinated by humans fighting, seeing in the sport something akin to their own efforts. Appropriately, two contending views of the sport emerged. In the red corner stand those who see meetings between nearly naked and practically unprotected combatants as simple and straightforward pursuits of victory through the unmediated imposition of their wills. Writers like to see them as symbolic of their own lonely quests after the elusive truth. In the blue corner are those who see fights as far more complex endeavors fraught with meaning and metaphorical possibilities. Rather than immediately comprehensible physical contests, fights are primarily mental challenges. Far from being basic and true, boxing involves trickery and deception. In one camp, boxing is free of artifice; in the other, it is full of it.

[[w:José Torres|José Torres]], a boxer turned writer, takes the latter view. The former world light heavyweight champion relishes describing boxing as a game of intelligence, cunning, deception and confidence. Some of his favorite boxing stories involve [[w:Muhammad Ali|Muhammad Ali]], a boxer with special appeal for writers. After he retired from the ring, Torres became one of the many authors (such as [[w:Murray Kempton|Murray Kempton]], [[Norman Mailer]], [[w:George Plimpton|George Plimpton]], [[w:Ishmael Reed|Ishmael Reed]], [[w:Wole Soyinka|Wole Soyinka]], [[w:Gay Talese|Gay Talese]], [[w:Hunter S. Thompson|Hunter S. Thompson]] and [[w:Tom Wolfe|Tom Wolfe]]) to write about Ali. Long after committing them to print, Torres continued to tell his Ali stories very much like he did in ''Sting Like a Bee'', which he co-authored with sportswriter [[w:Bert Sugar|Bert Sugar]].

The first time I met Torres he was with Paul Johnson, a former club fighter who later became chairman of the Boxers Organizing Committee, a group set up to form a union for professional boxers. Johnson set the stage for his friend to tell some of his favorite stories by recounting a time when the two were speaking together at a university. Paul had been telling students about what he then thought of as the fundamental honesty at the heart of boxing. Torres interrupted him.

“Boxers are liars,” he said.

Torres believes that boxing is “not really a contest of physical ability.” He elaborated his ideas in a subsequent meeting: “I felt it was a contest always of character and intelligence. And I always felt what made a champion and an ordinary fighter was that, the character, the will to win, more than the physicality. Because when you are up there, among the best, the physicality is the same.” Torres takes evident pleasure in explaining why Ali was not the greatest boxer, but was a genius in the ring. Doing so affords him the opportunity to recall fond memories of Ali and legendary trainer [[w:Cus D’Amato|Cus D’Amato]] while also illustrating his point about boxers being liars. In his book on Ali,he starts the story with D’Amato, the guide to three world champions: Floyd Patterson, Torres himself, and Mike Tyson. “[Ali] is not a good fighter, so says D’Amato, much less a great fighter. But he is champion of the world. Which, believing Cus, and I do, makes Ali a genius....” He continues, in virtually the same words he spoke to me decades after the 1971 book appeared:

{{quote|Ali is not a great fighter in the conventional sense that Sugar Ray Robinson, Willie Pep and Joe Louis were. Each of these fighters knew every punch and every move and added some tricks to the book, that unwritten book whose teachings are passed on from gym to gym and are the nearest thing we have to our own culture.... We have a man who does not have the physical greatness of the greatest men of other times, yet no professional has been able to beat him.... The explanation is simple. Muhammad Ali is a genius.... Don’t watch Ali’s gloves, arms or legs when he’s fighting. Watch his brains.}}

Other writers have made similar claims in connection with other fighters.
Jack Dempsey’s “overwhelming power made many people overlook the calculation that went into every punch he threw,” Roger Kahn writes in ''A Flame of Pure Fire''. “In that regard, he was a thinking, even intellectual boxer.” In the first volume of ''A Man without Qualities'', published not long after Dempsey’s reign as heavyweight champion ended, novelist Robert Musil prefigured Torres and D’Amato with observations like this one: “the tricks and
dodges used by an inventive mind in going through the logical operations of
a mathematical problem are really not very different from the ring-craft displayed by a well-trained body.” A. J. Liebling, who composed numerous entertainingly digressive, erudite articles on boxing for ''The New Yorker'' in the
1950s and early 1960s, distinguishes between “the ''ruffian'' approach” and that of “the ''reasoner'' inside the ring.”

Part of boxers’ “culture,” in the view of Torres and his fellow thinkers, is
the ability to lie successfully. As Jeremy Campbell notes in his so-called history of falseness, ''A Liar’s Tale'', “when winning is the important factor, deceitfulness is a kind of ethic....” From a technical standpoint, Ali did plenty
“wrong,” but excelled nonetheless because of his cleverness, his ability to con
his opponents. He perfected the liar’s ethic.

Of course, eventually Ali did meet opponents who could beat him, but
even then his genius was evident. ''Sting Like a Bee'' ends with Ali’s first
bout with Joe Frazier, which Ali lost. Frazier’s trainer, Eddie Futch, told Ali’s
biographer, Thomas Hauser, that Ali still successfully tricked his fighter
during the bout: “Joe should have knocked him out in the eleventh round,
but Ali conned him out of it. We teased Joe about that later, because he
didn’t realize at the time that he was being conned. Ali was in trouble.
He got hit with a left hook, and was hurt very badly, and he exaggerated the
fact that he was hurt like he was clowning. He gave Joe exaggerated moves,
and Joe walked casually to Ali all the way across the ring. We call that ‘The
Long March.’ It gave Ali extra time and kept Joe from scoring a knockout.
By exaggerating, Ali made Joe think that he was fooling. He conned him
good.”

Ali did eventually regain the championship, and he did so by again digging into his bag of tricks. He prevailed over George Foreman by fighting a very different fight than most expected. Rather than dancing around the
ring, using his speed to outmaneuver the famously hard-hitting Foremen, Ali
positioned himself on the ropes, allowing Forman to tire himself out throwing punches. While the “rope-a-dope” might not have been a good practice if concern for long-term health had been a primary concern, it was a successful tactic that morning in Zaire. Looking back on “Rumble in the Jungle,” Foreman conceded that Ali had him fooled.

The sport, as Ali so skillfully showed, shares elements with confidence games. In ''The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man'', David Mauer observes that such deceptions are not as simple as unscrupulous exploitation of the naïve. Con men prey not on the gullible and good but on the devious. A mark must have more than money ready for the taking. As Mauer puts it, “he must also have what grifters term ‘larceny in his veins’—in other words, he must want something for nothing, or be willing to participate in an unscrupulous deal.” The delicious irony of this is that con men are themselves susceptible to swindles. They have the very trait, the “thieves’ blood,” that they try to exploit in others.

Confidence games would not be so compelling if they were as simple as
taking candy from a baby. Cons, whether big or small, take some ingenuity;
otherwise they would be mere thievery. Con men and their targets navigate
a world in which not everyone is honest and not everything is as it appears.
Thus, confidence games have provided artists such as Herman Melville and
David Mamet with material because they entail questions of practical epistemology: Who can you trust? How do you know your information is reliable? And how can you use it to your advantage?

The same is true with boxing at its best, at least according to one way of
looking at it. Boxing is much more than two brutes beating up on each other.
It is also more complicated than one fighter tricking an unprepared dupe:
mismatches may be a part of the game, but they are boring. When the fighters are well matched physically and also shrewd strategists, with each seeking to exploit the other’s desire to find an opening, an advantage, a
weakness—then the sport rises to the level of art.

An art with very real consequences. As Mauer observes, a confidence man
“cannot fool his associates for long. Either he takes off the scores or he
doesn’t, and he stands or falls in his profession by the record he makes for
himself.” The importance of cunning in boxing doesn’t lessen the very real
physical perils. Boxing is not professional wrestling; the violence is real. The
sport’s mental aspect, which Torres so prizes, comes into play when physical abilities are comparable. Ali, the “Louisville Lip,” was able to back up his bluster, even if he did so with an unorthodox style.

The idea that boxers, individuals who choose to engage in a brain damaging game, are smart might strike the uninitiated as peculiar if not ridiculous. Indeed, the strangeness of associating fighters with intelligence
cause some to doubt that Torres actually wrote his books (he also published
a biography of Tyson). A rumor suggested that Mailer actually wrote Torres’s
portions of the Ali book. Jonathan Rendell, in his brilliantly titled ''This Bloody Mary Is the Last Thing I Own'', recounts hearing a version of it. “Mailer
wrote it for him,” the man on the next barstool explained to Rendell. “That
was the deal they had. Torres taught Mailer how to box and Mailer wrote
Sting Like a Bee for him. Ain’t that something?” Mailer and Torres were
friends, and Mailer admitted to providing editorial aid to the fighter, who did
give the novelist some boxing pointers. Still, Mailer insists that the book is
genuine and not another instance of a boxer’s con game. For he did share his
friend’s views about pugilistic trickery. In his 1975 account of the Ali Foreman fight, Mailer explicitly invokes the D’Amato-Torres philosophy, a key component of which is that a skilled boxer can block or evade any punch
they can see coming. “Champions were great liars,” Mailer explains in ''The Fight'' “They had to be. Once you knew what they thought, you could hit them. So their personalities became masterpieces of concealment.”

However, Mailer elsewhere expresses the other widely held view of boxing, the one in which fighters are heroic warriors, which is precisely how
Mailer imagined writers, or at least himself. Although the solitary writer
slouching at a desk seems worlds apart from a well-conditioned fighter confronting an opponent in a ring, Mailer saw them as very similar. In ''The Spooky Art'', he insists the demands writing makes on a novelist, including
physical ones, are much like those a fighter confronts:

{{quote|Only a writer can know how much damage writing a novel can do to you. It’s an unnatural activity to sit at a desk and squeeze words out of yourself. Various kinds of poisons—essences of fatigue—get secreted through your system. As you age it grows worse. I believe that is one of the reasons I’ve been so interested in prizefighters. I think often of the aging boxer who has to get into shape for one more fight and knows the punishment it will wreak on his body.... Even if he wins the fight—even if he wins it well—he is not going to get a new purchase on life out of a dazzling success, not in the way he did as a young fighter. That’s also true of my profession. Often, you have to make grave decisions: Am I going to attempt this difficult venture or not?}}

Put another way, writing is hard, just as boxing, more obviously, is hard. In
this comparison of fighters and writers, Mailer does not invoke cunning and
craftiness. Instead, he stresses earnest exertion.

Mailer goes even further in his search for commonality, arguing that boxers and writers are similar not only in the rigors they put themselves through
but also in their willingness to hurt others:

{{quote|Just as a fighter has to feel that he possesses the right to do physical damage to another man, so a writer has to be ready to take chances with his readers’ lives. If you’re trying for something at all interesting or difficult, then you cannot predict what the results of your work will be. If it’s close enough to the root, people can be physically injured reading you. Full of heart, he was also heartless—a splendid oxymoron. That can be the epitaph for many a good novelist.}}

Mailer’s “splendid oxymoron” clearly applies to many a good boxer. However, he almost certainly exaggerates both the challenges a novelist faces and the effect he or she can have on a reader. Yet he clearly liked the idea of having a fighter’s heartless heart—his will, determination, drive and competitiveness—beating in his chest. For him, boxing serves as a handy metaphor for what he imagined was his risky, intensely masculine style of writing.

Like Mailer, another friend of Torres also gave expression to both conceptions of the sport without achieving a synthesis of them. When the boxing-as-trickery notion was useful, journalist Jack Newfield used it. When
he wanted to point to a model of certain virtues, boxing again offered
handy examples. Newfield believed the deceitful personalities involved in
boxing provide a reason for writers’ unflagging interest in the sport. “As in
the record business and horse racing, almost everyone in boxing seems like
a character,” he writes in ''Only in America: The Life and Crimes of Don King''.
“That’s why writers and filmmakers are drawn to it. Almost everyone in
boxing is a colorful story teller with a touch of lunacy or larceny.” It is certainly true that he chose to focus on one of boxing’s colorful characters in King. A former numbers runner who killed two men, King became fabulously wealthy by using the rhetoric of racial solidarity to sign black boxers to his promotional company and then exploit them mercilessly, according to Newfield’s account. Newfield finds conniving and cunning not
only on the business side of the sport, but in the fights themselves. He discusses the Ali-Foreman bout in terms very similar to Mailer’s, writing: “Boxing is based on deceit. Fighters are taught to lie—to conceal fatigue, mask
pain, disguise intent with a feint, deny an injury, look one way and punch
another.” As the fights with Frazier and Foreman illustrate, the trickery
extends beyond concealing intentions in order to avoid being hit; for Ali, it
also meant baffling expectations.

Newfield changes tack when relating his own work to that of boxers, who
then become paragons. For instance, in ''Somebody’s Gotta Tell It'', the story of
his life as a newspaperman, Newfield, following Mailer’s example, finds
fighters worth emulating, but at the keyboard rather than the gym. Boxers’
bravery and relentlessness ought to characterize a dogged journalist as well.
He promotes what he calls the “Joe Frazier method” of journalism: “keep
coming forward. Don’t get discouraged. Be relentless. Don’t stop moving
your hands. Break the others guy’s will.”

One of Newfield’s intellectual heroes writes about boxing as though it
reflects the process of finding or creating meaning in an absurd world.
Albert Camus describes boxers as “gods with cauliflower ears,” giving some
indication of the respect he has for athletes who, like Sisyphus, persevere
through ultimately pointless endeavors. He also transmutes physical combat into the equivalent of a matter of language, viewing a fight as though it were an argument. Fighters’ representative capabilities—their amply
documented tendency to be regarded by spectators as the embodiment of a race, an ethnicity or a nationality—offers writers plenty of material to work with beyond mere athleticism. Camus explains how, for those in attendance at a fight he witnessed in Algeria between Amar from Oran and Pérez from Algiers, the boxers became stand-ins for their respective cities and how their bout became an extension of an ongoing rivalry between the
two places. “Thus a page of history is unfolding in the ring. And the tough
Oranese, backed by a thousand yelling voices, is defending against Pérez a
way of life and the pride of a province.” Spectators’ responses to fighters’
struggles often have more to do with such allegiances rather than with
what the contestants actually do in the ring, and in describing boxers’
moves Camus finds a parallel with disputation. “Truth forces me to admit
that Amar is not conducting his discussion well. His argument has a flaw:
he lacks reach. The slugger from Algiers, on the contrary, has the required
reach in his argument. It lands persuasively between his contradictor’s eyes.”
What writer wouldn’t want to have such a reach?

Joyce Carol Oates, for one, expresses impatience with the sort of “hellish-writerly metaphor” in which boxing serves to stand for something else. She concedes that skill, courage and intelligence can all be observed in a boxing match. She even “can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing.” However, boxing itself is, quite simply, “the most primitive and terrifying of contests.” Her ''On Boxing'' does not offer extravagant assertions of fighters as avatars of artistry or as unrecognized geniuses. She briefly surveys other writers’ writing on boxing and is impressed by little of it. She dislikes Liebling and does not think Ernest Hemingway’s boxing stories rank among his best. She admires aspects of Mailer’s work on the subject, but
concludes that in the end he gets it wrong. “It seems clear to this reader at least that Mailer cannot establish a connection between himself and the boxers: he tries heroically but he cannot understand them,” she writes. Whereas Camus likens boxing to an argument, Oates stresses its wordlessness, its lack of language. Whereas he sees fighters carrying on historical disputes, she counters that men fighting and those watching them belong “to no historical time.” For Oates, boxing is not like something else. It is certainly not like
writing, as it was for Mailer, Newfield and others. Instead, “boxing is only like
boxing.” If she finds truth in boxing, it is of a much more diminished and
melancholy sort.

Rendell fell into the Johnson camp, the camp that sought truth in the sport, only to conclude that viewing boxing as expressive of some deep meaning can only lead to disappointment. In ''This Bloody Mary'', his memoir of experiences in the boxing world, he recalls being a teenager looking at the photos in ''Ring'' magazine of ritualistic post-fight events—the announcement of the decision and the victor consoling the vanquished—and thinking: “It was as if all of them, the winners and losers and the managers and trainers, had touched something that only they could know about, something big, like truth.” Later, when the romance was gone and he’d seen enough of the fight game, he concludes that its connection to the truth was very different than he’d initially thought. “Boxing had been leading me to a truth after all, but only to the truth about boxing. And the truth was just a story itself, the first addictive dance under the chandeliers, and then the doomed roller coaster ride on thousands of blue curves.” The sort of truth he discovers is fighters dying in their twenties or living but with irreparable damage. For him, too, Ali becomes symbolic of boxing’s truth. Rendell describes meeting the former champion, who required an hour to eat a bowl of soup. The fighter once famous for his quickness and
prowess now had to move carefully, deliberately, and slowly in order not to dribble.

The competing views of boxing—the notion that it is an honest expression of man’s nature versus the belief that it entails artful deception as well as the more obvious physical challenges—also appear in W. C. Heinz’s 1958
novel ''The Professional''. Doc Carroll, a boxing manager, holds both, without
acknowledging the paradox of viewing boxing as essentially truthful and involving much trickery. Explaining why he likes boxing, Doc says he sees the “truth of life” in it, and that truth includes “that remnant of the animal in
man.” He says, “I find man revealing himself more completely in fighting than in any other form of expressive endeavor. It’s the war all over again, and they license it and sell tickets to it and people go to see it because, without even realizing it, they see this truth in it.” Later he tells his fighter, Eddie:
“There’s only so many punches. Everybody knows what they are. You’ve got
to con the other guy into walking into them. It’s thinking, first of all.” If Doc’s theories of boxing can be reconciled at all, it is by concluding that the essential truth, as revealed by boxing, is that man is a thinking beast, violent and clever, basic in animal desires and inclined toward misdirection to
satisfy them. Doc favors the fundamental-honesty-of-boxing school, regarding cons as tactical rather than essential elements of the game. Eddie, who admits to Doc that he had not realized role of trickery despite his nine years in boxing, loses the fight at the end of the book.

Another novelist, Darin Strauss, combines elements of history and fiction while mining the deep vein of literary possibilities offered by the idea of an intimate bond between pugilists and tricksters. If in Heinz’s world deception is merely a part of boxing strategy, in Strauss’s it throbs in the very heart of the sport. He very loosely based his 2002 novel ''The Real McCoy'' on the life of Norman Selby (a.k.a. Charles “Kid” McCoy), a crafty boxer who used his skills as a con man both in and out of the ring. Strauss remains faithful to these essential features even if he rearranges some facts to suit his story. (“We can change the normal way of things to fit our case,” McCoy persuades one of the women he marries.) Like the historical McCoy, the fictionalized Kid was born in Indiana in the late nineteenth century, becomes known for his trademark “corkscrew punch,” and has a colorful career as a charlatan.
Strauss departs from the documented record of Selby’s life in various ways. For instance, his “Virgil Selby” assumes the identity of another boxer known as Kid McCoy rather than creating the identity himself. The “real” McCoy won the vacant middleweight title in 1898, whereas Strauss has his McCoy win the welterweight title on January 1, 1900, by tricking the reigning champion into fighting what he thought was a mere exhibition. Strauss not only puts his McCoy in a lower weight division, he stresses his character’s slight build in order to highlight his mendacity in the ring.

Some of the fictional McCoy’s comments about boxing make him sound
like he could have come straight out of D’Amato’s school of boxing philosophy. “I lack in bulk, but I make up for it in guile,” McCoy explains in response to a reporter’s commentary on his skin-and-bones physique. “Boys, artifice is a dignified defense.” After successfully deploying his skin-ripping corkscrew punch in his title bout, McCoy is confronted by the deposed champ’s wife: “Admit it, Mr. McCoy.... You lied to my husband to get the
crown.... Admit your trickery!” “I don’t admit it,” he replies, “I ''relish'' in it.” Of course, Strauss recognizes that boxing requires physical ability and is
more than just deception. “McCoy knocked out Tommy Ryan thanks to real skill and the flimflam.”

The contending views of boxing as either the brutal violence it immediately appears to be or something akin to art and equally complicated and ultimately irreducible to any simple explanation will not be settled for as long as human beings stage combat for enjoyment’s sake. Given that boxing’s roots can be traced back hundreds of years before Virgil and that writers continue to find something of themselves in fighters long after the sport’s
heyday in the twentieth century, imminent resolution seems unlikely. That does not mean the match is even, however. The conclusion of Paul Johnson and José Torres’s well-rehearsed account of their college speaking engagement has the union organizer wondering if he never became a better fighter than he did because he was too honest. It may be that writers and other successful practitioners of artifice (such as Ali) do not suffer from such scrupulousness. An indication of which perspective appears to have the upper hand might be found at Gleason’s, a deliberately spare gym in a once-gritty neighborhood that later transformed itself into one filled with galleries, boutiques, and pricy loft apartments. Almost every time I have visited the place to talk
with its proprietor, Bruce Silverglade, there have been camera crews filming movies or commercials or taking photographs of models. Athletes still train there, but meaning-making and spectacle-creation simultaneously
occur amid the sparring and shadow boxing. Artifice, whether dignified or not, should never be underestimated.

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fighters and Writers}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/A New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost

2020-09-23T03:56:46Z

Amylhester: /* Works Cited */ correct publisher

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/A New Politics of Form in ''Harlot's Ghost''}}
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{{Byline|last=Anshen|first=David|abstract=A reading of ''[[Harlot’s Ghost]]'' in relation to {{NM}}’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War. The novel resists making overt judgments on events. The novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.||url=https://prmlr.us/mr08ansh}}

{{quote|width=50%|“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a perception which will settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} }}

{{quote|“Please do not understand me too quickly.”|author=Norman Mailer|source=quoting [[w:Andre Gide|Andre Gide]] in the epigraph to ''[[The Deer Park]]''.}}

{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers}} of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|See again {{harvtxt|Mailer|1959}} as well as essays in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1966}} and {{harvtxt|Mailer|1982}}. This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as [[w:Carl Rollyson|Carl Rollyson]] explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]'' Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel. . . . America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=359}} His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn|One of the many critics who argue this way is {{harvtxt|Nielson|1997}}, who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''[[Oswald’s Tale]]'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them.”{{sfn|Nielson|1997|p=23}} While her analysis of the episodes featuring [[William Kennedy|Kennedy]] in Mailer’s work and [[w:Gore Vidal|Vidal]]’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John {{harvtxt|Whalen-Bridge|1995}} argues persuasively that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.{{' "}} Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also {{harvtxt|Whalen-Bridge|1998}}. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include {{harvtxt|Glenday|1995}} who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA”{{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=131}} and {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999}}.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the [[w:Cold War|Cold War]], while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn|I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as [[w:Robert Coover|Coover]], [[w:E. L. Doctorow|Doctorow]] and [[w:Don Delillo|Delillo]] below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use [[w:Francis Fukiyama|Francis Fukiyama]]’s famous phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

===A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma===
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.”{{efn|This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See {{harvtxt|Mailer|1991|pp=1169–1187}}}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of [[w:Vladimir Ilich Lenin|Vladimir Ilich Lenin]], ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?{{' "}}{{efn|It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See {{harvtxt|Lenin|1977}}.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: [[w:Honoré de Balzac|Balzac]], [[w:Leo Tolstory|Tolstoy]], and [[w:Émile Zola|Zola]], who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn|Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See {{harvtxt|Jameson|1991}}, and {{harvtxt|McHale|1992}}, among others.}} On the other hand, [[w:Bertolt Brecht|Bertolt Brecht]]’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men in a form they can master”{{sfn|Adorno|1978|p=81}}{{efn| This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with [[w:Georg Lukács|Georg Lukács]] “Against Lukács” in {{harvtxt|Adorno|1978|p=81}}.}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn|Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost.”{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=409}} This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a ''post-facto'' explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by [[w:Walter Benjamin|Walter Benjamin]].{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Brecht|2001}}, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater.”}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Benjamin|1998|pp=85–105}}. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay

echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|pp=85–105}} in the face of the depersonalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=86}} inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which, “we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance,”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}} which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

===The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer===
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''[[w:Bildüngsroman|Bildüngsroman]]'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work){{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109}} under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la [[w:Ian Fleming|Ian Fleming]]. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be [[w:Joseph Conrad|Conrad]]’s ''[[w:The Secret Agent|The Secret Agent]]'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn|A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Mailer|1965}} and the episodes of rock climbing in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1991}}.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=102}} Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by [[w:Harold Bloom|Harold Bloom]] as conditions of, “[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic’.... ”{{sfn|Bloom|1986|p=40}} In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the [[w:Iron Curtain|Iron Curtain]]. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates'',”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=182}} which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the [[w:KGB|KGB]] works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it, “As an Agency officer, I . . . encountered my fair share of plots . . . but I was rarely able to see them whole.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|pp=109-110}} This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly. The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn|Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years,”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1169}} going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1170}} On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own.”{{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=134}} }} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=196}} and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197}} Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>
We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means, 586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|pp=197-198}}</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation, the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA who eventually defects to Cuba after the [[w:Bay of Pigs Invasion|Bay of Pigs]] fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on [[w:Henry Miller|Henry Miller]], collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Mailer|1976}}.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>
Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|pp=556-557}}</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood—then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord,”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=75}} or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=45}} However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=54}} Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=29}} The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=17}} He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

===The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation===
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in [[w:Manichaeism|Manichean]] terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and ''if'' Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1281}} This disconcerts Harry considerably since ''he'' is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom, to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}} Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great novel. In both cases, language such as “God,” “His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>
It [God as the source of expression] opens the possibility that the novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}}</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us understand how to read ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because, like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and “less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society (which has always been Mailer’s stated objectives), or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry, not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the novel,(but late in Harry’s life) before he decides to travel to Russia, when the news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come (or has come depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative structure of the novel) revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning can be made of his historical interventions (he can be asked for the truth in Moscow) and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>
Before I ask: what is a work’s position ''vis-à-vis'' the production relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position ''within'' them? This question concerns the function of a work within the literary production relations of its time. In other words, it is directly concerned with literary ''technique''.{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short, the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators.”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=98}}

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>
The reader having been given the end and the beginning will conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that ‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of the novel against mine.{{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=135}}</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero” who reveals history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel. Mailer stresses the value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an “author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all. Any answers given by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about how the novel that wasn’t written should end. We may consider whether the public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer, who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

===Back to the Future===
There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history” where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism (as represented by America) and communism (represented by the Soviet bloc) is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.{{efn|The most famous version of this comes from {{harvtxt|Fukiyama|1998}}. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.}} This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel. A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance. The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words. We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it won’t be written on paper.

===Notes===
{{Notelist}}

===Citations===
{{Reflist|15em}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite book |last=Adorno |first=Teodor |date=1978 |title=Aesthetics and Politics |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |translator-last1=Bostock |translator-first1=Anna |chapter=The Author as Producer |date=1998 |title=Understanding Brecht |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |date=1986 |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |url= |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |editor-mask=1 |date=2003 |chapter=Norman in Egypt |title=Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Norman Mailer |url= |location=Philadelphia |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Brecht |first=Bertolt |translator-last1=Willet |translator-first1=John |date=2001 |title=Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. |url= |location=New York |publisher=Hill and Wang |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Coover |first=Robert |date=1977 |title=The Public Burning |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary |date=1999 |title=Mailer a Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=DeLillo |first=Don |date=1997 |title=Underworld |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doctorow |first=E. |date=1996 |title=The Book of Daniel |url= |location=New York |publisher=Plume Penguin Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fukiyama |first=Francis |date=1998 |title=The End of History and the Last Man |url= |location=New York |publisher=Avon Books |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Glenday |first=Michael |date=1995 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=St. Martin's Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Jameson |first=Fredric |date=1991 |title=Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism |url= |location=Durham |publisher=Duke UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. |date=1977 |title=Selected Works in 3 Volumes |url= |location=Moscow |publisher=International Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location= |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1966 |title=Cannibals and Christians |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1955 |title=The Deer Park |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1976 |title=Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1991 |title=Harlot's Ghost |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |author-link=Norman Mailer |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1982 |title=Pieces and Pontifications |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=McHale |first=Brian |date=1992 |title=Constructing Postmodernism |url= |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Nielson |first=Heather |title=Jack's Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=American Studies International |volume=35 |issue=3 |date=1997 |pages=23-41 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |title=The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer |url= |journal=Connotations |volume=5 |issue=2-3 |date=1995 |pages=304-321 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |author-mask=1 |date=1998 |title=Fiction and the American Self |url= |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois P |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost, A}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/A New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost

2020-09-23T03:06:49Z

Amylhester: /* The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer */ fix punctuation

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/A New Politics of Form in ''Harlot's Ghost''}}
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{{Byline|last=Anshen|first=David|abstract=A reading of ''[[Harlot’s Ghost]]'' in relation to {{NM}}’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War. The novel resists making overt judgments on events. The novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.||url=https://prmlr.us/mr08ansh}}

{{quote|width=50%|“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a perception which will settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} }}

{{quote|“Please do not understand me too quickly.”|author=Norman Mailer|source=quoting [[w:Andre Gide|Andre Gide]] in the epigraph to ''[[The Deer Park]]''.}}

{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers}} of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|See again {{harvtxt|Mailer|1959}} as well as essays in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1966}} and {{harvtxt|Mailer|1982}}. This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as [[w:Carl Rollyson|Carl Rollyson]] explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]'' Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel. . . . America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=359}} His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn|One of the many critics who argue this way is {{harvtxt|Nielson|1997}}, who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''[[Oswald’s Tale]]'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them.”{{sfn|Nielson|1997|p=23}} While her analysis of the episodes featuring [[William Kennedy|Kennedy]] in Mailer’s work and [[w:Gore Vidal|Vidal]]’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John {{harvtxt|Whalen-Bridge|1995}} argues persuasively that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.{{' "}} Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also {{harvtxt|Whalen-Bridge|1998}}. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include {{harvtxt|Glenday|1995}} who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA”{{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=131}} and {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999}}.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the [[w:Cold War|Cold War]], while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn|I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as [[w:Robert Coover|Coover]], [[w:E. L. Doctorow|Doctorow]] and [[w:Don Delillo|Delillo]] below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use [[w:Francis Fukiyama|Francis Fukiyama]]’s famous phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

===A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma===
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.”{{efn|This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See {{harvtxt|Mailer|1991|pp=1169–1187}}}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of [[w:Vladimir Ilich Lenin|Vladimir Ilich Lenin]], ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?{{' "}}{{efn|It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See {{harvtxt|Lenin|1977}}.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: [[w:Honoré de Balzac|Balzac]], [[w:Leo Tolstory|Tolstoy]], and [[w:Émile Zola|Zola]], who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn|Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See {{harvtxt|Jameson|1991}}, and {{harvtxt|McHale|1992}}, among others.}} On the other hand, [[w:Bertolt Brecht|Bertolt Brecht]]’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men in a form they can master”{{sfn|Adorno|1978|p=81}}{{efn| This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with [[w:Georg Lukács|Georg Lukács]] “Against Lukács” in {{harvtxt|Adorno|1978|p=81}}.}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn|Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost.”{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=409}} This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a ''post-facto'' explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by [[w:Walter Benjamin|Walter Benjamin]].{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Brecht|2001}}, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater.”}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Benjamin|1998|pp=85–105}}. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay

echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|pp=85–105}} in the face of the depersonalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=86}} inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which, “we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance,”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}} which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

===The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer===
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''[[w:Bildüngsroman|Bildüngsroman]]'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work){{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109}} under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la [[w:Ian Fleming|Ian Fleming]]. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be [[w:Joseph Conrad|Conrad]]’s ''[[w:The Secret Agent|The Secret Agent]]'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn|A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Mailer|1965}} and the episodes of rock climbing in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1991}}.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=102}} Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by [[w:Harold Bloom|Harold Bloom]] as conditions of, “[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic’.... ”{{sfn|Bloom|1986|p=40}} In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the [[w:Iron Curtain|Iron Curtain]]. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates'',”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=182}} which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the [[w:KGB|KGB]] works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it, “As an Agency officer, I . . . encountered my fair share of plots . . . but I was rarely able to see them whole.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|pp=109-110}} This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly. The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn|Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years,”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1169}} going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1170}} On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own.”{{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=134}} }} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=196}} and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197}} Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>
We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means, 586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|pp=197-198}}</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation, the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA who eventually defects to Cuba after the [[w:Bay of Pigs Invasion|Bay of Pigs]] fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on [[w:Henry Miller|Henry Miller]], collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Mailer|1976}}.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>
Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|pp=556-557}}</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood—then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord,”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=75}} or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=45}} However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=54}} Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=29}} The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=17}} He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

===The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation===
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in [[w:Manichaeism|Manichean]] terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and ''if'' Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1281}} This disconcerts Harry considerably since ''he'' is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom, to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}} Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great novel. In both cases, language such as “God,” “His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>
It [God as the source of expression] opens the possibility that the novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}}</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us understand how to read ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because, like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and “less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society (which has always been Mailer’s stated objectives), or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry, not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the novel,(but late in Harry’s life) before he decides to travel to Russia, when the news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come (or has come depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative structure of the novel) revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning can be made of his historical interventions (he can be asked for the truth in Moscow) and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>
Before I ask: what is a work’s position ''vis-à-vis'' the production relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position ''within'' them? This question concerns the function of a work within the literary production relations of its time. In other words, it is directly concerned with literary ''technique''.{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short, the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators.”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=98}}

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>
The reader having been given the end and the beginning will conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that ‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of the novel against mine.{{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=135}}</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero” who reveals history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel. Mailer stresses the value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an “author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all. Any answers given by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about how the novel that wasn’t written should end. We may consider whether the public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer, who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

===Back to the Future===
There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history” where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism (as represented by America) and communism (represented by the Soviet bloc) is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.{{efn|The most famous version of this comes from {{harvtxt|Fukiyama|1998}}. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.}} This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel. A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance. The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words. We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it won’t be written on paper.

===Notes===
{{Notelist}}

===Citations===
{{Reflist|15em}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite book |last=Adorno |first=Teodor |date=1978 |title=Aesthetics and Politics |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |translator-last1=Bostock |translator-first1=Anna |chapter=The Author as Producer |date=1998 |title=Understanding Brecht |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |date=1986 |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |url= |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |editor-mask=1 |date=2003 |chapter=Norman in Egypt |title=Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Norman Mailer |url= |location=Philadelphia |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Brecht |first=Bertolt |translator-last1=Willet |translator-first1=John |date=2001 |title=Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. |url= |location=New York |publisher=Hill and Wang |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Coover |first=Robert |date=1977 |title=The Public Burning |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary |date=1999 |title=Mailer a Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=DeLillo |first=Don |date=1997 |title=Underworld |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doctorow |first=E. |date=1996 |title=The Book of Daniel |url= |location=New York |publisher=Plume Penguin Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fukiyama |first=Francis |date=1998 |title=The End of History and the Last Man |url= |location=New York |publisher=Avon Books |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Glenday |first=Michael |date=1995 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=St. Martin's Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Jameson |first=Fredric |date=1991 |title=Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism |url= |location=Durham |publisher=Duke UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. |date=1977 |title=Selected Works in 3 Volumes |url= |location=Moscow |publisher=International Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location= |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1966 |title=Cannibals and Christians |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1955 |title=The Deer Park |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1976 |title=Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1991 |title=Harlot's Ghost |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |author-link=Norman Mailer |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1982 |title=Pieces and Pontifications |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=McHale |first=Brian |date=1992 |title=Constructing Postmodernism |url= |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Nielson |first=Heather |title=Jack's Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=American Studies International |volume=35 |issue=3 |date=1997 |pages=23-41 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |title=The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer |url= |journal=Connotations |volume=5 |issue=2-3 |date=1995 |pages=304-321 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |author-mask=1 |date=1998 |title=Fiction and the American Self |url= |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois P |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost, A}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/A New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost

2020-09-23T02:57:10Z

Amylhester: fix text display for link

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/A New Politics of Form in ''Harlot's Ghost''}}
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{{Byline|last=Anshen|first=David|abstract=A reading of ''[[Harlot’s Ghost]]'' in relation to {{NM}}’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War. The novel resists making overt judgments on events. The novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.||url=https://prmlr.us/mr08ansh}}

{{quote|width=50%|“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a perception which will settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} }}

{{quote|“Please do not understand me too quickly.”|author=Norman Mailer|source=quoting [[w:Andre Gide|Andre Gide]] in the epigraph to ''[[The Deer Park]]''.}}

{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers}} of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|See again {{harvtxt|Mailer|1959}} as well as essays in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1966}} and {{harvtxt|Mailer|1982}}. This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as [[w:Carl Rollyson|Carl Rollyson]] explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]'' Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel. . . . America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=359}} His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn|One of the many critics who argue this way is {{harvtxt|Nielson|1997}}, who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''[[Oswald’s Tale]]'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them.”{{sfn|Nielson|1997|p=23}} While her analysis of the episodes featuring [[William Kennedy|Kennedy]] in Mailer’s work and [[w:Gore Vidal|Vidal]]’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John {{harvtxt|Whalen-Bridge|1995}} argues persuasively that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.{{' "}} Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also {{harvtxt|Whalen-Bridge|1998}}. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include {{harvtxt|Glenday|1995}} who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA”{{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=131}} and {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999}}.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the [[w:Cold War|Cold War]], while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn|I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as [[w:Robert Coover|Coover]], [[w:E. L. Doctorow|Doctorow]] and [[w:Don Delillo|Delillo]] below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use [[w:Francis Fukiyama|Francis Fukiyama]]’s famous phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

===A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma===
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.”{{efn|This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See {{harvtxt|Mailer|1991|pp=1169–1187}}}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of [[w:Vladimir Ilich Lenin|Vladimir Ilich Lenin]], ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?{{' "}}{{efn|It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See {{harvtxt|Lenin|1977}}.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: [[w:Honoré de Balzac|Balzac]], [[w:Leo Tolstory|Tolstoy]], and [[w:Émile Zola|Zola]], who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn|Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See {{harvtxt|Jameson|1991}}, and {{harvtxt|McHale|1992}}, among others.}} On the other hand, [[w:Bertolt Brecht|Bertolt Brecht]]’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men in a form they can master”{{sfn|Adorno|1978|p=81}}{{efn| This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with [[w:Georg Lukács|Georg Lukács]] “Against Lukács” in {{harvtxt|Adorno|1978|p=81}}.}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn|Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost.”{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=409}} This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a ''post-facto'' explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by [[w:Walter Benjamin|Walter Benjamin]].{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Brecht|2001}}, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater.”}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Benjamin|1998|pp=85–105}}. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay

echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|pp=85–105}} in the face of the depersonalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=86}} inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which, “we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance,”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}} which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

===The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer===
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''[[w:Bildüngsroman|Bildüngsroman]]'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work){{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109}} under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la [[w:Ian Fleming|Ian Fleming]]. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be [[w:Joseph Conrad|Conrad]]’s ''[[w:The Secret Agent|The Secret Agent]]'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn|A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Mailer|1965}} and the episodes of rock climbing in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1991}}.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=102}} Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by [[w:Harold Bloom|Harold Bloom]] as conditions of, “[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic.{{' "}}{{sfn|Bloom|1986|p=40}} In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the [[w:Iron Curtain|Iron Curtain]]. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates'',”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=182}} which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the [[w:KGB|KGB]] works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it, “As an Agency officer, I . . . encountered my fair share of plots . . . but I was rarely able to see them whole.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|pp=109-110}} This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly. The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn|Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years,”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1169}} going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1170}} On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own.”{{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=134}} }} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=196}} and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197}} Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>
We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means, 586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|pp=197-198}}</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation, the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA who eventually defects to Cuba after the [[w:Bay of Pigs Invasion|Bay of Pigs]] fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on [[w:Henry Miller|Henry Miller]], collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn|See {{harvtxt|Mailer|1976}}.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>
Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|pp=556-557}}</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood—then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord,”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=75}} or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=45}} However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=54}} Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly.”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=29}} The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=17}} He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

===The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation===
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in [[w:Manichaeism|Manichean]] terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and ''if'' Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.{{' "}}{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1281}} This disconcerts Harry considerably since ''he'' is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom, to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}} Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great novel. In both cases, language such as “God,” “His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>
It [God as the source of expression] opens the possibility that the novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}}</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us understand how to read ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because, like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and “less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society (which has always been Mailer’s stated objectives), or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry, not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the novel,(but late in Harry’s life) before he decides to travel to Russia, when the news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come (or has come depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative structure of the novel) revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning can be made of his historical interventions (he can be asked for the truth in Moscow) and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>
Before I ask: what is a work’s position ''vis-à-vis'' the production relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position ''within'' them? This question concerns the function of a work within the literary production relations of its time. In other words, it is directly concerned with literary ''technique''.{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short, the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators.”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=98}}

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>
The reader having been given the end and the beginning will conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that ‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of the novel against mine.{{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=135}}</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero” who reveals history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel. Mailer stresses the value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an “author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all. Any answers given by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about how the novel that wasn’t written should end. We may consider whether the public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer, who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

===Back to the Future===
There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history” where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism (as represented by America) and communism (represented by the Soviet bloc) is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.{{efn|The most famous version of this comes from {{harvtxt|Fukiyama|1998}}. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.}} This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel. A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance. The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words. We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it won’t be written on paper.

===Notes===
{{Notelist}}

===Citations===
{{Reflist|15em}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
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* {{cite book |last=McHale |first=Brian |date=1992 |title=Constructing Postmodernism |url= |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Nielson |first=Heather |title=Jack's Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=American Studies International |volume=35 |issue=3 |date=1997 |pages=23-41 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |title=The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer |url= |journal=Connotations |volume=5 |issue=2-3 |date=1995 |pages=304-321 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |author-mask=1 |date=1998 |title=Fiction and the American Self |url= |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois P |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost, A}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

User talk:Amylhester

2020-09-18T02:42:47Z

Amylhester: question about block quotes

==Article Suggestions==
Hi, I noticed that you are working on an article in your sandbox. Well done so far. I wanted to suggest a couple of things:
# No need to number the sections. I would also remove the “Introduction” section, as I think this is obvious.
# Do not number the notes. The letters are fine.
That's it right now. Feel free to ask if you have any questions. Keep up the good work! —[[User:Jules Carry|Jules Carry]] ([[User talk:Jules Carry|talk]]) 09:13, 10 September 2020 (EDT)

== Moved Intro ==

Hello, I moved the introduction to [[The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/A New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost|the article]] and made some tweaks. I think we can dispense with labeling the intro like it is in the journal. This is a tough article as far as notes and sources are concerned, so I’m happy to help you get it posted—though I’m sure you would do fine by yourself. —[[User:Jules Carry|Jules Carry]] ([[User talk:Jules Carry|talk]]) 07:51, 17 September 2020 (EDT)

: {{reply to|Jules Carry}} Hi, thanks for your help! I copied the rest of the article over to its page. The main thing I'm not sure about as far as formatting is the block quotes in the body. The original article used indented paragraph style with no space afterwards and a couple of the block quotes actually contain more than one paragraph. I wasn't sure if I should use an extra hard return to separate them or not (and I think I may have gone one way with one and the other way with another). Other than that I'll give it another look with fresh eyes this weekend to look for errors and after that, it's done, I think. [[User:Amylhester|Amylhester]] ([[User talk:Amylhester|talk]]) 22:42, 17 September 2020 (EDT)

User:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-18T02:26:48Z

Amylhester: cleared after copying article to its page

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/A New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost

2020-09-18T02:22:36Z

Amylhester: /* A Mystery wrapped in an Enigma */ copyedit

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/A New Politics of Form in ''Harlot's Ghost''}}
{{Working}}
{{MR02}}
{{Byline|last=Anshen|first=David|abstract=A reading of ''[[Harlot’s Ghost]]'' in relation to {{NM}}’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War. The novel resists making overt judgments on events. The novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.||url=https://prmlr.us/mr08ansh}}

{{quote|width=50%|“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a perception which will settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} }}

{{quote|“Please do not understand me too quickly.”|author=Norman Mailer|source=quoting [[w:Andre Gide|Andre Gide]] in the epigraph to ''[[The Deer Park]]''.}}

{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers}} of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|See again {{harvtxt|Mailer|1959}} as well as essays in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1966}} and {{harvtxt|Mailer|1982}}. This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as [[w:Carl Rollyson|Carl Rollyson]] explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]'' Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel. . . . America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=359}} His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn|One of the many critics who argue this way is {{harvtxt|Nielson|1997}}, who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''[[Oswald’s Tale]]'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them.”{{sfn|Nielson|1997|p=23}} While her analysis of the episodes featuring [[William Kennedy|Kennedy]] in Mailer’s work and [[w:Gore Vidal|Vidal]]’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John {{harvtxt|Whalen-Bridge|1995}} argues persuasively that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.{{' "}} Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also {{harvtxt|Whalen-Bridge|1998}}. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include {{harvtxt|Glenday|1995}} who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA”{{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=131}} and {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999}}.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the [[w:Cold War|Cold War]], while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn|I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as [[w:Robert Coover|Coover]], [[w:E. L. Doctorow|Doctorow]] and [[w:Don Delillo|Delillo]] below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use [[w:Francis Fukiyama|Francis Fukiyama]]’s famous phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

==A Mystery wrapped in an Enigma==
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.” {{efn| This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See ''Harlot’s Ghost'' pp. 1169–1187.}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?’” {{efn| It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See Lenin.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: Balzac, Tolstoy, and Zola, who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn| Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See Jameson, and McHale, among others.}} On the other hand, Bertolt Brecht’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men in a form they can master” {{sfn|Adorno|1978|p=81}} {{efn| This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with Georg Lukács “Against Lukács” in ''Aesthetics and Politics'' (NY: Verso, 1978 p. 81).}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn| Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost” (p. 409). This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a ''post-facto'' explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by Walter Benjamin.{{efn| See Brecht, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater” in Brecht on Theater.}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn| See Benjamin pp. 85–105. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay (see footnote 45) echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{efn| Benjamin pp. 85–105.}} in the face of the depersonalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,” {{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=86}} inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which,“we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}, which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

==The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer==
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''Bildüngsroman'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work) {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109}} under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la Ian Fleming. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be Conrad’s ''The Secret Agent'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn| A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn| See ''An American Dream'' and the episodes of rock climbing in ''Harlot’s Ghost''.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=102}}. Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by Harold Bloom as conditions of,“[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic’....” {{sfn|Bloom|1986|p=40}}. In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the Iron Curtain. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of
accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates''” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=182}}, which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist
influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the KGB works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it, “As an Agency officer, I ... encountered my fair share of plots ... but I was rarely able to see them whole”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109-110}}. This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly. The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn| Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years” (1169), going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent” (1170). On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own” (''Norman Mailer'' 134).}} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=196}} and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197}}. Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means, 586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197-198}}</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation, the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA who eventually defects to Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on Henry Miller, collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn| See Mailer, ''Genius and Lust''.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=556-557}}</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood — then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=75}}, or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=45}}. However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=54}}. Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=29}}. The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=17}}. He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

==The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation==
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in Manichean terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and ''if'' Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.’ ”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1281}}. This disconcerts Harry considerably since ''he'' is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom, to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}} Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great novel. In both cases, language such as “God,” “His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>It [God as the source of expression] opens the possibility that the novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}}</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us understand how to read ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because, like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and “less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society (which has always been Mailer’s stated objectives), or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry, not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the novel,(but late in Harry’s life) before he decides to travel to Russia, when the news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come (or has come depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative structure of the novel) revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning can be made of his historical interventions (he can be asked for the truth in Moscow) and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>Before I ask: what is a work’s position ''vis-à-vis'' the production relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position ''within'' them? This question concerns the function of a work within the literary production relations of its time. In other words, it is directly concerned with literary ''technique''.{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short, the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=98}}.

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>The reader having been given the end and the beginning will conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place
in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that ‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of the novel against mine. {{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=135}}</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero” who reveals history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel. Mailer stresses the value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an “author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all. Any answers given by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about how the novel that wasn’t written should end. We may consider whether the public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer, who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

==Back to the Future==
There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history” where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism (as represented by America) and communism (represented by the Soviet bloc) is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.{{efn| The most famous version of this comes from Francis Fukiyama’s book. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.}} This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel. A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance. The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words.
We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it won’t be written on paper.

===Notes===
{{Notelist}}

===Citations===
{{Reflist|15em}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite book |last=Adorno |first=Teodor |date=1978 |title=Aesthetics and Politics |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |translator-last1=Bostock |translator-first1=Anna |chapter=The Author as Producer |date=1998 |title=Understanding Brecht |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |date=1986 |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |url= |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |editor-mask=1 |date=2003 |chapter=Norman in Egypt |title=Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Norman Mailer |url= |location=Philadelphia |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Brecht |first=Bertolt |translator-last1=Willet |translator-first1=John |date=2001 |title=Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. |url= |location=New York |publisher=Hill and Wang |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Coover |first=Robert |date=1977 |title=The Public Burning |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary |date=1999 |title=Mailer a Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=DeLillo |first=Don |date=1997 |title=Underworld |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doctorow |first=E. |date=1996 |title=The Book of Daniel |url= |location=New York |publisher=Plume Penguin Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fukikyama |first=Francis |date=1998 |title=The End of History and the Last Man |url= |location=New York |publisher=Avon Books |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Glenday |first=Michael |date=1995 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=St. Martin's Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Jameson |first=Fredric |date=1991 |title=Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism |url= |location=Durham |publisher=Duke UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. |date=1977 |title=Selected Works in 3 Volumes |url= |location=Moscow |publisher=International Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location= |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1966 |title=Cannibals and Christians |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1955 |title=The Deer Park |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1976 |title=Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1991 |title=Harlot's Ghost |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1982 |title=Pieces and Pontifications |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=McHale |first=Brian |date=1992 |title=Constructing Postmodernism |url= |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Nielson |first=Heather |title=Jack's Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=American Studies International |volume=35 |issue=3 |date=1997 |pages=23-41 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |title=The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer |url= |journal=Connotations |volume=5 |issue=2-3 |date=1995 |pages=304-321 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |author-mask=1 |date=1998 |title=Fiction and the American Self |url= |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois P |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost, A}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/A New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost

2020-09-18T02:19:53Z

Amylhester: added the rest of the article body

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/A New Politics of Form in ''Harlot's Ghost''}}
{{Working}}
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{{Byline|last=Anshen|first=David|abstract=A reading of ''[[Harlot’s Ghost]]'' in relation to {{NM}}’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War. The novel resists making overt judgments on events. The novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.||url=https://prmlr.us/mr08ansh}}

{{quote|width=50%|“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a perception which will settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} }}

{{quote|“Please do not understand me too quickly.”|author=Norman Mailer|source=quoting [[w:Andre Gide|Andre Gide]] in the epigraph to ''[[The Deer Park]]''.}}

{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers}} of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|See again {{harvtxt|Mailer|1959}} as well as essays in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1966}} and {{harvtxt|Mailer|1982}}. This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as [[w:Carl Rollyson|Carl Rollyson]] explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]'' Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel. . . . America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=359}} His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn|One of the many critics who argue this way is {{harvtxt|Nielson|1997}}, who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''[[Oswald’s Tale]]'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them.”{{sfn|Nielson|1997|p=23}} While her analysis of the episodes featuring [[William Kennedy|Kennedy]] in Mailer’s work and [[w:Gore Vidal|Vidal]]’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John {{harvtxt|Whalen-Bridge|1995}} argues persuasively that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.{{' "}} Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also {{harvtxt|Whalen-Bridge|1998}}. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include {{harvtxt|Glenday|1995}} who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA”{{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=131}} and {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999}}.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the [[w:Cold War|Cold War]], while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn|I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as [[w:Robert Coover|Coover]], [[w:E. L. Doctorow|Doctorow]] and [[w:Don Delillo|Delillo]] below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use [[w:Francis Fukiyama|Francis Fukiyama]]’s famous phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

==A Mystery wrapped in an Enigma==
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.” {{efn| This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See ''Harlot’s Ghost'' pp. 1169–1187.}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?’” {{efn| It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See Lenin.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: Balzac, Tolstoy, and Zola, who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn| Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See Jameson, and McHale, among others.}} On the other hand, Bertolt Brecht’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men in a form they can master” {{sfn|Adorno|1978|p=81}} {{efn| This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with Georg Lukács “Against Lukács” in ''Aesthetics and Politics'' (NY: Verso, 1978 p. 81).}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn| Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost” (p. 409). This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a ''post-facto'' explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by Walter Benjamin.{{efn| See Brecht, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater” in Brecht on Theater.}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn| See Benjamin pp. 85–105. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay (see footnote 45) echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{efn| Benjamin pp. 85–105.}} in the face of the de-personalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,” {{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=86}} inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which,“we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}, which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

==The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer==
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''Bildüngsroman'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work) {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109}} under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la Ian Fleming. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be Conrad’s ''The Secret Agent'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn| A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn| See ''An American Dream'' and the episodes of rock climbing in ''Harlot’s Ghost''.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=102}}. Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by Harold Bloom as conditions of,“[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic’....” {{sfn|Bloom|1986|p=40}}. In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the Iron Curtain. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of
accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates''” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=182}}, which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist
influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the KGB works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it, “As an Agency officer, I ... encountered my fair share of plots ... but I was rarely able to see them whole”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109-110}}. This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly. The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn| Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years” (1169), going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent” (1170). On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own” (''Norman Mailer'' 134).}} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=196}} and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197}}. Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means, 586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197-198}}</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation, the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA who eventually defects to Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on Henry Miller, collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn| See Mailer, ''Genius and Lust''.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=556-557}}</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood — then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=75}}, or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=45}}. However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=54}}. Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=29}}. The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=17}}. He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

==The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation==
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in Manichean terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and ''if'' Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.’ ”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1281}}. This disconcerts Harry considerably since ''he'' is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom, to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}} Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great novel. In both cases, language such as “God,” “His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>It [God as the source of expression] opens the possibility that the novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}}</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us understand how to read ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because, like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and “less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society (which has always been Mailer’s stated objectives), or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry, not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the novel,(but late in Harry’s life) before he decides to travel to Russia, when the news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come (or has come depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative structure of the novel) revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning can be made of his historical interventions (he can be asked for the truth in Moscow) and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>Before I ask: what is a work’s position ''vis-à-vis'' the production relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position ''within'' them? This question concerns the function of a work within the literary production relations of its time. In other words, it is directly concerned with literary ''technique''.{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short, the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=98}}.

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>The reader having been given the end and the beginning will conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place
in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that ‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of the novel against mine. {{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=135}}</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero” who reveals history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel. Mailer stresses the value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an “author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all. Any answers given by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about how the novel that wasn’t written should end. We may consider whether the public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer, who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

==Back to the Future==
There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history” where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism (as represented by America) and communism (represented by the Soviet bloc) is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.{{efn| The most famous version of this comes from Francis Fukiyama’s book. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.}} This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel. A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance. The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words.
We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it won’t be written on paper.

===Notes===
{{Notelist}}

===Citations===
{{Reflist|15em}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite book |last=Adorno |first=Teodor |date=1978 |title=Aesthetics and Politics |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |translator-last1=Bostock |translator-first1=Anna |chapter=The Author as Producer |date=1998 |title=Understanding Brecht |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |date=1986 |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |url= |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |editor-mask=1 |date=2003 |chapter=Norman in Egypt |title=Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Norman Mailer |url= |location=Philadelphia |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Brecht |first=Bertolt |translator-last1=Willet |translator-first1=John |date=2001 |title=Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. |url= |location=New York |publisher=Hill and Wang |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Coover |first=Robert |date=1977 |title=The Public Burning |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary |date=1999 |title=Mailer a Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=DeLillo |first=Don |date=1997 |title=Underworld |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doctorow |first=E. |date=1996 |title=The Book of Daniel |url= |location=New York |publisher=Plume Penguin Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fukikyama |first=Francis |date=1998 |title=The End of History and the Last Man |url= |location=New York |publisher=Avon Books |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Glenday |first=Michael |date=1995 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=St. Martin's Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Jameson |first=Fredric |date=1991 |title=Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism |url= |location=Durham |publisher=Duke UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. |date=1977 |title=Selected Works in 3 Volumes |url= |location=Moscow |publisher=International Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location= |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1966 |title=Cannibals and Christians |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1955 |title=The Deer Park |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1976 |title=Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1991 |title=Harlot's Ghost |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1982 |title=Pieces and Pontifications |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=McHale |first=Brian |date=1992 |title=Constructing Postmodernism |url= |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Nielson |first=Heather |title=Jack's Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=American Studies International |volume=35 |issue=3 |date=1997 |pages=23-41 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |title=The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer |url= |journal=Connotations |volume=5 |issue=2-3 |date=1995 |pages=304-321 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |author-mask=1 |date=1998 |title=Fiction and the American Self |url= |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois P |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost, A}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

User:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-17T08:08:22Z

Amylhester: fixed spacing

“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a perception which will settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time” (''Advertisements for Myself'' 17).

“Please do not understand me too quickly.” (Norman Mailer’s quoting of Andre Gide in the epigraph to ''The Deer Park'').

==Introduction==
Norman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness” {{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|See again ''Advertisements'' as well as essays in ''Cannibals and Christians'' and Norman Mailer, ''Pieces and Pontifications'' (Boston: Little Brown, 1982). This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as Carl Rollyson explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since The Naked and the Dead Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel.... America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on {{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=359}}.” His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn| One of the many critics who argue this way is Heather Nielson (pp. 23–41), who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''Oswald’s Tale'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them” (23). While her analysis of the episodes featuring Kennedy in Mailer’s work and Vidal’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John Whalen-Bridge argues persuasively in “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer” that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.’ ” Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also Whalen-Bridge, ''Political Fiction and the American Self''. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include Glenday who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA” (p. 131) and Dearborn.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War, while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to
most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn| I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as Coover, Doctorow and Delillo below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use Francis Fukiyama’s famous phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

==A Mystery wrapped in an Enigma==
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.” {{efn| This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See ''Harlot’s Ghost'' pp. 1169–1187.}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?’” {{efn| It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See Lenin.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: Balzac, Tolstoy, and Zola, who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn| Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See Jameson, and McHale, among others.}} On the other hand, Bertolt Brecht’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men in a form they can master” {{sfn|Adorno|1978|p=81}} {{efn| This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with Georg Lukács “Against Lukács” in ''Aesthetics and Politics'' (NY: Verso, 1978 p. 81).}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn| Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost” (p. 409). This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a ''post-facto'' explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by Walter Benjamin.{{efn| See Brecht, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater” in Brecht on Theater.}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn| See Benjamin pp. 85–105. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay (see footnote 45) echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{efn| Benjamin pp. 85–105.}} in the face of the de-personalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,” {{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=86}} inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which,“we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}, which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

==The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer==
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''Bildüngsroman'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work) {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109}} under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la Ian Fleming. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be Conrad’s ''The Secret Agent'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn| A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn| See ''An American Dream'' and the episodes of rock climbing in ''Harlot’s Ghost''.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=102}}. Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by Harold Bloom as conditions of,“[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic’....” {{sfn|Bloom|1986|p=40}}. In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the Iron Curtain. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of
accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates''” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=182}}, which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist
influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the KGB works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it, “As an Agency officer, I ... encountered my fair share of plots ... but I was rarely able to see them whole”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109-110}}. This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly. The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn| Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years” (1169), going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent” (1170). On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own” (''Norman Mailer'' 134).}} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=196}} and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197}}. Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means, 586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197-198}}</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation, the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA who eventually defects to Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on Henry Miller, collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn| See Mailer, ''Genius and Lust''.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=556-557}}</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood — then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=75}}, or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=45}}. However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=54}}. Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=29}}. The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=17}}. He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

==The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation==
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in Manichean terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and ''if'' Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.’ ”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1281}}. This disconcerts Harry considerably since ''he'' is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom, to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}} Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great novel. In both cases, language such as “God,” “His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>It [God as the source of expression] opens the possibility that the novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}}</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us understand how to read ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because, like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and “less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society (which has always been Mailer’s stated objectives), or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry, not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the novel,(but late in Harry’s life) before he decides to travel to Russia, when the news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come (or has come depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative structure of the novel) revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning can be made of his historical interventions (he can be asked for the truth in Moscow) and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>Before I ask: what is a work’s position ''vis-à-vis'' the production relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position ''within'' them? This question concerns the function of a work within the literary production relations of its time. In other words, it is directly concerned with literary ''technique''.{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short, the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=98}}.

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>The reader having been given the end and the beginning will conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place
in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that ‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of the novel against mine. {{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=135}}</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero” who reveals history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel. Mailer stresses the value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an “author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all. Any answers given by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about how the novel that wasn’t written should end. We may consider whether the public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer, who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

==Back to the Future==
There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history” where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism (as represented by America) and communism (represented by the Soviet bloc) is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.{{efn| The most famous version of this comes from Francis Fukiyama’s book. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.}} This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel. A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance. The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words.
We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it won’t be written on paper.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

===Citations===
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|40em}}
* {{cite book |last=Adorno |first=Teodor |date=1978 |title=Aesthetics and Politics |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |translator-last1=Bostock |translator-first1=Anna |chapter=The Author as Producer |date=1998 |title=Understanding Brecht |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |date=1986 |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |url= |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |editor-mask=1 |date=2003 |chapter=Norman in Egypt |title=Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Norman Mailer |url= |location=Philadelphia |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Brecht |first=Bertolt |translator-last1=Willet |translator-first1=John |date=2001 |title=Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. |url= |location=New York |publisher=Hill and Wang |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Coover |first=Robert |date=1977 |title=The Public Burning |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary |date=1999 |title=Mailer a Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=DeLillo |first=Don |date=1997 |title=Underworld |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doctorow |first=E. |date=1996 |title=The Book of Daniel |url= |location=New York |publisher=Plume Penguin Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fukikyama |first=Francis |date=1998 |title=The End of History and the Last Man |url= |location=New York |publisher=Avon Books |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Glenday |first=Michael |date=1995 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=St. Martin's Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Jameson |first=Fredric |date=1991 |title=Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism |url= |location=Durham |publisher=Duke UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. |date=1977 |title=Selected Works in 3 Volumes |url= |location=Moscow |publisher=International Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location= |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1966 |title=Cannibals and Christians |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1955 |title=The Deer Park |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1976 |title=Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1991 |title=Harlot's Ghost |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1982 |title=Pieces and Pontifications |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=McHale |first=Brian |date=1992 |title=Constructing Postmodernism |url= |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Nielson |first=Heather |title=Jack's Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=American Studies International |volume=35 |issue=3 |date=1997 |pages=23-24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |title=The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer |url= |journal=Connotations |volume=5 |issue=2-3 |date=1995 |pages=304-321 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |author-mask=1 |date=1998 |title=Fiction and the American Self |url= |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois P |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

User:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-17T07:36:44Z

Amylhester: added citations

“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a
perception which will settle for nothing less
than making a revolution in the consciousness
of our time” (''Advertisements for Myself'' 17).

“Please do not understand me too quickly.”
(Norman Mailer’s quoting of Andre Gide in
the epigraph to ''The Deer Park'').

==Introduction==
Norman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness” {{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|See again ''Advertisements'' as well as essays in ''Cannibals and Christians'' and Norman Mailer, ''Pieces and Pontifications'' (Boston: Little Brown, 1982). This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as Carl Rollyson explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since The Naked and the Dead Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel.... America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on {{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=359}}.” His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn| One of the many critics who argue this way is Heather Nielson (pp. 23–41), who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''Oswald’s Tale'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them” (23). While her analysis of the episodes featuring Kennedy in Mailer’s work and Vidal’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John Whalen-Bridge argues persuasively in “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer” that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.’ ” Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also Whalen-Bridge, ''Political Fiction and the American Self''. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include Glenday who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA” (p. 131) and Dearborn.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War, while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to
most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn| I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as Coover, Doctorow and Delillo below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use Francis Fukiyama’s famous
phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

==A Mystery wrapped in an Enigma==
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.” {{efn| This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See ''Harlot’s Ghost'' pp. 1169–1187.}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the
Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?’” {{efn| It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See Lenin.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: Balzac, Tolstoy, and Zola, who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn| Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See Jameson, and McHale, among others.}} On the other hand, Bertolt Brecht’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men in a form they can master” {{sfn|Adorno|1978|p=81}} {{efn| This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with Georg Lukács “Against Lukács” in ''Aesthetics and Politics'' (NY: Verso, 1978 p. 81).}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn| Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost” (p. 409). This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a ''post-facto'' explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by Walter Benjamin.{{efn| See Brecht, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater” in Brecht on Theater.}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn| See Benjamin pp. 85–105. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay (see footnote 45) echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{efn| Benjamin pp. 85–105.}} in the face of the de-personalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,” {{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=86}} inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which,“we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}, which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

==The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer==
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''Bildüngsroman'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work) {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109}} under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la Ian Fleming. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be Conrad’s ''The Secret Agent'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn| A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn| See ''An American Dream'' and the episodes of rock climbing in ''Harlot’s Ghost''.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=102}}. Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by Harold Bloom as conditions of,“[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic’....” {{sfn|Bloom|1986|p=40}}. In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the Iron Curtain. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of
accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates''” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=182}}, which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist
influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the KGB works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it, “As an Agency officer, I ... encountered my fair share of plots ... but I was rarely able to see them whole”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109-110}}. This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly. The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn| Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years” (1169), going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent” (1170). On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own” (''Norman Mailer'' 134).}} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that
under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=196}} and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197}}. Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means, 586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197-198}}</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation, the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA who eventually defects to Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on Henry Miller, collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn| See Mailer, ''Genius and Lust''.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=556-557}}</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood — then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=75}}, or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=45}}. However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=54}}. Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=29}}. The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=17}}. He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

==The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation==
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in Manichean terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and ''if'' Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.’ ”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1281}}. This disconcerts Harry considerably since ''he'' is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom, to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}} Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great novel. In both cases, language such as “God,” “His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>It [God as the source of expression] opens the possibility that the novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}}</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us understand how to read ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because, like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and “less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society (which has always been Mailer’s stated objectives), or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry, not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the novel,(but late in Harry’s life) before he decides to travel to Russia, when the news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come (or has come depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative structure of the novel) revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning can be made of his historical interventions (he can be asked for the truth in Moscow) and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>Before I ask: what is a work’s position ''vis-à-vis'' the production relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position ''within'' them? This question concerns the function of a work within the literary production relations of its time. In other words, it is directly concerned with literary ''technique''.{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short,
the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators”{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=98}}.

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>The reader having been given the end and the beginning will conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place
in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that ‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of the novel against mine. {{sfn|Glenday|1995|p=135}}</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero” who reveals history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel. Mailer stresses the value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an “author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all. Any answers given by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about how the novel that wasn’t written should end. We may consider whether the public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer, who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

==Back to the Future==
There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history” where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism (as represented by America) and communism (represented by the Soviet bloc) is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.{{efn| The most famous version of this comes from Francis Fukiyama’s book. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.}} This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel. A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance. The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words.
We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it won’t be written on paper.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

===Citations===
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|40em}}
* {{cite book |last=Adorno |first=Teodor |date=1978 |title=Aesthetics and Politics |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |translator-last1=Bostock |translator-first1=Anna |chapter=The Author as Producer |date=1998 |title=Understanding Brecht |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |date=1986 |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |url= |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |editor-mask=1 |date=2003 |chapter=Norman in Egypt |title=Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Norman Mailer |url= |location=Philadelphia |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Brecht |first=Bertolt |translator-last1=Willet |translator-first1=John |date=2001 |title=Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. |url= |location=New York |publisher=Hill and Wang |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Coover |first=Robert |date=1977 |title=The Public Burning |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary |date=1999 |title=Mailer a Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=DeLillo |first=Don |date=1997 |title=Underworld |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doctorow |first=E. |date=1996 |title=The Book of Daniel |url= |location=New York |publisher=Plume Penguin Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fukikyama |first=Francis |date=1998 |title=The End of History and the Last Man |url= |location=New York |publisher=Avon Books |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Glenday |first=Michael |date=1995 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=St. Martin's Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Jameson |first=Fredric |date=1991 |title=Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism |url= |location=Durham |publisher=Duke UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. |date=1977 |title=Selected Works in 3 Volumes |url= |location=Moscow |publisher=International Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location= |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1966 |title=Cannibals and Christians |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1955 |title=The Deer Park |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1976 |title=Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1991 |title=Harlot's Ghost |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1982 |title=Pieces and Pontifications |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=McHale |first=Brian |date=1992 |title=Constructing Postmodernism |url= |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Nielson |first=Heather |title=Jack's Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=American Studies International |volume=35 |issue=3 |date=1997 |pages=23-24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |title=The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer |url= |journal=Connotations |volume=5 |issue=2-3 |date=1995 |pages=304-321 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |author-mask=1 |date=1998 |title=Fiction and the American Self |url= |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois P |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

User:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-17T07:11:26Z

Amylhester: added citations

“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a
perception which will settle for nothing less
than making a revolution in the consciousness
of our time” (''Advertisements for Myself'' 17).

“Please do not understand me too quickly.”
(Norman Mailer’s quoting of Andre Gide in
the epigraph to ''The Deer Park'').

==Introduction==
Norman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness” {{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|See again ''Advertisements'' as well as essays in ''Cannibals and Christians'' and Norman Mailer, ''Pieces and Pontifications'' (Boston: Little Brown, 1982). This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as Carl Rollyson explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since The Naked and the Dead Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel.... America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on {{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=359}}.” His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn|2. One of the many critics who argue this way is Heather Nielson (pp. 23–41), who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''Oswald’s Tale'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them” (23). While her analysis of the episodes featuring Kennedy in Mailer’s work and Vidal’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John Whalen-Bridge argues persuasively in “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer” that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.’ ” Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also Whalen-Bridge, ''Political Fiction and the American Self''. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include Glenday who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA” (p. 131) and Dearborn.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War, while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to
most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn|3. I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as Coover, Doctorow and Delillo below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use Francis Fukiyama’s famous
phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

==A Mystery wrapped in an Enigma==
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.” {{efn|4. This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See ''Harlot’s Ghost'' pp. 1169–1187.}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the
Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?’” {{efn|5. It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See Lenin.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: Balzac, Tolstoy, and Zola, who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn|6. Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See Jameson, and McHale, among others.}} On the other hand, Bertolt Brecht’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men
in a form they can master” {{sfn|Adorno|1978|p=81}} {{efn|7. This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with Georg Lukács “Against Lukács” in ''Aesthetics and Politics'' (NY: Verso, 1978 p. 81).}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn|8. Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost” (p. 409). This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a ''post-facto'' explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by Walter Benjamin.{{efn|9. See Brecht, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater” in Brecht on Theater.}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn|10. See Benjamin pp. 85–105. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay (see footnote 45) echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{efn|11. Benjamin pp. 85–105.}} in the face of the de-personalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,” {{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=86}} inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which,“we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance”
{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}, which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

==The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer==
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''Bildüngsroman'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work) {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109}} under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la Ian Fleming. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be Conrad’s ''The Secret Agent'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn|12. A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn|13. See ''An American Dream'' and the episodes of rock climbing in ''Harlot’s Ghost''.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=102}}. Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by Harold Bloom as conditions of,“[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic’....” {{sfn|Bloom|1986|p=40}}. In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the Iron Curtain. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of
accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates''” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=182}}, which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist
influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the KGB works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it, “As an Agency officer, I ... encountered my fair share of plots ... but I was rarely able to see them whole”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109-110}}. This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to
frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly.
The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn| Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years” (1169), going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent” (1170). On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own” (''Norman Mailer'' 134).}} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that
under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=196}} and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197}}. Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means,586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197-198}}</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation,
the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA
who eventually defects to Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s
worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at
different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on Henry Miller, collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn| See Mailer, ''Genius and Lust''.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s
in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=556-557}}</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely
because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood — then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the
prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=75}}, or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=45}}. However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an
absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=54}}. Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=29}}. The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to
Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=17}}. He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the
novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

==The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation==
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in Manichean terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and ''if'' Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.’ ”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1281}}. This disconcerts Harry considerably since ''he'' is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom,
to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}} Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great novel. In both cases, language such as “God,” “His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>It [God as the source of expression] opens the possibility that the novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into
something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=380}}</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative
energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us understand how to read ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because,
like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and “less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society (which has always been Mailer’s stated objectives), or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry, not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel
that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the novel,(but late in Harry’s life) before he decides to travel to Russia, when the news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come (or has come
depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative structure of the novel) revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning can be made of his historical interventions (he can be asked for the truth in
Moscow) and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>Before I ask: what is a work’s position ''vis-à-vis'' the production relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position ''within'' them? This question concerns the function of a work
within the literary production relations of its time. In other
words, it is directly concerned with literary ''technique''. {{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the
more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short,
the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators” ~98!.

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of
the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two
explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to
complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he
won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This
doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview
for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes
Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms
authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>The reader having been given the end and the beginning will
conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place
in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between
Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that
‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if
they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in
the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of
the novel against mine. (Glenday 135)</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero”who reveals
history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at
some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of
questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results
remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel.Mailer stresses the
value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves
around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and
existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the
collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an
“author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other
hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely
out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all.Any answers given
by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since
they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by
making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with
the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we
are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about
how the novel that wasn’t written should end.We may consider whether the
public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and
so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and
beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like
a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s
place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer,
who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the
great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project
and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

==Back to the Future==

There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The
novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the
readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history”where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism ~as represented by
America! and communism ~represented by the Soviet bloc! is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.16 This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly
what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil
nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a
sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel.
A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold
War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American
Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the
plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece
of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is
not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists
and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any
answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out
to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance.
The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words.
We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it
won’t be written on paper.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

16. The most famous version of this comes from Francis Fukiyama’s book. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.

===Citations===
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|40em}}
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* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location= |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1966 |title=Cannibals and Christians |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1955 |title=The Deer Park |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1976 |title=Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1991 |title=Harlot's Ghost |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1982 |title=Pieces and Pontifications |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=McHale |first=Brian |date=1992 |title=Constructing Postmodernism |url= |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Nielson |first=Heather |title=Jack's Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=American Studies International |volume=35 |issue=3 |date=1997 |pages=23-24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |title=The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer |url= |journal=Connotations |volume=5 |issue=2-3 |date=1995 |pages=304-321 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |author-mask=1 |date=1998 |title=Fiction and the American Self |url= |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois P |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

User:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-17T05:48:09Z

Amylhester: added citations

“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a
perception which will settle for nothing less
than making a revolution in the consciousness
of our time” (''Advertisements for Myself'' 17).

“Please do not understand me too quickly.”
(Norman Mailer’s quoting of Andre Gide in
the epigraph to ''The Deer Park'').

==Introduction==
Norman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness” {{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|See again ''Advertisements'' as well as essays in ''Cannibals and Christians'' and Norman Mailer, ''Pieces and Pontifications'' (Boston: Little Brown, 1982). This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as Carl Rollyson explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since The Naked and the Dead Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel.... America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on {{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=359}}.” His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn|2. One of the many critics who argue this way is Heather Nielson (pp. 23–41), who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''Oswald’s Tale'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them” (23). While her analysis of the episodes featuring Kennedy in Mailer’s work and Vidal’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John Whalen-Bridge argues persuasively in “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer” that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.’ ” Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also Whalen-Bridge, ''Political Fiction and the American Self''. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include Glenday who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA” (p. 131) and Dearborn.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War, while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to
most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn|3. I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as Coover, Doctorow and Delillo below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use Francis Fukiyama’s famous
phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

==A Mystery wrapped in an Enigma==
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.” {{efn|4. This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See ''Harlot’s Ghost'' pp. 1169–1187.}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the
Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?’” {{efn|5. It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See Lenin.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: Balzac, Tolstoy, and Zola, who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn|6. Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See Jameson, and McHale, among others.}} On the other hand, Bertolt Brecht’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men
in a form they can master” {{sfn|Adorno|1978|p=81}} {{efn|7. This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with Georg Lukács “Against Lukács” in ''Aesthetics and Politics'' (NY: Verso, 1978 p. 81).}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn|8. Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost” (p. 409). This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a ''post-facto'' explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by Walter Benjamin.{{efn|9. See Brecht, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater” in Brecht on Theater.}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn|10. See Benjamin pp. 85–105. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay (see footnote 45) echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{efn|11. Benjamin pp. 85–105.}} in the face of the de-personalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,” {{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=86}} inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which,“we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance”
{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}, which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

==The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer==
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''Bildüngsroman'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work) {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109}} under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la Ian Fleming. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be Conrad’s ''The Secret Agent'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn|12. A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn|13. See ''An American Dream'' and the episodes of rock climbing in ''Harlot’s Ghost''.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=102}}. Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by Harold Bloom as conditions of,“[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic’....” {{sfn|Bloom|1986|p=40}}. In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the Iron Curtain. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of
accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates''” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=182}}, which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist
influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the KGB works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it, “As an Agency officer, I ... encountered my fair share of plots ... but I was rarely able to see them whole”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109-110}}. This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to
frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly.
The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn| Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years” (1169), going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent” (1170). On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own” (''Norman Mailer'' 134).}} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that
under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=196}} and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197}}. Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means,586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197-198}}</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation,
the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA
who eventually defects to Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s
worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at
different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on Henry Miller, collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn| See Mailer, ''Genius and Lust''.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s
in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas.{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=556-557}}</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely
because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood — then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the
prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=75}}, or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=45}}. However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an
absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=54}}. Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=29}}. The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to
Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure” (17). He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the
novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

==The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation==
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in Manichean terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and if Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for
God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.’ ” (1281). This disconcerts Harry considerably since he is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel
suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future
of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom,
to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of
God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”
~Advertisements 380! Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great
novel. In both cases, language such as “God,”“His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his
novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by
stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>It @God as the source of expression# opens the possibility that the
novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into
something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that
everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less
important. ~Advertisements 382!</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative
energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement
with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works
that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust
his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us
understand how to read Harlot’s Ghost and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because,
like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and
“less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society ~which has always been Mailer’s stated
objectives!, or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful
optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being
revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry,
not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part
of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be
revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel
that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this
deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger
in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in
new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the
novel,~but late in Harry’s life! before he decides to travel to Russia, when the
news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an
affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes
upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is
quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the
real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of
finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come ~or has come
depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative
structure of the novel! revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The
implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to
motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with
Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and
of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning
can be made of his historical interventions ~he can be asked for the truth in
Moscow! and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and
Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In
his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that
writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>Before I ask: what is a work’s position vis-à-vis the production
relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position
within them? This question concerns the function of a work
within the literary production relations of its time. In other
words, it is directly concerned with literary technique. ~87!</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the
more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short,
the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators” ~98!.

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of
the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two
explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to
complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he
won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This
doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview
for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes
Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms
authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>The reader having been given the end and the beginning will
conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place
in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between
Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that
‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if
they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in
the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of
the novel against mine. (Glenday 135)</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero”who reveals
history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at
some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of
questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results
remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel.Mailer stresses the
value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves
around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and
existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the
collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an
“author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other
hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely
out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all.Any answers given
by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since
they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by
making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with
the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we
are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about
how the novel that wasn’t written should end.We may consider whether the
public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and
so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and
beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like
a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s
place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer,
who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the
great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project
and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

==Back to the Future==

There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The
novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the
readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history”where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism ~as represented by
America! and communism ~represented by the Soviet bloc! is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.16 This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly
what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil
nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a
sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel.
A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold
War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American
Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the
plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece
of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is
not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists
and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any
answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out
to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance.
The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words.
We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it
won’t be written on paper.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

16. The most famous version of this comes from Francis Fukiyama’s book. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.

===Citations===
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|40em}}
* {{cite book |last=Adorno |first=Teodor |date=1978 |title=Aesthetics and Politics |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |translator-last1=Bostock |translator-first1=Anna |chapter=The Author as Producer |date=1998 |title=Understanding Brecht |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |date=1986 |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |url= |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |editor-mask=1 |date=2003 |chapter=Norman in Egypt |title=Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Norman Mailer |url= |location=Philadelphia |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Brecht |first=Bertolt |translator-last1=Willet |translator-first1=John |date=2001 |title=Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. |url= |location=New York |publisher=Hill and Wang |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Coover |first=Robert |date=1977 |title=The Public Burning |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary |date=1999 |title=Mailer a Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=DeLillo |first=Don |date=1997 |title=Underworld |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doctorow |first=E. |date=1996 |title=The Book of Daniel |url= |location=New York |publisher=Plume Penguin Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fukikyama |first=Francis |date=1998 |title=The End of History and the Last Man |url= |location=New York |publisher=Avon Books |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Glenday |first=Michael |date=1995 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=St. Martin's Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Jameson |first=Fredric |date=1991 |title=Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism |url= |location=Durham |publisher=Duke UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. |date=1977 |title=Selected Works in 3 Volumes |url= |location=Moscow |publisher=International Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location= |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1966 |title=Cannibals and Christians |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1955 |title=The Deer Park |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1976 |title=Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1991 |title=Harlot's Ghost |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1982 |title=Pieces and Pontifications |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=McHale |first=Brian |date=1992 |title=Constructing Postmodernism |url= |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Nielson |first=Heather |title=Jack's Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=American Studies International |volume=35 |issue=3 |date=1997 |pages=23-24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |title=The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer |url= |journal=Connotations |volume=5 |issue=2-3 |date=1995 |pages=304-321 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |author-mask=1 |date=1998 |title=Fiction and the American Self |url= |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois P |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

User:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-17T05:07:23Z

Amylhester: adding citations

“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a
perception which will settle for nothing less
than making a revolution in the consciousness
of our time” (''Advertisements for Myself'' 17).

“Please do not understand me too quickly.”
(Norman Mailer’s quoting of Andre Gide in
the epigraph to ''The Deer Park'').

==Introduction==
Norman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness” {{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|See again ''Advertisements'' as well as essays in ''Cannibals and Christians'' and Norman Mailer, ''Pieces and Pontifications'' (Boston: Little Brown, 1982). This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as Carl Rollyson explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since The Naked and the Dead Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel.... America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on {{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=359}}.” His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn|2. One of the many critics who argue this way is Heather Nielson (pp. 23–41), who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''Oswald’s Tale'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them” (23). While her analysis of the episodes featuring Kennedy in Mailer’s work and Vidal’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John Whalen-Bridge argues persuasively in “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer” that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s
DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.’ ” Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also Whalen-Bridge, ''Political Fiction and the American Self''. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include Glenday who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA” (p. 131) and Dearborn.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War, while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to
most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn|3. I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as Coover, Doctorow and Delillo below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use Francis Fukiyama’s famous
phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

==A Mystery wrapped in an Enigma==
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.” {{efn|4. This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See ''Harlot’s Ghost'' pp. 1169–1187.}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the
Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?’” {{efn|5. It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See Lenin.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: Balzac, Tolstoy, and Zola, who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn|6. Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See Jameson, and McHale, among others.}} On the other hand, Bertolt Brecht’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men
in a form they can master” {{sfn|Adorno|1978|p=81}} {{efn|7. This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with Georg Lukács “Against Lukács” in ''Aesthetics and Politics'' (NY: Verso, 1978 p. 81).}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn|8. Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost” (p. 409). This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a ''post-facto'' explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by Walter Benjamin.{{efn|9. See Brecht, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater” in Brecht on Theater.}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn|10. See Benjamin pp. 85–105. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay (see footnote 45) echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{efn|11. Benjamin pp. 85–105.}} in the face of the de-personalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,” {{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=86}} inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which,“we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance”
{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}, which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

==The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer==
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''Bildüngsroman'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work) {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109}} under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la Ian Fleming. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be Conrad’s ''The Secret Agent'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn|12. A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn|13. See ''An American Dream'' and the episodes of rock climbing in ''Harlot’s Ghost''.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=102}}. Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by Harold Bloom as conditions of,“[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic’....” {{sfn|Bloom|1986|p=40}}. In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the Iron Curtain. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of
accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates''” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=182}}, which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist
influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the KGB works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it, “As an Agency officer, I ... encountered my fair share of plots ... but I was rarely able to see them whole”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109-110}}. This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to
frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly.
The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn| Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years” (1169), going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent” (1170). On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own” (''Norman Mailer'' 134).}} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that
under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=196}} and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=197}}. Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means,586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers. (197–198)</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation,
the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA
who eventually defects to Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s
worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at
different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on Henry Miller, collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn|15. See Mailer, ''Genius and Lust''.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s
in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas. (556–557)</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in
my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely
because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood — then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the
prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in Harlot’s Ghost is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord” (75), or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?” (45). However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an
absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation” (54). Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly” (29). The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to
Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure” (17). He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the
novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

==The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation==
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in Manichean terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and if Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for
God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.’ ” (1281). This disconcerts Harry considerably since he is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel
suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future
of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom,
to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of
God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”
~Advertisements 380! Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great
novel. In both cases, language such as “God,”“His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his
novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by
stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>It @God as the source of expression# opens the possibility that the
novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into
something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that
everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less
important. ~Advertisements 382!</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative
energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement
with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works
that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust
his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us
understand how to read Harlot’s Ghost and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because,
like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and
“less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society ~which has always been Mailer’s stated
objectives!, or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful
optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being
revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry,
not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part
of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be
revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel
that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this
deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger
in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in
new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the
novel,~but late in Harry’s life! before he decides to travel to Russia, when the
news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an
affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes
upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is
quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the
real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of
finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come ~or has come
depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative
structure of the novel! revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The
implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to
motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with
Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and
of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning
can be made of his historical interventions ~he can be asked for the truth in
Moscow! and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and
Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In
his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that
writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>Before I ask: what is a work’s position vis-à-vis the production
relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position
within them? This question concerns the function of a work
within the literary production relations of its time. In other
words, it is directly concerned with literary technique. ~87!</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the
more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short,
the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators” ~98!.

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of
the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two
explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to
complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he
won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This
doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview
for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes
Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms
authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>The reader having been given the end and the beginning will
conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place
in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between
Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that
‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if
they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in
the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of
the novel against mine. (Glenday 135)</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero”who reveals
history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at
some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of
questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results
remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel.Mailer stresses the
value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves
around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and
existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the
collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an
“author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other
hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely
out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all.Any answers given
by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since
they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by
making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with
the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we
are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about
how the novel that wasn’t written should end.We may consider whether the
public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and
so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and
beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like
a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s
place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer,
who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the
great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project
and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

==Back to the Future==

There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The
novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the
readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history”where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism ~as represented by
America! and communism ~represented by the Soviet bloc! is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.16 This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly
what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil
nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a
sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel.
A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold
War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American
Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the
plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece
of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is
not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists
and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any
answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out
to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance.
The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words.
We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it
won’t be written on paper.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

16. The most famous version of this comes from Francis Fukiyama’s book. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.

===Citations===
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|40em}}
* {{cite book |last=Adorno |first=Teodor |date=1978 |title=Aesthetics and Politics |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |translator-last1=Bostock |translator-first1=Anna |chapter=The Author as Producer |date=1998 |title=Understanding Brecht |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |date=1986 |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |url= |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |editor-mask=1 |date=2003 |chapter=Norman in Egypt |title=Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Norman Mailer |url= |location=Philadelphia |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Brecht |first=Bertolt |translator-last1=Willet |translator-first1=John |date=2001 |title=Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. |url= |location=New York |publisher=Hill and Wang |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Coover |first=Robert |date=1977 |title=The Public Burning |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary |date=1999 |title=Mailer a Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=DeLillo |first=Don |date=1997 |title=Underworld |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doctorow |first=E. |date=1996 |title=The Book of Daniel |url= |location=New York |publisher=Plume Penguin Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fukikyama |first=Francis |date=1998 |title=The End of History and the Last Man |url= |location=New York |publisher=Avon Books |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Glenday |first=Michael |date=1995 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=St. Martin's Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Jameson |first=Fredric |date=1991 |title=Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism |url= |location=Durham |publisher=Duke UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. |date=1977 |title=Selected Works in 3 Volumes |url= |location=Moscow |publisher=International Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location= |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1966 |title=Cannibals and Christians |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1955 |title=The Deer Park |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1976 |title=Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1991 |title=Harlot's Ghost |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1982 |title=Pieces and Pontifications |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=McHale |first=Brian |date=1992 |title=Constructing Postmodernism |url= |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Nielson |first=Heather |title=Jack's Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=American Studies International |volume=35 |issue=3 |date=1997 |pages=23-24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |title=The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer |url= |journal=Connotations |volume=5 |issue=2-3 |date=1995 |pages=304-321 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |author-mask=1 |date=1998 |title=Fiction and the American Self |url= |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois P |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

User:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-10T04:14:27Z

Amylhester: adding citations

“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a
perception which will settle for nothing less
than making a revolution in the consciousness
of our time” (''Advertisements for Myself'' 17).

“Please do not understand me too quickly.”
(Norman Mailer’s quoting of Andre Gide in
the epigraph to ''The Deer Park'').

==I. Introduction==
Norman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness” {{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=17}} which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|1. See again ''Advertisements'' as well as essays in ''Cannibals and Christians'' and Norman Mailer, ''Pieces and Pontifications'' (Boston: Little Brown, 1982). This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as Carl Rollyson explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since The Naked and the Dead Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel.... America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on {{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=359}}.” His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn|2. One of the many critics who argue this way is Heather Nielson (pp. 23–41), who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''Oswald’s Tale'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them” (23). While her analysis of the episodes featuring Kennedy in Mailer’s work and Vidal’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John Whalen-Bridge argues persuasively in “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer” that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s
DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.’ ” Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also Whalen-Bridge, ''Political Fiction and the American Self''. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include Glenday who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA” (p. 131) and Dearborn.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War, while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to
most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn|3. I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as Coover, Doctorow and Delillo below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use Francis Fukiyama’s famous
phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

==II. A Mystery wrapped in an Enigma==
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.” {{efn|4. This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See ''Harlot’s Ghost'' pp. 1169–1187.}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the
Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?’” {{efn|5. It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See Lenin.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: Balzac, Tolstoy, and Zola, who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn|6. Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See Jameson, and McHale, among others.}} On the other hand, Bertolt Brecht’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men
in a form they can master” {{sfn|Adorno|1978|p=81}} {{efn|7. This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with Georg Lukács “Against Lukács” in ''Aesthetics and Politics'' (NY: Verso, 1978 p. 81).}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn|8. Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost” (p. 409). This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a ''post-facto'' explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by Walter Benjamin.{{efn|9. See Brecht, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater” in Brecht on Theater.}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn|10. See Benjamin pp. 85–105. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay (see footnote 45) echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{efn|11. Benjamin pp. 85–105.}} in the face of the de-personalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,” {{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=86}} inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which,“we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance”
{{sfn|Benjamin|1998|p=87}}, which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

==III. The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer==
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''Bildüngsroman'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work) {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=109}} under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la Ian Fleming. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be Conrad’s ''The Secret Agent'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn|12. A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn|13. See ''An American Dream'' and the episodes of rock climbing in ''Harlot’s Ghost''.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=102}}. Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by Harold Bloom as conditions of,“[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic’....” {{sfn|Bloom|1986|p=40}}. In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the Iron Curtain. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of
accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates''” {{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=182}}, which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist
influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—
particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the KGB works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it,“As an Agency officer, I ... encountered my fair share of plots ... but I was rarely able to see them whole” (109–110). This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his
or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to
frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly.
The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn|14. Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years” (1169), going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent” (1170). On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own” (''Norman Mailer'' 134).}} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that
under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character” (196) and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance”(197). Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an
effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means,586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers. (197–198)</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation,
the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA
who eventually defects to Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s
worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at
different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on Henry Miller, collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn|15. See Mailer, ''Genius and Lust''.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s
in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas. (556–557)</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in
my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely
because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood — then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the
prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in Harlot’s Ghost is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord” (75), or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?” (45). However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an
absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation” (54). Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly” (29). The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to
Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure” (17). He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the
novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

==IV. The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation==
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in Manichean terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and if Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for
God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.’ ” (1281). This disconcerts Harry considerably since he is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel
suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future
of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom,
to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of
God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”
~Advertisements 380! Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great
novel. In both cases, language such as “God,”“His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his
novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by
stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>It @God as the source of expression# opens the possibility that the
novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into
something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that
everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less
important. ~Advertisements 382!</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative
energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement
with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works
that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust
his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us
understand how to read Harlot’s Ghost and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because,
like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and
“less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society ~which has always been Mailer’s stated
objectives!, or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful
optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being
revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry,
not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part
of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be
revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel
that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this
deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger
in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in
new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the
novel,~but late in Harry’s life! before he decides to travel to Russia, when the
news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an
affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes
upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is
quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the
real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of
finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come ~or has come
depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative
structure of the novel! revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The
implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to
motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with
Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and
of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning
can be made of his historical interventions ~he can be asked for the truth in
Moscow! and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and
Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In
his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that
writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>Before I ask: what is a work’s position vis-à-vis the production
relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position
within them? This question concerns the function of a work
within the literary production relations of its time. In other
words, it is directly concerned with literary technique. ~87!</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the
more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short,
the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators” ~98!.

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of
the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two
explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to
complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he
won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This
doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview
for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes
Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms
authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>The reader having been given the end and the beginning will
conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place
in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between
Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that
‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if
they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in
the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of
the novel against mine. (Glenday 135)</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero”who reveals
history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at
some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of
questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results
remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel.Mailer stresses the
value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves
around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and
existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the
collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an
“author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other
hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely
out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all.Any answers given
by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since
they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by
making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with
the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we
are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about
how the novel that wasn’t written should end.We may consider whether the
public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and
so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and
beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like
a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s
place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer,
who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the
great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project
and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

==V. Back to the Future==

There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The
novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the
readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history”where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism ~as represented by
America! and communism ~represented by the Soviet bloc! is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.16 This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly
what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil
nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a
sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel.
A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold
War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American
Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the
plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece
of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is
not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists
and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any
answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out
to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance.
The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words.
We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it
won’t be written on paper.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

16. The most famous version of this comes from Francis Fukiyama’s book. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.

===Citations===
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|40em}}
* {{cite book |last=Adorno |first=Teodor |date=1978 |title=Aesthetics and Politics |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |translator-last1=Bostock |translator-first1=Anna |chapter=The Author as Producer |date=1998 |title=Understanding Brecht |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |date=1986 |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |url= |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |editor-mask=1 |date=2003 |chapter=Norman in Egypt |title=Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Norman Mailer |url= |location=Philadelphia |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Brecht |first=Bertolt |translator-last1=Willet |translator-first1=John |date=2001 |title=Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. |url= |location=New York |publisher=Hill and Wang |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Coover |first=Robert |date=1977 |title=The Public Burning |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary |date=1999 |title=Mailer a Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=DeLillo |first=Don |date=1997 |title=Underworld |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doctorow |first=E. |date=1996 |title=The Book of Daniel |url= |location=New York |publisher=Plume Penguin Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fukikyama |first=Francis |date=1998 |title=The End of History and the Last Man |url= |location=New York |publisher=Avon Books |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Glenday |first=Michael |date=1995 |title=Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=St. Martin's Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Jameson |first=Fredric |date=1991 |title=Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism |url= |location=Durham |publisher=Duke UP |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. |date=1977 |title=Selected Works in 3 Volumes |url= |location=Moscow |publisher=International Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location= |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1966 |title=Cannibals and Christians |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1955 |title=The Deer Park |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1976 |title=Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1991 |title=Harlot's Ghost |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1982 |title=Pieces and Pontifications |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little Brown |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=McHale |first=Brian |date=1992 |title=Constructing Postmodernism |url= |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Nielson |first=Heather |title=Jack's Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=American Studies International |volume=35 |issue=3 |date=1997 |pages=23-24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=1991 |title=The Lives of Norman Mailer |url= |location=New York |publisher=Paragon House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |title=The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer |url= |journal=Connotations |volume=5 |issue=2-3 |date=1995 |pages=304-321 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |author-mask=1 |date=1998 |title=Fiction and the American Self |url= |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois P |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

User:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-07T05:53:43Z

Amylhester: notes about progress

Sources added:
Adorno, Teodor, et al. Aesthetics and Politics. New York: Verso, 1978.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Author as Producer.” Understanding Brecht. Trans. by Anna Bostock. New York: Verso, 1998.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.
———. “Norman in Egypt.” . Ed. and with Intro. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.
Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. Trans. and ed. by John Willet. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.
Coover, Robert. The Public Burning. New York: Grove Press, 1977.
Dearborn, Mary V. Mailer a Biography. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
DeLillo, Don. Underworld. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1997.
Doctorow, E.L. The Book of Daniel. New York: Plume Penguin Press, 1996.
Fukikyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Avon Books, 1998.
Glenday, Michael K. Norman Mailer. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP,
1991.
Lenin, V.I. Selected Works in 3 Volumes. Moscow: International Press, 1977.
Mailer, Norman. Advertisements for Myself. New York: Putnam, 1959.
———. An American Dream. New York: Dial, 1965.
———. Cannibals and Christians. New York: Dial, 1966.
———. The Deer Park. New York: Putnam, 1955.
———. Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller. New York:
Grove, 1976.
———. Harlot’s Ghost. New York: Random House, 1991
———. Pieces and Pontifications. Boston: Little Brown, 1982.
McHale, Brian. Constructing Postmodernism. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
Nielson, Heather.“Jack’s Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and
Norman Mailer.” American Studies International ~October 1997!: 23–24.
Rollyson, Carl. The Lives of Norman Mailer. New York: Paragon House, 1991.
Whalen-Bridge, John. “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer.” Connotations ~1995–6!:
304–321.
———. Political Fiction and the American Self. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1998

'''cut/paste of previously edited text to readd later:'''

“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a
perception which will settle for nothing less
than making a revolution in the consciousness
of our time” (''Advertisements for Myself'' 17).

“Please do not understand me too quickly.”
(Norman Mailer’s quoting of Andre Gide in
the epigraph to ''The Deer Park'').

==I. Introduction==
Norman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness” (''Advertisements 17'') which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|1. See again ''Advertisements'' as well as essays in ''Cannibals and Christians'' and Norman Mailer, ''Pieces and Pontifications'' (Boston: Little Brown, 1982). This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as Carl Rollyson explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since The Naked and the Dead Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel.... America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on (359).” His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn|2. One of the many critics who argue this way is Heather Nielson (pp. 23–41), who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''Oswald’s Tale'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them” (23). While her analysis of the episodes featuring Kennedy in Mailer’s work and Vidal’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John Whalen-Bridge argues persuasively in “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer” that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s
DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.’ ” Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also Whalen-Bridge, ''Political Fiction and the American Self''. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include Glenday who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA” (p. 131) and Dearborn.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War, while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to
most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn|3. I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as Coover, Doctorow and Delillo below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use Francis Fukiyama’s famous
phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

==II. A Mystery wrapped in an Enigma==
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.” {{efn|4. This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See ''Harlot’s Ghost'' pp. 1169–1187.}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the
Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?’” {{efn|5. It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See Lenin.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: Balzac, Tolstoy, and Zola, who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn|6. Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See Jameson, and McHale, among others.}} On the other hand, Bertolt Brecht’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men
in a form they can master” (Aesthetics and Politics 81){{efn|7. This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with Georg Lukács “Against Lukács” in ''Aesthetics and Politics'' (NY: Verso, 1978 p. 81).}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn|8. Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost” (p. 409). This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a post-facto explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by Walter Benjamin.{{efn|9. See Brecht, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater” in Brecht on Theater.}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn|10. See Benjamin pp. 85–105. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay (see footnote 45) echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{efn|11. Benjamin pp. 85–105.}} in the face of the de-personalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,” (86) inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which,“we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance” (87), which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

==III. The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer==
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''Bildüngsroman'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work) (''HG'' 109) under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la Ian Fleming. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be Conrad’s ''The Secret Agent'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn|12. A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn|13. See ''An American Dream'' and the episodes of rock climbing in ''Harlot’s Ghost''.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs” (102). Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by Harold Bloom as conditions of,“[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic’....” (“Norman” 40). In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the Iron Curtain. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of
accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates''” (182), which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist
influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—
particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the KGB works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it,“As an Agency officer, I ... encountered my fair share of plots ... but I was rarely able to see them whole” (109–110). This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his
or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to
frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly.
The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn|14. Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years” (1169), going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent” (1170). On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own” (''Norman Mailer'' 134).}} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that
under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character” (196) and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance”(197). Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an
effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means,586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers. (197–198)</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation,
the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA
who eventually defects to Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s
worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at
different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on Henry Miller, collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn|15. See Mailer, ''Genius and Lust''.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s
in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas. (556–557)</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in
my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely
because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood — then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the
prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in Harlot’s Ghost is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord” (75), or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?” (45). However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an
absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation” (54). Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly” (29). The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to
Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure” (17). He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the
novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

==IV. The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation==
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in Manichean terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and if Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for
God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.’ ” (1281). This disconcerts Harry considerably since he is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel
suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future
of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom,
to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of
God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”
~Advertisements 380! Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great
novel. In both cases, language such as “God,”“His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his
novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by
stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>It @God as the source of expression# opens the possibility that the
novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into
something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that
everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less
important. ~Advertisements 382!</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative
energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement
with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works
that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust
his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us
understand how to read Harlot’s Ghost and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because,
like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and
“less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society ~which has always been Mailer’s stated
objectives!, or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful
optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being
revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry,
not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part
of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be
revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel
that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this
deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger
in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in
new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the
novel,~but late in Harry’s life! before he decides to travel to Russia, when the
news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an
affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes
upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is
quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the
real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of
finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come ~or has come
depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative
structure of the novel! revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The
implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to
motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with
Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and
of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning
can be made of his historical interventions ~he can be asked for the truth in
Moscow! and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and
Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In
his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that
writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>Before I ask: what is a work’s position vis-à-vis the production
relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position
within them? This question concerns the function of a work
within the literary production relations of its time. In other
words, it is directly concerned with literary technique. ~87!</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the
more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short,
the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators” ~98!.

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of
the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two
explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to
complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he
won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This
doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview
for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes
Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms
authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>The reader having been given the end and the beginning will
conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place
in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between
Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that
‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if
they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in
the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of
the novel against mine. (Glenday 135)</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero”who reveals
history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at
some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of
questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results
remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel.Mailer stresses the
value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves
around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and
existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the
collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an
“author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other
hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely
out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all.Any answers given
by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since
they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by
making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with
the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we
are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about
how the novel that wasn’t written should end.We may consider whether the
public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and
so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and
beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like
a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s
place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer,
who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the
great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project
and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

==V. Back to the Future==

There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The
novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the
readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history”where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism ~as represented by
America! and communism ~represented by the Soviet bloc! is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.16 This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly
what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil
nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a
sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel.
A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold
War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American
Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the
plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece
of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is
not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists
and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any
answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out
to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance.
The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words.
We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it
won’t be written on paper.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

16. The most famous version of this comes from Francis Fukiyama’s book. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.

User talk:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-07T05:50:27Z

Amylhester: question about journal citations

[[User:Amylhester|Amylhester]] ([[User talk:Amylhester|talk]]) 00:29, 3 September 2020 (EDT)

questions -

1. Include the "Ed. and with Intro. Harold Bloom" portion?

———. “Norman in Egypt.” . '''Ed. and with Intro. Harold Bloom'''. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.
:{{Reply to|Amylhester}} First, be sure you're using citation templates. Just using editor here is fine, unless you're citing the intro.

2. What if ed. and trans. by same person and with a different author??

Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. '''Trans. and ed. by John Willet'''. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.
:You could use both in the template, or pick the more important: in this case editor.

3. What to do if editor citation lists and editor and et al.?

Adorno, Teodor, '''et al'''. Aesthetics and Politics. New York: Verso, 1978.
:Find the orginal source and list the editors. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:50, 3 September 2020 (EDT)
::{{Reply to|Grlucas}} Thank you for your help. [[User:Amylhester|Amylhester]] ([[User talk:Amylhester|talk]]) 00:31, 4 September 2020 (EDT)

[[User:Amylhester|Amylhester]] ([[User talk:Amylhester|talk]]) 01:49, 7 September 2020 (EDT)

My citations included 2 journals which didn't exactly fit the usual MLA style - missing the volume and issue numbers and used month instead. I looked up the citations using GALILEO to find that information and included it and wanted to double-check that was the correct thing to do.

original text:

Nielson, Heather.“Jack’s Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and
Norman Mailer.” American Studies International (October 1997): 23–24.

Whalen-Bridge, John. “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer.” Connotations (1995–6):
304–321.

the citations I added to my article:
{{Refbegin}}
* {{cite journal |last=Nielson |first=Heather |title=Jack's Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer |url= |journal=American Studies International |volume=35 |issue=3 |date=1997 |pages=23-24 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Whalen-Bridge |first=John |title=The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer |url= |journal=Connotations |volume=5 |issue=2-3 |date=1995|pages=304-321 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/A New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost

2020-09-07T05:48:17Z

Amylhester: Undo revision 11173 by Amylhester (talk)

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/A New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost

2020-09-07T05:46:07Z

Amylhester: /* Works Cited */ fixed a date

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/A New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost

2020-09-07T05:33:53Z

Amylhester: /* Works Cited */ added 10 entries Mailer thru Whalen-Bridge

User:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-05T02:45:54Z

Amylhester:

* {{cite book |last= |first= |date= |title= |url= |location= |publisher= |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last= |first= |title= |url= |journal= |volume= |issue= |date= |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last= |first= |date= |title= |url= |magazine= |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last= |first= |date= |title= |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite web |url= |title= |last= |first= |date= |website= |publisher= |access-date= |quote= |ref=harv }}

Sources added:
Adorno, Teodor, et al. Aesthetics and Politics. New York: Verso, 1978.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Author as Producer.” Understanding Brecht. Trans. by Anna Bostock. New York: Verso, 1998.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.
———. “Norman in Egypt.” . Ed. and with Intro. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.
Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. Trans. and ed. by John Willet. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.
Coover, Robert. The Public Burning. New York: Grove Press, 1977.
Dearborn, Mary V. Mailer a Biography. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
DeLillo, Don. Underworld. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1997.
Doctorow, E.L. The Book of Daniel. New York: Plume Penguin Press, 1996.
Fukikyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Avon Books, 1998.
Glenday, Michael K. Norman Mailer. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP,
1991.
Lenin, V.I. Selected Works in 3 Volumes. Moscow: International Press, 1977.
Mailer, Norman. Advertisements for Myself. New York: Putnam, 1959.
———. An American Dream. New York: Dial, 1965.

'''Sources Not yet added:'''
———. Cannibals and Christians. New York: Dial, 1966.
———. The Deer Park. New York: Putnam, 1955.
———. Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller. New York:
Grove, 1976.
———. Harlot’s Ghost. New York: Random House, 1991
———. Pieces and Pontifications. Boston: Little Brown, 1982.
McHale, Brian. Constructing Postmodernism. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
Nielson, Heather.“Jack’s Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and
Norman Mailer.” American Studies International ~October 1997!: 23–24.
Rollyson, Carl. The Lives of Norman Mailer. New York: Paragon House, 1991.
Whalen-Bridge, John. “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer.” Connotations ~1995–6!:
304–321.
———. Political Fiction and the American Self. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1998

'''cut/paste of previously edited text to readd later:'''

“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a
perception which will settle for nothing less
than making a revolution in the consciousness
of our time” (''Advertisements for Myself'' 17).

“Please do not understand me too quickly.”
(Norman Mailer’s quoting of Andre Gide in
the epigraph to ''The Deer Park'').

==I. Introduction==
Norman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness” (''Advertisements 17'') which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|1. See again ''Advertisements'' as well as essays in ''Cannibals and Christians'' and Norman Mailer, ''Pieces and Pontifications'' (Boston: Little Brown, 1982). This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as Carl Rollyson explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since The Naked and the Dead Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel.... America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on (359).” His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn|2. One of the many critics who argue this way is Heather Nielson (pp. 23–41), who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''Oswald’s Tale'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them” (23). While her analysis of the episodes featuring Kennedy in Mailer’s work and Vidal’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John Whalen-Bridge argues persuasively in “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer” that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s
DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.’ ” Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also Whalen-Bridge, ''Political Fiction and the American Self''. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include Glenday who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA” (p. 131) and Dearborn.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War, while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to
most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn|3. I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as Coover, Doctorow and Delillo below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use Francis Fukiyama’s famous
phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

==II. A Mystery wrapped in an Enigma==
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.” {{efn|4. This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See ''Harlot’s Ghost'' pp. 1169–1187.}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the
Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?’” {{efn|5. It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See Lenin.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: Balzac, Tolstoy, and Zola, who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn|6. Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See Jameson, and McHale, among others.}} On the other hand, Bertolt Brecht’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men
in a form they can master” (Aesthetics and Politics 81){{efn|7. This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with Georg Lukács “Against Lukács” in ''Aesthetics and Politics'' (NY: Verso, 1978 p. 81).}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn|8. Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost” (p. 409). This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a post-facto explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by Walter Benjamin.{{efn|9. See Brecht, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater” in Brecht on Theater.}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn|10. See Benjamin pp. 85–105. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay (see footnote 45) echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{efn|11. Benjamin pp. 85–105.}} in the face of the de-personalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,” (86) inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which,“we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance” (87), which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

==III. The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer==
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''Bildüngsroman'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work) (''HG'' 109) under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la Ian Fleming. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be Conrad’s ''The Secret Agent'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn|12. A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn|13. See ''An American Dream'' and the episodes of rock climbing in ''Harlot’s Ghost''.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs” (102). Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by Harold Bloom as conditions of,“[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic’....” (“Norman” 40). In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the Iron Curtain. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of
accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates''” (182), which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist
influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—
particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the KGB works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it,“As an Agency officer, I ... encountered my fair share of plots ... but I was rarely able to see them whole” (109–110). This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his
or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to
frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly.
The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn|14. Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years” (1169), going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent” (1170). On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own” (''Norman Mailer'' 134).}} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that
under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character” (196) and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance”(197). Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an
effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means,586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers. (197–198)</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation,
the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA
who eventually defects to Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s
worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at
different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on Henry Miller, collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn|15. See Mailer, ''Genius and Lust''.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s
in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas. (556–557)</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in
my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely
because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood — then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the
prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in Harlot’s Ghost is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord” (75), or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?” (45). However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an
absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation” (54). Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly” (29). The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to
Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure” (17). He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the
novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

==IV. The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation==
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in Manichean terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and if Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for
God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.’ ” (1281). This disconcerts Harry considerably since he is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel
suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future
of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom,
to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of
God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”
~Advertisements 380! Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great
novel. In both cases, language such as “God,”“His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his
novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by
stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>It @God as the source of expression# opens the possibility that the
novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into
something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that
everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less
important. ~Advertisements 382!</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative
energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement
with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works
that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust
his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us
understand how to read Harlot’s Ghost and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because,
like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and
“less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society ~which has always been Mailer’s stated
objectives!, or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful
optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being
revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry,
not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part
of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be
revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel
that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this
deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger
in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in
new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the
novel,~but late in Harry’s life! before he decides to travel to Russia, when the
news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an
affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes
upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is
quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the
real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of
finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come ~or has come
depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative
structure of the novel! revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The
implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to
motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with
Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and
of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning
can be made of his historical interventions ~he can be asked for the truth in
Moscow! and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and
Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In
his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that
writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>Before I ask: what is a work’s position vis-à-vis the production
relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position
within them? This question concerns the function of a work
within the literary production relations of its time. In other
words, it is directly concerned with literary technique. ~87!</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the
more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short,
the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators” ~98!.

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of
the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two
explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to
complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he
won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This
doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview
for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes
Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms
authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>The reader having been given the end and the beginning will
conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place
in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between
Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that
‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if
they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in
the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of
the novel against mine. (Glenday 135)</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero”who reveals
history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at
some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of
questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results
remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel.Mailer stresses the
value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves
around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and
existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the
collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an
“author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other
hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely
out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all.Any answers given
by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since
they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by
making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with
the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we
are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about
how the novel that wasn’t written should end.We may consider whether the
public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and
so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and
beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like
a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s
place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer,
who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the
great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project
and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

==V. Back to the Future==

There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The
novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the
readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history”where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism ~as represented by
America! and communism ~represented by the Soviet bloc! is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.16 This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly
what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil
nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a
sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel.
A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold
War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American
Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the
plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece
of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is
not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists
and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any
answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out
to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance.
The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words.
We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it
won’t be written on paper.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

16. The most famous version of this comes from Francis Fukiyama’s book. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/A New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost

2020-09-05T02:38:09Z

Amylhester: /* Works Cited */ added authors Glenday - Mailer

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/A New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost

2020-09-04T05:02:00Z

Amylhester: cut and paste unfinished body text to sandbox

User:Amylhester/sandbox

2020-09-04T04:58:54Z

Amylhester: cut edited body text and end notes from "A New Politics" to readd at a later date

* {{cite book |last= |first= |date= |title= |url= |location= |publisher= |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last= |first= |title= |url= |journal= |volume= |issue= |date= |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last= |first= |date= |title= |url= |magazine= |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last= |first= |date= |title= |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite web |url= |title= |last= |first= |date= |website= |publisher= |access-date= |quote= |ref=harv }}

Sources added:
Adorno, Teodor, et al. Aesthetics and Politics. New York: Verso, 1978.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Author as Producer.” Understanding Brecht. Trans. by Anna Bostock. New York: Verso, 1998.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.
———. “Norman in Egypt.” . Ed. and with Intro. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.
Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. Trans. and ed. by John Willet. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.
Coover, Robert. The Public Burning. New York: Grove Press, 1977.
Dearborn, Mary V. Mailer a Biography. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
DeLillo, Don. Underworld. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1997.
Doctorow, E.L. The Book of Daniel. New York: Plume Penguin Press, 1996.
Fukikyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Avon Books, 1998.

'''Sources Not yet added:'''

Glenday, Michael K. Norman Mailer. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP,
1991.
Lenin, V.I. Selected Works in 3 Volumes. Moscow: International Press, 1977.
Mailer, Norman. Advertisements for Myself. New York: Putnam, 1959.
———. An American Dream. New York: Dial, 1965.
———. Cannibals and Christians. New York: Dial, 1966.
———. The Deer Park. New York: Putnam, 1955.
———. Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller. New York:
Grove, 1976.
———. Harlot’s Ghost. New York: Random House, 1991
———. Pieces and Pontifications. Boston: Little Brown, 1982.
McHale, Brian. Constructing Postmodernism. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
Nielson, Heather.“Jack’s Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and
Norman Mailer.” American Studies International ~October 1997!: 23–24.
Rollyson, Carl. The Lives of Norman Mailer. New York: Paragon House, 1991.
Whalen-Bridge, John. “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer.” Connotations ~1995–6!:
304–321.
———. Political Fiction and the American Self. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1998

'''cut/paste of previously edited text to readd later:'''

“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a
perception which will settle for nothing less
than making a revolution in the consciousness
of our time” (''Advertisements for Myself'' 17).

“Please do not understand me too quickly.”
(Norman Mailer’s quoting of Andre Gide in
the epigraph to ''The Deer Park'').

==I. Introduction==
Norman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness” (''Advertisements 17'') which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|1. See again ''Advertisements'' as well as essays in ''Cannibals and Christians'' and Norman Mailer, ''Pieces and Pontifications'' (Boston: Little Brown, 1982). This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as Carl Rollyson explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since The Naked and the Dead Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel.... America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on (359).” His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn|2. One of the many critics who argue this way is Heather Nielson (pp. 23–41), who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''Oswald’s Tale'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them” (23). While her analysis of the episodes featuring Kennedy in Mailer’s work and Vidal’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John Whalen-Bridge argues persuasively in “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer” that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s
DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.’ ” Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also Whalen-Bridge, ''Political Fiction and the American Self''. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include Glenday who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA” (p. 131) and Dearborn.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War, while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to
most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn|3. I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as Coover, Doctorow and Delillo below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use Francis Fukiyama’s famous
phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

==II. A Mystery wrapped in an Enigma==
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.” {{efn|4. This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See ''Harlot’s Ghost'' pp. 1169–1187.}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the
Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?’” {{efn|5. It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See Lenin.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: Balzac, Tolstoy, and Zola, who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn|6. Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See Jameson, and McHale, among others.}} On the other hand, Bertolt Brecht’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men
in a form they can master” (Aesthetics and Politics 81){{efn|7. This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with Georg Lukács “Against Lukács” in ''Aesthetics and Politics'' (NY: Verso, 1978 p. 81).}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn|8. Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost” (p. 409). This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a post-facto explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by Walter Benjamin.{{efn|9. See Brecht, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater” in Brecht on Theater.}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn|10. See Benjamin pp. 85–105. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay (see footnote 45) echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{efn|11. Benjamin pp. 85–105.}} in the face of the de-personalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,” (86) inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which,“we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance” (87), which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

==III. The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer==
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''Bildüngsroman'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work) (''HG'' 109) under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la Ian Fleming. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be Conrad’s ''The Secret Agent'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn|12. A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn|13. See ''An American Dream'' and the episodes of rock climbing in ''Harlot’s Ghost''.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs” (102). Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by Harold Bloom as conditions of,“[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic’....” (“Norman” 40). In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the Iron Curtain. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of
accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates''” (182), which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist
influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—
particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the KGB works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it,“As an Agency officer, I ... encountered my fair share of plots ... but I was rarely able to see them whole” (109–110). This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his
or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to
frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly.
The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn|14. Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years” (1169), going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent” (1170). On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own” (''Norman Mailer'' 134).}} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that
under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character” (196) and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance”(197). Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an
effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means,586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers. (197–198)</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation,
the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA
who eventually defects to Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s
worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at
different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on Henry Miller, collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn|15. See Mailer, ''Genius and Lust''.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s
in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas. (556–557)</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in
my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely
because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood — then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the
prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in Harlot’s Ghost is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord” (75), or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?” (45). However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an
absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation” (54). Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly” (29). The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to
Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure” (17). He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the
novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

==IV. The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation==
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in Manichean terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and if Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for
God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.’ ” (1281). This disconcerts Harry considerably since he is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel
suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future
of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom,
to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of
God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”
~Advertisements 380! Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great
novel. In both cases, language such as “God,”“His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his
novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by
stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>It @God as the source of expression# opens the possibility that the
novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into
something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that
everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less
important. ~Advertisements 382!</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative
energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement
with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works
that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust
his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us
understand how to read Harlot’s Ghost and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because,
like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and
“less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society ~which has always been Mailer’s stated
objectives!, or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful
optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being
revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry,
not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part
of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be
revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel
that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this
deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger
in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in
new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the
novel,~but late in Harry’s life! before he decides to travel to Russia, when the
news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an
affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes
upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is
quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the
real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of
finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come ~or has come
depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative
structure of the novel! revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The
implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to
motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with
Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and
of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning
can be made of his historical interventions ~he can be asked for the truth in
Moscow! and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and
Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In
his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that
writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>Before I ask: what is a work’s position vis-à-vis the production
relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position
within them? This question concerns the function of a work
within the literary production relations of its time. In other
words, it is directly concerned with literary technique. ~87!</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the
more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short,
the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators” ~98!.

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of
the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two
explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to
complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he
won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This
doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview
for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes
Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms
authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>The reader having been given the end and the beginning will
conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place
in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between
Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that
‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if
they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in
the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of
the novel against mine. (Glenday 135)</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero”who reveals
history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at
some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of
questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results
remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel.Mailer stresses the
value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves
around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and
existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the
collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an
“author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other
hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely
out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all.Any answers given
by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since
they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by
making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with
the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we
are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about
how the novel that wasn’t written should end.We may consider whether the
public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and
so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and
beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like
a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s
place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer,
who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the
great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project
and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

==V. Back to the Future==

There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The
novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the
readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history”where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism ~as represented by
America! and communism ~represented by the Soviet bloc! is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.16 This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly
what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil
nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a
sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel.
A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold
War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American
Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the
plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece
of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is
not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists
and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any
answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out
to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance.
The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words.
We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it
won’t be written on paper.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

16. The most famous version of this comes from Francis Fukiyama’s book. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.

The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/A New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost

2020-09-04T04:47:08Z

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{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/A New Politics of Form in ''Harlot's Ghost''}}
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{{Byline|last=Anshen|first=David|abstract=A reading of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War. The novel resists making overt judgments on events. The novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.||url=https://prmlr.us/mr08ansh}}
“The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a
perception which will settle for nothing less
than making a revolution in the consciousness
of our time” (''Advertisements for Myself'' 17).

“Please do not understand me too quickly.”
(Norman Mailer’s quoting of Andre Gide in
the epigraph to ''The Deer Park'').

==I. Introduction==
Norman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness” (''Advertisements 17'') which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,{{efn|1. See again ''Advertisements'' as well as essays in ''Cannibals and Christians'' and Norman Mailer, ''Pieces and Pontifications'' (Boston: Little Brown, 1982). This point recurs throughout his writing.}} through writing the “great American novel” which will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as Carl Rollyson explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since The Naked and the Dead Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel.... America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on (359).” His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.{{efn|2. One of the many critics who argue this way is Heather Nielson (pp. 23–41), who sums up her conclusion about Mailer’s politics based on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and ''Oswald’s Tale'' by stating, “What an examination of the persistent presence of Kennedy in their writings tends to suggest is that, for all Mailer’s non-conformism, his oeuvre serves to ultimately uphold the defining myths of the society which he describes, while that of Vidal works to undermine them” (23). While her analysis of the episodes featuring Kennedy in Mailer’s work and Vidal’s is persuasive in showing that Mailer’s writings on Kennedy are more positive than Vidal’s, this doesn’t justify, in my opinion, the broad conclusions she draws. On the other hand, the major critic who has treated ''Harlot’s Ghost'' as a whole, John Whalen-Bridge argues persuasively in “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer” that Mailer’s novel debunks the “myth of the American Adam.” This “myth” described by R.W.B. Lewis (and others) concerns alleged American “innocence” which Whalen-Bridge convincingly demonstrates is undermined by the novel. Whalen-Bridge is the major scholar that has written in detail on ''Harlot’s Ghost'' and draws the conclusion that “His [Mailer’s
DA] fictional interpretation of American intelligence work does more than any other work of literature to help readers gain access to ‘the imagination of the state.’ ” Unfortunately, few others have recognized the critical features of the novel. See also Whalen-Bridge, ''Political Fiction and the American Self''. Others who don’t believe the novel is critical of the CIA include Glenday who, in his biography states categorically that the novel “doesn’t set out be, then, a critique of the CIA” (p. 131) and Dearborn.}} This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.

My essay offers a reading of the novel in relation to Mailer’s efforts to use fiction writing to reveal contradictions at the heart of American society and challenge American ideology, particularly in relation to the Cold War, while offering an explanation for the unorthodox formal features. In contrast to
most critics who have written on the novel, I believe that ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a fierce indictment of America during the Cold War and after, which is intensified by the unconventional form.{{efn|3. I would place this novel alongside masterpieces of Cold War literature such as Coover, Doctorow and Delillo below. All of these novels challenge the conventions of traditional literary realism and present radical formal structures.}} Indeed, I hope to show that the novel’s importance and significance, the truth it tells about American society, lies in what might appear its utter failure, both as a novel and a judgment on the history and politics, namely the way the novel fails to cohere as a novel. The novel refuses overt judgments on the events narrated. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will argue that the ''failure'' of traditional novelistic form and resolution creates a dialectic between reader and text allowing important revelations about American society to emerge which make the novel a success in telling the “truth of our times.” The truths revealed are precisely that the issues of the novel, which concern the meaning of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism and its challenges, are not over and that instead of “the end of history” (to use Francis Fukiyama’s famous
phrase) we are still plunged into unresolved history. Therefore, the novel’s form and its political and social content are unified in their challenge to the dominant societal narratives about America and how these narratives are traditionally told.

==II. A Mystery wrapped in an Enigma==
The relative neglect of the novel is easily understandable. After 1,168 pages, Norman Mailer terminates ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with a promise. He writes in bold capital letters at the end of the novel “TO BE CONTINUED.” {{efn|4. This isn’t the very end of the ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Mailer writes an “Author’s Note” which offers a defense of the novel’s claim for “verisimilitude” to historical reality and a list of nonfiction works about the CIA that informed the novel. This is followed by a list of CIA acronyms and individuals. This is an interesting and unconventional ending to a fictional spy novel. See ''Harlot’s Ghost'' pp. 1169–1187.}} There has been no sequel. To make matters worse, none of the conflicts of the novel, whether personal or political, are resolved, leaving readers to wonder about the fate of Harry Hubbard, the central character, and the other characters in the novel. This has obviously frustrated many readers. Given that Hubbard is a CIA agent caught in highly charged, real episodes in the history of the
Cold War, and considering Mailer’s career-long ambition to tell the “truth of our times,” more information is expected. The novel ends with Hubbard in Moscow, after years of service to the CIA, looking for his godfather and career mentor, known as Harlot, who may have faked death and defected to the Soviets. In the last sentence of the novel, Hubbard poses a question: “Could I be ready to find my godfather and ask him, along with everything else I would ask: ‘Whom?’ In the immortal words of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, ‘Whom? Whom does all this benefit?’” {{efn|5. It is doubtful that Lenin ever said this. Although presented as a quotation it is, as far as I can ascertain—at best—a paraphrase. It sounds a little like the title of Lenin’s famous book that also presents a question, ''What is to be Done?'' It also seems similar to the question Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s ''JFK'' asks about the Kennedy assassination—who benefits from this? See Lenin.}} It is puzzling that this question, so starkly posed, has not received an answer in the sequel promised at the end of the novel.

Mailer sets up grandiose expectations for the sequel by the incomplete ending and the final questions of the novel. The information left open concerns the fictional life of Harry Hubbard but also implies a verdict on the politics of America in the Cold War. To explain the events of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' means to reveal history since Hubbard is conveniently placed in the midst of major episodes in the Cold War due to his role in the CIA as an “agent” trying to influence developments. It is only at the end that Hubbard and readers realize the degree to which there is uncertainty as to what exactly has happened and why. In effect, the novel has set up a mystery without providing answers. However, to provide the meaning of the political events so starkly, in the form of answers to a question (“Whom does all this benefit?”), which will supposedly be answered when Harlot is located, is difficult to imagine given the deep level of political truths involved. Can any person, no matter how well placed, really be imagined who can answer ultimate truths about the meaning of the Cold War? In my view, it is to Mailer’s credit that he challenges himself to find a way to imaginatively create persuasive answers and meaning to the most important political issues of our times. Yet, it is further to his credit that, whether consciously or not, he has shown the honesty to abandon a simple approach to a career long objective which could only be achieved, I will argue, at the cost of intellectual, political, and literary triviality. In effect, Mailer turns away from a dream that, if achieved, would situate him as part of a literary tradition that includes authors he admires most: Balzac, Tolstoy, and Zola, who also strove to tell the truth of their times. However, to invent a character revealing the meaning behind historical events brings to mind the superficiality of conspiracy theories, one form of historical fiction that seems to be growing in popularity (sometimes interestingly in literature but tragically in public discourse).{{efn|6. Conspiracy theories have been taken by several critics as the hallmark of postmodern historical representation. See Jameson, and McHale, among others.}} On the other hand, Bertolt Brecht’s goal for writers that they should “render reality to men
in a form they can master” (Aesthetics and Politics 81){{efn|7. This phrase comes from Brecht’s polemic around the ''nature'' of realism with Georg Lukács “Against Lukács” in ''Aesthetics and Politics'' (NY: Verso, 1978 p. 81).}} seems the prerequisite for any politically useful fiction and sets up relevant criteria for evaluating ''Harlot’s Ghost''. Therefore, Mailer’s unwillingness or inability to write an ending or sequel to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' will be considered in light of such Brechtian goals. This paper will show that the novel’s lack of resolution is best understood not as a personal failure, or as symptomatic of the impossibility of political writing at the present time, but rather represents a new and valuable strategy in Mailer’s efforts to present unpleasant realities of American society. It should be noted, in passing, that my argument is not based on Mailer’s conscious ''intention'', which cannot be definitively ascertained, but rather on the logic of the novel in relation to its historical and political subject matter and Mailer’s stated objectives. These objectives are derived from Mailer’s career-long writings, interviews and public pronouncements and, in my view, form a clear and definable worldview and approach to human existence and human freedom.

With a few notable exceptions, this novel hasn’t fared well among critics and readers because it has been taken as conservative and sympathetic to the CIA, and because of its lack of an ending. These reactions need to be reconsidered. The novel is not a flattering portrait of the CIA, as we shall see, despite the tendency of some commentators to conflate the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' with that of its narrator and protagonist, Harry Hubbard who, at least initially, views the CIA as a noble organization.{{efn|8. Mary Dearborn in her recent biography of Norman Mailer takes this view of the work. She writes, “To Hubbard, America is a country that ‘had God’s sanction’ and he is privileged and honored to serve it” and concludes from her reading of the novel that “Norman’s admiration for the CIA, and his approval of what he takes to be its patrician ways, is obvious in Harlot’s Ghost” (p. 409). This seems to me to miss the ambiguity and tension that drive the novel and represents a too simplistic conflation of the framework of the protagonist with the logic of the novel.}} ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents a damning vision of contemporary American society that fits into an alternative canon of politically engaged, Cold War literature that find traditional modes of representation inadequate for conditions of late capitalism. The novel’s lack of closure, although frustrating to many readers, reflects an unwillingness to artificially resolve the real historical conditions and conflicts depicted in the novel—even if this is a post-facto explanation. This refusal of premature closure represents a new politics of form for Mailer. To understand the novel’s lack of ending, we need to consider the subtle and unexpected affinities between Mailer’s performance and the Brechtian concepts of how political art should function as elaborated by Walter Benjamin.{{efn|9. See Brecht, “The Modern Theater is the Epic Theater” in Brecht on Theater.}} The novel’s lack of closure is best understood by considering it in light of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, influenced by Brecht, “The Author as Producer.”{{efn|10. See Benjamin pp. 85–105. I wish to make it clear that I am not suggesting that Mailer was influenced by this essay directly but rather that it helps us understand the functioning and logic of the structure of the novel. While Mailer never cites Benjamin or Brecht, in relation to this novel or in any of his writings (that I know of), his explanation for the structure of the novel, quoted towards the end of this essay (see footnote 45) echoes their approach.}} Benjamin confronts the question that has haunted Mailer for years—namely, how can authors effectively and meaningfully use their writing to expand creativity and human freedom{{efn|11. Benjamin pp. 85–105.}} in the face of the de-personalizing effects of modern capitalism. It is often the case that the politics of a work of fiction is reduced to its explicit political content but Benjamin, in contrast makes the claim, still radical in current circumstances, that “the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense,” (86) inextricably linking political content to form. Therefore, by Benjamin’s criteria the politics of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' do not reside in what it overtly tells us about the politics of the CIA, but rather through a more complex dialectic between the novel’s form and content. The justification for Benjamin’s assertion lies in his description of a situation in which,“we are in the midst of a vast process in which literary forms are being melted down, a process in which many of the contrasts in terms of which we have been accustomed to think may lose their relevance” (87), which is more true in the contemporary media and information explosion that accompanies late capitalism than when Benjamin wrote. Mailer’s incomplete novel can be taken as coherent if, despite the belief that we live in a post-ideological era where the struggle between capitalism and its challenges are over, the issues at the heart of the Cold War remain unresolved, leaving a final word impossible.

==III. The Portrait of a Young Man—Hubbard and Mailer==
There is a strange ambiguity within ''Harlot’s Ghost'' concerning the novel’s subject matter. The novel is about real historical events yet it also serves as a ''Bildüngsroman'' (as Hubbard himself describes the work) (''HG'' 109) under the veneer of the spy genre. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' certainly disappoints readers who expect the traditional features of spy novels, since all of the experiences described are left profoundly opaque and there are no heroic resolutions à la Ian Fleming. Perhaps the closest literary comparison would be Conrad’s ''The Secret Agent'' since both novels are filled with bureaucratic machinations, unsavory characters, and a vision of society in terminal crisis, although Mailer never provides even the limited cognitive satisfaction of Conrad’s highly ambiguous work. In ''The Secret Agent'', readers are at least provided with enough details to understand the motivations of the characters and the events of the novel. ''Harlot’s Ghost'' features an almost complete, radical indeterminacy, where it is not just the characters that don’t know the meaning of the events but also the readers and perhaps even the author himself. This situation is justified by understanding the real subject matter of the novel.

Critics who have written about the novel have generally taken it as a simple novel about the CIA, and have failed to notice its allegorical features and the way the novel operates.{{efn|12. A notable exception, as mentioned above, is John Whalen-Bridge.}} On the literal level, the novel treats historical events from the Cold War and espionage. On a deeper level, the novel concerns issues central to Mailer, namely the possibility of creativity, freedom, and the cost of success in American society. Mailer’s intellectual framework, based on the valorization of courage and existential integrity as the road to self-expansion, is tested in this novel through characters who strive to succeed in influencing history.{{efn|13. See ''An American Dream'' and the episodes of rock climbing in ''Harlot’s Ghost''.}} Further, as is often true of Mailer’s writing, questions of individuality and freedom intersect with the status of ''writing'' and being a ''writer''. The status of writing is explicitly at stake since the novel is formed by a series of incomplete narratives with missing information from the protagonist Hubbard, who at one point explains, “I clung to my writings as if they were body organs” (102). Hubbard feels that if he can narrate the events he will have gained knowledge and provided absolute truths; however, since his narrative if fragmentary, filled with gaps, and incomplete, he cannot fulfill either goal.

Mailer’s treatment of the dangers and conditions of life in the CIA gives a clue to the novel’s real subject matter, which is broader than just the military and information gathering features of the Cold War. The Cold War and espionage serve as parts of a greater whole, as metonymic representations of the nature of life in America. This explains the fact that we find few episodes of physical danger in Mailer’s CIA. Instead, the difficulty of CIA work seems to parallel the struggles of any individual striving for success inside a large, faceless bureaucracy and an impersonal society. Harry Hubbard describes himself at the beginning of the novel when he reviews his entire career, as a once-promising CIA operative, who is reduced to hack status. He has failed in every major project and has been reduced to the object of amusement by his colleagues who whisper about his failed potential. Indeed, all the agents in the novel, whether fictional or based on real CIA agents, are obsessed with the most American of ambitions: career advancement. Courage, skill, and grace (key values for Mailer) are generally tested in the shark infested waters of “the Company,” not by evil madmen intent on taking over the world, but by common features of life in capitalist America, including the struggle for career advancement. The dangers to America are what America is becoming. This theme is familiar in Mailer’s work and has been accurately summarized by Harold Bloom as conditions of,“[A]n America where he [Mailer] sees our bodies and spirits as becoming increasingly artificial, even ‘plastic’....” (“Norman” 40). In other words, authentic experience and meaningful action is constantly threatened by standardizing features and mediocrity prevalent in the CIA (“the Company” extraordinaire).

An indicative example of life in the CIA and its “dangers” face Hubbard on his first assignment. He is placed in a records room known as the “Snake Pit” and ordered to provide information and files on an individual known only by a code acronym. He cannot locate the data since it has either been removed or lost. Since he is under orders by a superior officer overseas to provide this information, which cannot be located, his mission becomes to conceal his own identity as an incompetent data clerk. He is able to do this with the help of his mentor and Godfather, Harlot, who has the power to change Harry’s own code name acronym. Eventually, he gets placed overseas and finds himself in West Germany, serving under Bill Harvey (the real CIA station head at that time) who gives him the assignment of locating the real identity of the incompetent data clerk who, it turns out, failed to locate information for Harvey. Hubbard’s mission becomes investigating and reporting on the real identity of an incompetent clerk who turns out to be Hubbard himself (shades of Oedipus).

Hubbard manages to conceal his identity despite close dealings with Harvey. However, he never finds out the significance of his original inability to locate the data requested. Perhaps the original missing information would have provided Harvey with information about a double agent, reporting to the East Germans about the secret construction of a tunnel, which would have aided the West in spiriting information and people across the Iron Curtain. In other words, Hubbard’s failure might have been of real importance in the Cold War. This distinguishes life in the CIA from other agencies or bureaus of government or business, since the CIA is, to a very large degree, in the business of directly intervening in history through the achievement of
accurate information or “intelligence.” Hubbard makes clear that he is attracted to the CIA precisely because, as he explains in his CIA personal history statement, “''I have been brought up to face ultimates''” (182), which reflects the belief that the CIA is the road to truth and effective action. However, truth is never so easy. Harlot argues to Hubbard that the successful completion of the tunnel would have been a disaster because it would have provided ''too much'' information about the real state of affairs in the Soviet bloc (a weak level of military preparedness and a series of bankrupt economies), which would threaten CIA funding. Harlot prefers disinformation to accurate information because it justifies future government expenditures. Did he set up Hubbard? Another possibility readers are forced to consider is that Harlot himself is a double agent and therefore subverts the tunnel to aid the Soviets. Readers, like Hubbard, never know for sure.

When Hubbard moves on to operations in Uruguay to fight communist
influence, he receives a secret message from a high-ranking KGB official that there is a high-ranking double agent and he shouldn’t trust anyone—
particularly the Soviet Division of the CIA. When Hubbard is debriefed; that is, interrogated by the Soviet Division, he decides not to report this part of the message. His evasion sets in motion a prolonged series of questions: it seems suspicious to the Soviet Division, experts on how the KGB works, that a KGB agent would become a double agent for the US by fingering double agents against the US without specifying who they are. And, of course, the KGB does act exactly as expected to act, but Harry, not knowing how the KGB is supposed to act, puts himself in jeopardy. If his omission is revealed, Hubbard will appear as a double agent himself, but with the help of Harlot he is able to get out of the jam. Harlot himself offers the theory that if Hubbard mentioned the Soviet Division, it would be taken, by the Soviet Division, as evidence that Harlot and Harry were intent on destroying the Soviet Division.

This picture of CIA activities would be ridiculous if it didn’t present a convincing picture of institutional logic. All of these gaps in knowledge are typical of the novel. Indeed, they present a consistent picture of inherent, systematic obstacles to effective activity. As Hubbard puts it,“As an Agency officer, I ... encountered my fair share of plots ... but I was rarely able to see them whole” (109–110). This conflicts with the “existential” quest for courage, freedom and effective action since for an individual to freely choose his
or her behavior, they must be able to understand their situation with a certain degree of accuracy. What prevents success in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is not lack of courage or unwillingness to face unpleasant truths, but rather the daily functioning of compartmentalized, fragmented, and isolated individuals pursuing their own local interests. Knowledge and effective action are revealed as impossible on a micro-level, despite the traditional claim that competing interests in a market system result in maximum efficiency, fair results, and the common good. Truth, if it exists at all in this fictional world of espionage, can only be imagined as a whole picture looked at from the outside of the multiple bureaus and interests. However, if we take these episodes as suggestive of American society more broadly with its logic of privatization and the market system, we are given a critical picture of how the divergent interests that operate within American capitalist society serve to
frustrate the interests of the whole. The ultimate logic of capitalism and the market (where each individual pursues individual interests) are revealed as leading to incoherence and flawed results. American society is in crisis, unable to function effectively in the Cold War because so-called intelligence gathering can never effectively provide more than limited and partial information, and truth is contingent upon pragmatic considerations.

The major characters and their problems also function more narrowly.
The CIA agents, determined to influence history, are all would-be authors; they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas similar to Mailer himself.{{efn|14. Mailer makes explicit his connection with his characters in the “Authors Note” of ''Harlot’s Ghost'' when he says that, “I wrote this book with the part of my mind that had lived in the CIA for forty years” (1169), going on to say that he might have joined the CIA provided he had a “different political bent” (1170). On at least one other occasion, he explicitly compared the life of writers, and his, with CIA agents. In an interview quoted by Glenday, he explains, “I have an umbilical connection to ''Harlot’s Ghost'' because I’ve been obsessed with questions of identity my whole life” explaining that the changes in his status as a writer have been comparable to “spies and actors who take on roles that are not their own” (''Norman Mailer'' 134).}} On the most general level, they are all ambitious and determined, but are left in a precarious status in terms of their ultimate contribution to history (like Mailer).

The novel opens with Hubbard reading over his memoirs. He opines that
under other circumstances he might have settled as a writer (just as Mailer states in the “Author’s note” that under other circumstances he might have been a CIA agent, which reveals similarities between the two “spooky arts”) but he wonders if anyone will ever read his document. We flash back to his early life where, notably, there are many common features between the tradecraft of writing and espionage. Hubbard learns that espionage is an art. He finds out that “codes” express and determine the life of an agent. Codes change an individual’s name, and Hubbard expresses the view that “the change of name itself ought to be enough to alter one’s character” (196) and that “even as shifting one’s cryptonym called forth a new potentiality for oneself, so there was a shiver of metamorphosis in this alteration of appearance”(197). Developing a code name is taken as the construction of a personality, one of the primary tasks of writers and CIA agents alike. Being an
effective agent is almost directly compared to the kinds of imagination and creativity required for producing powerful literature. For example, Hubbard describes his early training:

<blockquote>We were assigned a specific color for each number...

[n]ext, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, a lamp. If the first three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to picture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange lamp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman in a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange chair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means,586-4216 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects.... I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw hues so soon as I heard numbers. (197–198)</blockquote>

Espionage is the art of metaphor. Representation allows transformation,
the alteration of “appearances” and signifiers creating powerful new meanings. This is what agents learn in their CIA schooling, according to Mailer. They don’t just master symbols, metaphors, codes, and figures of speech; they also master influence over others. This is Harlot’s specialty, what he trains agents in, and he stresses that influencing individuals through the art of espionage is linked with the struggle to influence history. This is made particularly clear when “counter-espionage,” or developing double agents, is taught by Harlot and practiced by Hubbard in Uruguay. Hubbard describes feeling a loyalty to his “creation” Chevi Fuertes, a leftist won over to the CIA
who eventually defects to Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fails to create effective characters or characters misunderstood by critics. Through these and other episodes in the CIA, we see that Hubbard’s grand ambitions parallel Mailer’s, and interestingly, generally lead to failure.

It is not just Harry that can be seen as embodying elements of Mailer’s
worldview. Kittredge, a woman agent married to both Harry and Harlot at
different times in the novel, is a career psychologist and theorist for the CIA, and she also articulates a theory of personality that shares much in common with Mailer’s views. (Mailer’s worldview is frequently given voice in almost all of his novels since ''An American Dream''.) Her explanations of human behavior are direct articulations of Mailer’s theories of the human personality, to the degree that her theories seems straight out of Mailer’s essays on Henry Miller, collected in the anthology ''Genius and Lust'', or even Mailer’s last collection of reflections, ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation''.{{efn|15. See Mailer, ''Genius and Lust''.}} She articulates, in great detail, Mailer’s oft-stated theory of the dual nature of the human personality and the concept of the “Alpha and Omega” of the psyche; the two-sided, male-female, divided nature of the human personality. She explains that when one acts in a destructive or ineffective manner, this should be understood as the inability to reconcile two sides of an individual’s personality. Although she has had a successful career as the CIA’s
in-house psychologist and philosopher, she has a problem: her career is failing. In fact, it is an interesting fact that despite her championing of Mailer’s views, she is in despair. It is a sign of Mailer’s own self-critical ability to question his own perspective that characters fail and flounder despite articulating views close to Mailer’s. She writes:

<blockquote>Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden of woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration...

Harry, life has always treated me as a darling, and for much too long. If my mother merely adored me my father more than made up for it.... My brain was so fertile that I could have gone off to a desert island and been deliriously happy with myself. The only pains I knew were the ferocious congestions attendant on new ideas. (556–557)</blockquote>

Mailer has described feeling as if he were the literary darling of critics after his early success with ''The Naked and The Dead'', which was extravagantly praised, but followed by harshly treated subsequent novels, ''The Deer Park'' and ''Barbary Shore''. Clearly, Mailer knew what it felt like to have incredibly “fertile” periods of creativity accompanied by frustration. Mailer has shown a repeated willingness to air publicly the frustrations of being a writer in his writing. Kittredge ends her despair, as Mailer so often has, by resolving to “find a way to renew oneself.”

Despite her articulation of Mailer’s theories, she, like all the characters, is unable ultimately to account for her sense of failure, and the theory fails. What makes this reading important about ''Harlot’s Ghost'' is that the novel functions as a testing ground for Mailer’s ideology, yet reveals the possibility of deconstructing that ideology. Mailer has stressed, in his essays and fiction, his conviction that courage and will determine success and that we must be “existentially” responsible for the conditions of our life. Bravery and honesty must be summoned and maintained and then we will be successful, Mailer claims. Mailer’s conviction is represented in ''An American Dream'' when Stephen Rojack walks around an apartment building balcony ledge, staving off the attempt of a devil-like character to push him off. After this act, Rojack, achieves inner peace and the novel resolves (unpersuasively, in
my view).

The problem of failure, therefore, is a problem in Mailer’s worldview. This may explain the persistence of the supernatural in Mailer’s writings with the frequent presence of powerful forces, pressures, and “ghosts” that serve to constrict or destroy. The pseudo-metaphoric struggle between the individual spirit and supernatural forces (in all their murky strangeness and mystery) is central in almost all of Mailer’s writing. These “ghosts” seem to serve the function of calling upon individuals to achieve inner courage and strength, and also, to explain the failure of these values. What must be noticed is that all the agents in ''Harlot’s Ghost'' seem headed toward failure, precisely
because of intangible conditions that cannot be dealt with or understood — then the novel’s abrupt ending leaves their lives and history suspended, with Kittredge either speaking to Harlot or his ghost. Why doesn’t the novel resolve this? It is as if Mailer stands at the abyss of a logic he will not face, namely that courage and spiritual development cannot provide success in the face of the impersonal forces of American society, and turns away out of fear and frustration. But this turning away is actually supreme honesty for Mailer’s project since it reveals the true unresolved state of American society.

In Mailer’s writing, dualism has not been enough to explain away the
prevalent dread of failure. He has repeatedly supplemented his dualist explanation with “ghosts” and references to the battle between God and the Devil. What are these strange powers that move and slip in all realms of Mailer’s literary life? The unknowable and the supernatural in Harlot’s Ghost is manifest in the character of Harlot himself. Harlot is the God-like figure of the novel as Hubbard explains, “Harlot [is] a manifest of the Lord” (75), or when he believes Harlot is dead Hubbard poses the question, “What would you do if you received incontrovertible news that the Lord had died?” (45). However literally we take this, it is clear by the end of the novel that Harlot’s status as a character who will reveal the mysteries of the novel is made problematic by his uncertain status as either dead, alive, or a ghost. History as an
absolute truth is blocked by the structure of American society in ways so effectively represented in this novel, yet history itself is experienced as an inexplicable failure by Mailer’s characters. They fail to effectively intervene in history, most clearly in their efforts to defeat the Cuban revolution. This explains the mysteries around Harlot and his “ghost”; how else to explain heroic efforts that fail, if you believe, like Harry Hubbard that “love [is] a reward [for courage]. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity or loss, had succeeded in stirring the
power of creation” (54). Harlot, is amongst all else, the rival for Kittredge’s affections, whom she seems to be talking with toward the end of the novel’s chronology. Mailer himself states in ''On God'', “my own experience tells me that the degree one is brave, one finds more love than when one is cowardly” (29). The mysterious and ghostly is precisely the failure of ambition, of courage and the American dream (if you work hard and persevere, you succeed—if you fail it is your own fault). Mailer, like his characters, is caught in this duality: he subscribes to the American dream, yet realizes his own experience doesn’t correspond to it. This requires mysticism to sustain the dream. If you are worthy, the “powers of creation” will be stirred, but if you fail the same powers will block you.

There is one other “author” who functions with a formal similarity to
Mailer in ''Harlot’s Ghost'', namely Harlot. He is the master spy that is expected to tell the truth and reveal all in the sequel. He has been the guiding influence on events, the person Hubbard describes as his own personal “master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect—machismo” who “gave life courses in grace under pressure” (17). He is the author of the ideology of courage that Hubbard develops. Of course, it must be stressed that Harlot tests his willingness to face absolutes, to push beyond the limits, and he fails during a rock climbing accident which reduces him to a wheelchair and literal and symbolic impotence (Kittredge leaves him after the accident and marries Hubbard), killing their son, and damaging his career. This suggests the limitations of Harlot’s framework and, by extension, Mailer’s.

Harlot, however, remains the author of the various plots that drive the
novel. In this sense, he is again like Mailer. He is expected to answer the questions that have been left unanswered and provide historical truth. Harlot is the godfather to Hubbard, the god-like figure who would be in a position to tell the truth and rise above the fray of conflicting interests and perspectives, but he is left fundamentally unknowable as a character.

==IV. The Novelist as the God that Fails and the Novel as Disinformation==
Close to the end of the novel, Hubbard has some disconcerting thoughts. In a conversation with Bill Harvey (a fictional character based on the real CIA station chief) suspicion is cast upon the loyalty of Hugh Montague, a.k.a. Harlot, who has been the primary influence over Harry’s career. Could Harlot, one of the most powerful leaders of the CIA, actually be a Soviet agent? This would make Harlot the complete opposite of everything he appears to be and would call into question all the values and ideology that Harry Hubbard assumes. In addition, since Harlot explains all of his efforts in Manichean terms of serving God against the Devil (echoes of Mailer), and if Harlot is a Soviet agent, then the absolute values assumed throughout the novel, and taught by Harlot, either collapse into nihilism and become self-serving or reverse their position: God representing democracy and capitalism is really evil and the Devil of Communism is really good. This has become a possibility that Harry’s experience with the CIA, particularly his truly disastrous efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution and assassinate Fidel Castro, makes him inclined to consider seriously if the God of Capitalism is really the God or the Devil. How the entire novel is to be understood rests upon what side, if any, Harlot really serves.

Harry remembers a conversation with Harlot about God and Evolution. Evolution threatens the theory of divine creation. In response, Harlot proposes the theory that God tricks man by setting up false appearances for
God’s protection to secure his function. Evolution explains things, but is a “cover story” designed by God to confuse man. Harlot reasons: “ ‘You can say the universe is a splendidly-worked up system of disinformation calculated to make us believe in evolution and so divert us away from God. Yes, that is exactly what I would do if I were the Lord and could not trust My own creation.’ ” (1281). This disconcerts Harry considerably since he is Harlot’s creation. Has the entire Cold War, or at least his part of it, been a massive disinformation campaign? If so, has Hubbard been serving good (God) or the (Devil), and do these values reside in capitalism or communism, or some third way? Also, the discourse of deception should make readers of this novel
suspicious since it suggests the novel itself might be a complex piece of trickery, precisely what the incomplete ending of the novel also suggests. If we go back to an early Mailer interview, “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in ''Advertisements for Myself'', we find Mailer talking about God in terms of the future
of the novel and creativity more broadly. In this interview, Mailer disarmingly jumps from conceptions of God, to conceptions of individual freedom,
to the place of the writer in history. In an interesting way, these levels of concern shift and alter into a common concern. He explains his conception of
God as “divided, not-all powerful; He exists as a warring element” and claims “we are a part—perhaps the most important part—of His great expression.”
~Advertisements 380! Mailer makes humans into characters in God’s great
novel. In both cases, language such as “God,”“His great expression” and “creation” directly connects God and the universe with the novelist and his
novel. In the interview Mailer goes on to make explicit this connection by
stressing the implications of his Gnostic brand of theology:

<blockquote>It @God as the source of expression# opens the possibility that the
novel, along with many other art forms may be growing into
something larger rather than something smaller, and the sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that
everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less
important. ~Advertisements 382!</blockquote>

The divine and mystical power of God allows new reservoirs of creative
energy for aesthetic expression. If, however, we compare Harlot’s statement
with Mailer’s earlier claims above, we detect an important shift. In both conceptions God is divided and warring, like a writer struggling to create works
that are true to personal vision but facing critical rejection. However, Harlot’s theology is based on a God that is a losing force and that does not trust
his audience. God needs to produce disinformation or his rule will be threatened by his creations. I suggest that Mailer’s theology, and Harlot’s, helps us
understand how to read Harlot’s Ghost and probe beneath appearances. Harlot, who plots Hubbard’s fate and orchestrated history, manipulates because,
like God, he needs to face the conditions of things becoming “smaller” and
“less important.” Therefore, what is at stake in this novel is precisely the possibility of the novel, in general, as a creative form which can reveal understanding about history and society ~which has always been Mailer’s stated
objectives!, or novels reduced to a minor expressive form. Mailer’s youthful
optimism and confident rebellion against shrinkage of human and expressive potential seem lost: as God, Harlot and the novel are in danger of being
revealed as weak frauds. If Harlot, who plays God with his Godson Harry,
not to mention the CIA as a whole with its missions and history, is really part
of an elaborate hoax, then the novel itself, by extension, threatens to be
revealed as inadequate to represent history. However, perhaps Mailer’s strategy is similar to what he projected onto a threatened God; the grand novel
that resolves history is disinformation. The lapse in this novel’s ending becomes full of implications for novel writing at large. Perhaps just this
deception is necessary since the novel is not expanding and growing larger
in our world of the television and the Internet but needs to be fought for in
new ways.

To pursue this idea further, it is necessary to return to a scene early in the
novel,~but late in Harry’s life! before he decides to travel to Russia, when the
news has come that Harlot is dead. Harry, after deceiving Kittredge with an
affair, and before she explains she will leave him for someone else, comes
upon Kittredge talking to Harlot. Since Harlot is thought to be dead, this is
quite strange. She is either delusional, talking to his ghost, or talking to the
real Harlot. However, Harry can never know or obtain answers, short of
finding Harlot, and the entire meaning of all that will come ~or has come
depending on the chronology taken in terms of Harry’s life or the narrative
structure of the novel! revolves around this ghost. Is it real or not? The
implications fundamentally shape the meaning of the entire novel and Harry’s relation with history. If Harlot is dead, then there can be no answers to
motivations, loyalties, and the meaning of historical actions. The only meaning Harlot can retain in the “death of God” scenario is as a figure in the personal memories of Kittredge and Harry. Further, Kittredge’s talking with
Harlot is madness, a delusion that truth can be revealed through communication. Harlot’s death is the end of the dream of making sense of history and
of the novel’s mysteries. If Harlot is alive, on the other hand, then meaning
can be made of his historical interventions ~he can be asked for the truth in
Moscow! and of history proper. If so, however, then his ghostly visage is illusory, a deception and fraud and the personal relations between Kittredge and
Harlot become thoroughly subjective and unreliable. Take your choice, Harlot can seemingly only function as truth on the personal level or on the political level—but not both.

To make sense of this ending, it is useful to return to Walter Benjamin. In
his essay on authors in capitalism, he claims that the true revolution that
writers can affect is one in terms of “technique”:

<blockquote>Before I ask: what is a work’s position vis-à-vis the production
relations of its time, I should like to ask: what is its position
within them? This question concerns the function of a work
within the literary production relations of its time. In other
words, it is directly concerned with literary technique. ~87!</blockquote>

This emphasis on “technique” is further explained by the claim that a progressive “technique” is defined as a type of writing which “will be better, the
more consumers it brings in contact with the production process—in short,
the more readers or spectators it turns into collaborators” ~98!.

This framework of Benjamin’s sheds new light on what can be made of
the apparent failure of the novel to resolve. Mailer himself has given two
explanations. At the time of the novel’s publication, Mailer promised to
complete the work after some time went by, but recently has stated that he
won’t revisit the novel because technology has dehumanized espionage. This
doesn’t seem persuasive to me because the novel’s scope is not contemporary espionage but historical episodes revealed through the voice of a fictional spy positioned to discover truth. Interestingly, in an earlier interview
for BBC, Mailer defends the form of the novel in a way that directly echoes
Benjamin’s concept of a transformation in technique, which transforms
authors into producers. He says:

<blockquote>The reader having been given the end and the beginning will
conceive of that ‘middle’; they know that the middle takes place
in Vietnam, and Watergate, and that the love affair between
Harry Hubbard and Kittredge ... was consummated in that
‘middle’ and they will think about it, and in their own mind—if
they like the book—they’ll come to the point where they conceive of that middle novel. Now, if I come along and write it in
the next few years, they’ll then be able to check their version of
the novel against mine. (Glenday 135)</blockquote>

From the vantage point of “telling” the “truth of our times,” and on the level of crafting an explicit plot resolution, the novel fails. The position of the author is in decline—at least in terms of the author as the “hero”who reveals
history. Could the novel be taken as an elaborate hoax? Mailer, himself, at
some level, recognizes that there is no novelistic resolution to the level of
questions he poses. Even though Mailer planned to write a sequel, the results
remain: the incomplete novel becomes a radical formal experiment and gesture of making the readers into the “authors” of the sequel.Mailer stresses the
value of readers who “conceive” the ending. Given that the ending revolves
around the nature of the Cold War and the value of the relative sides, making the readers interpret the future “ending” means placing the readers as judges of history. Perhaps Mailer’s attachment to radical individualism and
existential courage is shown inadequate in the face of “ghosts”; that is, the
collective, overpowering force of history that cannot be revealed by an
“author” because they are beyond the purview of an individual. On the other
hand, out of this failure, meaningful truth is produced and revealed, precisely
out of abandoning the position of the author who tells all.Any answers given
by Mailer to the questions at the end of the novel would ring hollow since
they would force him to stand for or against the U.S. role in the Cold War by
making Harlot a hero or villain. True, the reader cannot end this novel with
the sense of completion or satisfaction traditional novels provide. Instead, we
are left to become the writers and producers—speculating and arguing about
how the novel that wasn’t written should end.We may consider whether the
public media-driven faith in the God-like claims about capitalism and
so-called democracy, which are supposedly outside of time and history and
beyond challenge are an elaborate hoax. Harlot may be alive or dead, and like
a possible “God” and “Devil” we cannot know, but we are put in the writer’s
place free from the authority of any divine will. It would be ironic if Mailer,
who, like his fictional CIA agents, has spent a career attempting to write the
great novel, decided not to, precisely so that by turning away from this project
and refusing a sequel, he forces us to rethink our relationship to novels and history. This is where his great contribution can reside.

==V. Back to the Future==

There is one other way that the novel offers knowledge about history. The
novel was written before the end of the Cold War. Since this point, we, the
readers of history, have been told the story that we are at the “end of history”where the great dualistic struggle between capitalism ~as represented by
America! and communism ~represented by the Soviet bloc! is over, goodness has won, and the era of peace and prosperity is awaiting.16 This suggests that the truth of the Cold War was revealed and it can be seen clearly
what was at stake—the benefits of liberal democracy or the necessarily evil
nature of communism or any attempt to challenge the market system. In a
sense, history seemed to provide the answer to the question of Mailer’s novel.
A sense of euphoria and moral certitude swept over the victors of the Cold
War as they proclaimed with religious ferocity the advent of the American
Century and the “new world order.” However, quickly this resolution of the
plot dissolved. From the vantage point of distance, the choice God or the Devil, the Soviet Union or America, victory or defeat seems a strange piece
of “disinformation.” Despite America’s victory, like Norman Mailer’s unfinished novel, all of the dangers and possibilities, the ambiguities and contradictions, seem still unresolved. Mailer turns out to be prescient; the novel is
not over. There still has been no way to end, for good or bad, the plot twists
and surprises, the unexplained betrayals and crimes of recent history. Any
answers to history that seemed written by the end of the Cold War turn out
to be incomplete and faulty, ideological and short-sighted as capitalist America continues to engender conflict and confusion, dangers and resistance.
The truth of these events will not be given to us by some expert with words.
We are still left to create the story that will tell the truth of our times, but it
won’t be written on paper.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

16. The most famous version of this comes from Francis Fukiyama’s book. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.

==Works Cited==
{{Refbegin}}
* {{cite book |last=Adorno |first=Teodor |date=1978 |title=Aesthetics and Politics |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |translator-last1=Bostock |translator-first1=Anna |chapter=The Author as Producer |date=1998 |title=Understanding Brecht |url= |location=New York |publisher=Verso |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |date=1986 |title=Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views |url= |location=New York |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last= |first= |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first= Harold |editor-mask=1 |date=2003 |chapter=Norman in Egypt |title=Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Norman Mailer |url= |location=Philadelphia |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Brecht |first=Bertolt |translator-last1=Willet |translator-first1=John |date=2001 |title=Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. |url= |location=New York |publisher=Hill and Wang |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Coover |first=Robert |date=1977 |title=The Public Burning |url= |location=New York |publisher=Grove Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary |date=1999 |title=Mailer a Biography |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=DeLillo |first=Don |date=1997 |title=Underworld |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Shuster |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doctorow |first=E. |date=1996 |title=The Book of Daniel |url= |location=New York |publisher=Plume Penguin Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fukikyama |first=Francis |date=1998 |title=The End of History and the Last Man |url= |location=New York |publisher=Avon Books |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

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2020-09-04T04:31:57Z

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