Word: mailers
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...first glance Norman Mailer's much anticipated and superhyped new novel beggars description. Saying, for openers, that it is very, very long is like observing that the Grand Canyon is quite roomy. The next step is to point out that mind-boggling immensity seems to be one of the points of the exercise. Mailer's narrator, an aging CIA hand named Herrick ("Harry") Hubbard, who has written the two manuscripts that make up the bulk of Harlot's Ghost (Random House; 1,310 pages; $30), notes that he has been guided by Thomas Mann's assertion "Only the exhaustive...
...Unfortunately, other criteria for engaging a reader's attention also exist: plot, suspense, characterization, dialogue, effective prose. In all these areas, Harlot's Ghost runs into serious difficulties, sometimes intermittently, sometimes over the long haul. No one can deny Mailer's monumental ambition in this novel or his dedication to the hard, slogging work that writing an enormous narrative entails. What can be questioned is whether his fundamental premise -- a fictional history of a real Central Intelligence Agency -- was not misconceived from the beginning...
This long opening riff is fine and engaging, comparable to the best passages -- fictional or otherwise -- that Mailer has ever written. Harry's narrative sails forward on a river of Scotch, melodrama, sex, paranoia and typically Mailerian metaphysics (Harry knows why his waitress-girlfriend was so pleasant to him the first time she worked his table: "She saw money coming in all kinds of emotional flavors. It took happy money to buy a dependable appliance"). At the end of all these pyrotechnical effects, which include a persuasively real ghost in Harry's basement, the hero has achieved some pressing problems...
...strangest letter we received was from some kid who sent us--believe it--his wart. At the end of a long, complicated letter which rambled on for two pages, I discovered under a large mound of scotch tape, what was unmistakably a human wart. The mailer's effort, however misguided and anal retentive, was semi-successful. His idea did, that is, make it out of the dead letter box--and right into a medical waste disposal basket...
...junior, that rumors of the affair appeared in gossip columns. He discussed a divorce with Clare but backed away, Martin alleges, when she attempted suicide and demanded editorial control of Time Inc. as the price of freedom. On the rebound, Lady Jeanne ^ briefly and tempestuously married novelist Norman Mailer...