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 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:
+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:
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 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.”
+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).
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 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:
+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:
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