I had a look at the New York Times review of this book that has a link to it on the Wikipedia page. The review is extremely negative. The reviewer didn’t get any of the references in this fascinating historical thriller, and it has languished virtually unknown since its publication.
I bought this book second-hand a long time ago. It has an “Ariel” sticker on the back cover. It had been bought, sometime in or soon after 1999, at that Sydney bookstore, which used to exist on the margin between tony Paddington and Bohemian Darlinghurst. The bookshop has since moved further down the street toward the city. Near where it used to reside there is now a Berkelouw’s, but Berkelouw’s is on the other side of Oxford Street from Ariel’s former abode.
Mailer’s novel also sits astride the demotic and the lofty, both in tone and according to the level determined by the subject matter. At times the novel, which is mostly narrated by a man named Herrick Hubbard (he goes by the name “Harry”), uses a voice that derives from pulp fiction – there are numerous references to early crime fiction – and at times it owes more to the high diction of Nabokov whose novel ‘Ada’ provides the model for several of the characters used, and themes developed, in ‘Harlot’s Ghost’. The drama ties together the eminent and the base and at the core of it sits John F Kennedy. At its dramatic apex rests the assassination, in November 1963, of JFK.
Mailer is a master ventriloquist. Much of the narrative is in the form of letters between Harry and Kittredge Montague – wife of Hugh Montague, the “Harlot” of the book’s title, and Harry’s godfather – but there are numerous additions from “Cal” Hubbard, Harry’s father who is, like the other main characters, in the Central Intelligence Agency.
I was bitterly disappointed on reading the NYT review. The guy who wrote it was a complete nincompoop and totally misunderstood this novel if, that is, he even read the whole thing. I somehow doubt that he did. The beauties herein are various and many. It deserves to be read and rediscovered now, after 9/11, when its messages seem to be so on-point.
I bought this book second-hand a long time ago. It has an “Ariel” sticker on the back cover. It had been bought, sometime in or soon after 1999, at that Sydney bookstore, which used to exist on the margin between tony Paddington and Bohemian Darlinghurst. The bookshop has since moved further down the street toward the city. Near where it used to reside there is now a Berkelouw’s, but Berkelouw’s is on the other side of Oxford Street from Ariel’s former abode.
Mailer’s novel also sits astride the demotic and the lofty, both in tone and according to the level determined by the subject matter. At times the novel, which is mostly narrated by a man named Herrick Hubbard (he goes by the name “Harry”), uses a voice that derives from pulp fiction – there are numerous references to early crime fiction – and at times it owes more to the high diction of Nabokov whose novel ‘Ada’ provides the model for several of the characters used, and themes developed, in ‘Harlot’s Ghost’. The drama ties together the eminent and the base and at the core of it sits John F Kennedy. At its dramatic apex rests the assassination, in November 1963, of JFK.
Mailer is a master ventriloquist. Much of the narrative is in the form of letters between Harry and Kittredge Montague – wife of Hugh Montague, the “Harlot” of the book’s title, and Harry’s godfather – but there are numerous additions from “Cal” Hubbard, Harry’s father who is, like the other main characters, in the Central Intelligence Agency.
I was bitterly disappointed on reading the NYT review. The guy who wrote it was a complete nincompoop and totally misunderstood this novel if, that is, he even read the whole thing. I somehow doubt that he did. The beauties herein are various and many. It deserves to be read and rediscovered now, after 9/11, when its messages seem to be so on-point.
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