SOURCE: Gitlin, Todd. “Crazy in Jerusalem.” Nation 266, no. 17 (11 May 1998): 50-2.

In the following review, Gitlin argues that Damascus Gate is “overlong and overstuffed” with characters and subplots.

It would be much too simple to say that a lot of Robert Stone's characters are stoned. Drugs are only their turnstiles. They get stoned, also, on going places they don't belong but can't stay away from. In six novels now, one of the major oeuvres in American letters of the past three decades, Stone is obsessed with the spiritual desperadoes, the overreachers, the uneasy riders, those who are tempted to go too far out—to madness, riches, prizes, revolution, whatever they find out too late they can't get. These zealots are seekers at the end of their dope, stoned on freedom, jumping at chances to squander everything dear in exchange for something ineffable, searching for some transcendence that will leave...