SOURCE: "Mailer's Main Event," in The Hudson Review, Vol. 45, No. 1, Spring, 1992, pp. 149-57.

In the following review, Pritchard offers favorable assessment of Harlot's Ghost, praising the admirable ambition of the work despite Mailer's characteristic narrative style that ranges from "the sublime to the ridiculous."

Six weeks ago one of the larger pieces of mail ever received turned up at my front door in the form of a dauntingly wrapped copy of Harlot's Ghost, all four pounds of it. It was mid-semester break, my sinuses were full of misery, and I settled in, if somewhat warily, to ingest Mailer's longest book. Somewhat warily since a trusted friend, having read it in proof, termed it a disaster; and since Newsweek's Peter Prescott, a pretty good reviewer of fiction, had just called it "a dry and dusty thing … for nearly all of its incredibly long way." Would Harlot pass Wyndham...