The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/A New Politics of Form in Harlot's Ghost: Difference between revisions

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 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;
+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).
-they are not just writers-in-general, but the characters often articulate ideas
-similar to Mailer himself.14 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
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-. 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 proDAVID ANSHEN { 471
-vided 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!.
 . See Mailer, Genius and Lust.
 . 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.