Harlot's Ghost
CRITIQUE | THE TEXT
First editionFirst publication
1996
Literature form
Novel
Genres
Literary, historical fiction, intrigue
Writing language
English
Author's country
United States
Length
Approx. 438,500 words
Notable lines
First line
On a late-winter evening in 1983, while driving through fog along the Maine coast, recollections of old campfires began to drift into the March mist, and I thought of the Abnaki Indians of the Algonquin tribe who dwelt near Bangor a thousand years ago.
Passages
Bright was the light of my last martini on my moral horizon.
How she could come!
Sometimes I think our future existence will depend on whether we can keep false information from proliferating too rapidly. If our power to verify the facts does not keep pace, then distortions of information will eventually choke us.
Happiness is experienced most directly in the intervals between terror.
Last lines
I might never finish the book of Harry Hubbard and his years in Saigon, nor the stretch of service in the White House when one lived through Watergate, no, nor the commencement of my love affair with Kittredge, no, that was as removed as childhood. Unlike God, I had not been able to present all of my creation. I was out of the documents and on my own, and my life was more exposed than it had ever been, for I was taking the longest leap of my life. 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?' ".
CRITIQUE | THE TEXT
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