''An American Dream'' is a 1965 novel by American author
Norman Mailer. It was published by
Dial Press. Mailer wrote it in serialized form for ''
Esquire'', consciously attempting to resurrect the methodology used by
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
and other earlier novelists, with Mailer writing each chapter against monthly deadlines. The book is written in a poetic style heavy with metaphor that creates unique and hypnotising narrative and dialogue. The novel's action takes place over 32 hours in the life of its protagonist Stephen Rojack. Rojack is a decorated war-hero, former congressman, talk-show host, and university professor. He is depicted as the metaphorical embodiment of the
American Dream.
Background
In 1963, Mailer wrote two regular columns: one on religion called "Responses and Reactions" for ''Commentary'' and one called "Big Bite" for ''Esquire''. Mailer also divorced from his third wife
Jeanne Campbell and met
Beverly Bentley who would become his fourth wife. Bentley had known
Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fi ...
in Spain and briefly dated
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of music ...
in New York before she met Mailer. Bentley and Mailer took a long car trip, notably visited an army buddy "Fig" Gwaltney in Arkansas, viewed an autopsy of a cancer victim, watched the
Sonny Liston
Charles L. "Sonny" Liston ( 1930 – December 30, 1970) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1953 to 1970. A dominant contender of his era, he became the world heavyweight champion in 1962 after knocking out Floyd Patterson i ...
and
Floyd Patterson
Floyd Patterson (January 4, 1935 – May 11, 2006) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1952 to 1972, and twice reigned as the world heavyweight champion between 1956 and 1962. At the age of 21, he became the youngest boxer in hi ...
fight in Las Vegas, and spent time with the Beats in San Francisco. While in San Francisco, Mailer "walked narrow ledges, testing his nerve and balance". They spent several days in Georgia with Bentley's family, and returned to New York in August, with Bentley several months pregnant. Mailer officially divorced Campbell, after he and Bentley were married. These experiences, states Lennon, are reflected in ''An American Dream'' which Mailer began in September.
Mailer's has similarities with Rojack: They both attended Harvard, served in World War II, had an interest in political office, and appeared on talk shows. Mailer seems to have drawn on his stabbing his second wife
Adele Morales
Adele Carolyn Morales (June 12, 1925 – November 22, 2015) was an American painter and memoirist.
Early life
Morales was born in New York City, to a family of Peruvian origin. She grew up in Bensonhurst but moved to Manhattan, where she stud ...
in Rojack's murdering of his wife Deborah. Mailer did not deny these similarities, but stated:
After a cross-country trip and having little success with his "big novel", Mailer approached the editor of ''Esquire'' with an idea that would make him produce a short novel: He would write eight 10,000-word installments that would run from January to August 1964. The editor agreed, and Mailer announced the novel in his last "Big Bite" column.
Major Characters
* Stephen Rojack: The novel's protagonist, a WWII hero, politician, academic, and public figure, Rojack experiences an existential crisis early in the novel.
* Cherry: Shago's girlfriend with ties to organized crime, Cherry becomes Rojack's love interest.
* Deborah Kelly: Rojack's wife and daughter of Barney Kelly.
* Barney Kelly: The father of Deborah Kelly
* Shago Martin: A jazz musician and Cherry's boyfriend.
* Roberts: A police detective who interrogates Rojack.
* Ruta: Deborah’s maid and Kelly's spy.
Synopsis
In an alcoholic rage, Rojack murders his estranged wife, a high society woman, and descends into a lurid underworld of
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
jazz clubs, bars, and
Mafia
"Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of d ...
intrigue after meeting Cherry Melanie, a night-club singer and the girlfriend of a highly placed mobster. Rojack makes the death appear as a suicide, and maintains his innocence no matter how intense the scrutiny or severe the consequences. Rojack feels liberated by the violence and imagines himself receiving messages from the moon, perceiving voices that command him to deny his guilt. In the course of the next twenty four hours, Rojack sets his focus against the New York City Police Department, the intimidation of an erratic black entertainer who draws a knife on him, and the gathered political clout of his dead wife's father, Barney Oswald Kelly, who suggests that higher political sources have an interest in Rojack's fate.
Chapter summaries
The Harbours of the Moon
Rojack vomits over the balcony at a party and considers suicide. He leaves the party and calls his estranged wife Deborah, going to her house after she invites him. Ruta, the maid, lets him in. He notices that Deborah has been drinking. She belittles him in his time of need, and he strangles her on the floor.
A Runner from the Gaming Room
Rojack has sex with Ruta in her room. He then returns to Deborah's room, cleans up the evidence of murder, then throws her over the balcony making her death appear as a suicide. He tells Ruta that Mrs. Rojack killed herself.
A Messenger from the Maniac
Rojack asks Ruta to tell the cops nothing about their encounter. He runs to the street and sees Cherry Melanie, the night club singer, for the first time. He meets Detective Roberts at the scene of the "suicide." Depicted is Deborah's body smashed from impact and hit by a car. They go back upstairs, and Rojack fabricates a story about Deborah having cancer as the cause of her suicide. The police insist that Rojack come downtown for questioning. They meet Lt. Leznicki on the way out. Leznicki and O'Brien badger Rojack on the way to the police department. Rojack learns that one of the cars in the pile-up caused by Deborah was Eddie Ganucci, a mob boss wanted on a subpoena. Later Rojack sees Cherry again. He is drawn to her. It turns out that Deborah actually did have cancer so they release Rojack. Rojack goes to the club where Cherry performs in Greenwich Village.
Green Circles of Exhaustion
Rojack sits at the bar drinking and listening to Cherry perform. He joins Cherry and her "friends" for a drink, verbally sparring with her "date" Romeo. She and Rojack flirt and kiss; Rojack gets a call from Roberts who warns him to leave. He has an encounter with Tony, who orders Cherry to sing another set. She sings a hymn so Tony fires her. She leaves with Rojack, they get breakfast, and she invites him to a special place.
A Catenary of Manners
The special place is Cherry's post-mortem sister's old apartment. They have sex, and Rojack realizes he has fallen in love with her. He returns to his apartment in the afternoon and talks with Arthur who informs Rojack that Rojack's television show has been cancelled. He then speaks with Dr. Tharchman who tells Rojack that he must take leave from the college. When later talking to Bettina Gigot he picks up on a hint regarding Deborah concerning her father and daughter. Rojack then meets Roberts at the police station who presents him with three pieces of evidence that seem to implicate Rojack. Roberts presses him for a confession. Rojack refuses and is cleared of wrongdoing. Rojack goes back to Cherry and they make love.
A Vision in the Dessert
Rojack and Cherry talk a bit about Rojack's TV show. Then, Cherry tells her life-story: her dead parents; her brother's incest; "
Daddy Warbucks
Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks is a fictional character from the comic strip ''Little Orphan Annie''. He made his first appearance in the New York ''Daily News'' in the ''Annie'' strip on September 27, 1924. In the series he is said to be around 52 year ...
" who turns out to be Kelly; her escape from Vegas; her relationships; her two abortions, one with Kelly and one with a man named Shago; her finally having a vaginal orgasm with Rojack; and her premonition of death soon after. Shago appears at the chapter's end and tells Rojack to leave.
A Votive Is Prepared
Rojack and Shago fight. Rojack gets the upper hand and throws Shago down the stairs.
At the Lion and the Serpent
Rojack goes to the Waldorf Tower to confront Kelly. Rojack talks with Ruta and Deirdre before eating with Kelly. Rojack confesses to the murder of Deborah, then walks the parapet around the roof of the building, hitting Kelly with Shago's umbrella before escaping. He returns to Cherry's only to find out from Roberts she has been killed.
At the Harbors of the Moon Again (Epilogue)
Rojack travels to
Las Vegas
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...
where he wins big at the tables, paying off all his debts. He imagines speaking with Cherry in Heaven before he heads south to
Guatemala
Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by H ...
and the
Yucatán
Yucatán (, also , , ; yua, Yúukatan ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Yucatán,; yua, link=no, Xóot' Noj Lu'umil Yúukatan. is one of the 31 states which comprise the political divisions of Mexico, federal entities of Mexico. I ...
.
Style
The style of ''An American Dream'' seemed to grow organically from Mailer's "Big Bite" columns for ''Esquire.'' His voice, explains Rollyson, is a "supple first-person" persona "punctuated with feisty asides and comic exaggerations".
''An American Dream'' is narrated by Stephen Richards Rojack, the novel's protagonist, in "an edgy,
rococo
Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...
style" that shows Mailer at the height of his narrative powers.
Andrew Gordon points out that the events of the novel unfold at a quick pace, compared to Mailer's prior works, writing "before we are five pages into the novel, Rojack has killed four Germans in a grotesque and graphically violent scene. By the end of thirty pages, Rojack has murdered his wife". Gordon finds that Mailer tempers the shock of ''An American Dreams violence by using a combination of flashback sequences, playful, heavily stylized language, and an abundance of mythical, fairy tale imagery to evoke an exaggerated, dreamlike psychological fantasy.
While Kaufmann likens Mailer's narrative to a medieval allegory in its emphasis on magic and metaphysics, Rollyson suggests it embodies an Elizabethan baroqueness and shows Mailer at his best as a novelist. Kaufmann avers that Mailer borrowed his guiding principle from Marx: "quantity changes quality". Mailer blends modern America with Rojack's dream visions, making his narrative akin to the magician's stage show in writing a "novelist as magician who writes a book filled with effects without any causes". Even though Mailer himself said he had the intention of writing a realistic novel, his style suggests otherwise. ''An American Dream'' is like something out of
Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
or
Dante
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: '' ...
, or out of American romance, or that the events created by Rojack do not represent literal occurrences that readers come to expect in a novel. Still, argues Merrill, one cannot dismiss Mailer's serious intentions.
Barry H. Leeds, in his ''Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer'', suggests two primary structural patterns: one is Rojack's pilgrimage from "damnation and madness to salvation and sanity" and the other is the geometrical sexual connections shared by the characters.
Analysis
Dearborn calls Rojack the "quintessential Mailer hero" as he exemplifies many of the traits and accomplishments Mailer himself as a war hero, a successful politician, a television personality, and a professor of "existential psychology". Mailer commented in a later ''
New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established ...
'' interview: "I wanted a man who was very much of my generation and generally of my type". Rojack feels that his reality is created by the public and that he has become just a shell, a mere actor, which creates a crisis of identity and precipitates his actions. Like Mailer's
Hipster, Rojack does not live until he has experienced death — so his murder of Deborah frees him from his hollow public life and initiates his transformation. It's only through the lowest and most severe forms of physical transgression that Rojack, like Mailer's Hipster is able to begin his journey toward psychic redemption. Rojack's journey reflects a seminal theme for Mailer in the importance of growth by confronting serious existential situations with courage. In a 1963 letter, Mailer defines what he means by "existentialism" as "that character can dissolve in one stricken event and re-form in startling new fashion".
Likewise, states Dearborn, Rojack believes that in killing Deborah, he has cured himself of cancer, a theme that becomes explicit in the novel's epilogue where "Cancer is the growth of madness denied". In a later interview with ''
High Times
''High Times'' is an American monthly magazine (and cannabis brand) that advocates the Legalization of non-medical cannabis in the United States, legalization of cannabis as well as other counterculture ideas. The magazine was founded in 1974 by ...
'', Mailer elaborates further noting "A lot of people get cancer because they were too responsible with their lives. They led lives that were more responsible then they wanted to be. They lived their lives for others more than for themselves. Denied themselves certain fundamental things, whatever they were. . . . Cancer is a revolution of the cells". Leeds adds that, for Mailer, cancer represents moral failure and is a significant theme in much of Mailer's work.
It is not easy to accept or to excuse Rojack's ability to escape punishment for his transgression of murder. Often characters cannot so easily get away with murder unless it stems from revenge. Murderer's gambit, whose success requires the approval of the reader, can be applied as a way for the "novelist to gamble with the reader's empathy in the hopes of either winning greater sympathy or . . . greater interest in the character's situation". Yet, there must contain more strategical tactics in order to win over the jury. For example, when Rojack murders his wife, he compares it to the killing of the Germans. The juxtaposition poses the question of what is the difference between killing a person in wartime and killing a person in society? Mailer also hints that the narrative is "framed" by a dream cloud through the use of the novel's name ''An American Dream'' and the allusion of F. Scott Fitzgerald's story "
A Diamond as Big as the Ritz
''The Diamond as Big as the Ritz'' is a novella by novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was first published in the June 1922 issue of ''The Smart Set'' magazine, and was included in Fitzgerald's 1922 short story collection '' Tales of the Jazz Age' ...
".
''An American Dream'' was controversial for its portrayal and treatment of women, and was critiqued by
Kate Millett
Katherine Murray Millett (September 14, 1934 – September 6, 2017) was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She attended Oxford University and was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honor ...
in ''
Sexual Politics
''Sexual Politics'' is the debut book by American writer and activist Kate Millett, based on her PhD dissertation. It was published in 1970 by Doubleday. It is regarded as a classic of feminism and one of radical feminism's key texts. ''Sexu ...
''. Millett sees Rojack as another incarnation of a Mailer protagonist who becomes heroic through the linking of sex and violence. Mailer, she argues, attempts to use existentialism to excuse Rojack's misogynistic exploration as his "sexistentialist project". Rojack's victims are women and a black man, appropriate objects of the white male's "dominant wrath". Millett chastises Rojack, and by proxy Mailer, for what she assesses as the feigned pretense of radically progressive beliefs that belie his defiant sense of white male privilege, likening him to an old southern Confederate, pretending nobility while lashing out at the encroachment of true progress. Millett notes that "Rojack belongs to the oldest ruling class in the world, and like one of
Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of ...
's ancient retainers of a lost cause, he is making his stand on the preservation of a social hierarchy that sees itself as threatened with extinction. His partial Jewish ancestry and his 'liberal' views to the contrary, Rojack is the last surviving white man as conquering hero".
Millett criticizes Mailer for being almost wholly unique among prominent authors in championing a character who is a murderer, while allowing the offender to escape any accountability for his crimes:
The humanist convictions which underlie ''Crime and Punishment
''Crime and Punishment'' ( pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform rus, Преступление и наказание, Prestupléniye i nakazániye, prʲɪstʊˈplʲenʲɪje ɪ nəkɐˈzanʲɪje) is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. ...
'' (the original and still the greatest study in what it is like to commit murder), may all go by the board. Both Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...
and Dreiser, in ''An American Tragedy
''An American Tragedy'' is a 1925 novel by American writer Theodore Dreiser. He began the manuscript in the summer of 1920, but a year later abandoned most of that text. It was based on the notorious murder of Grace Brown in 1906 and the trial of ...
'' gradually created in their murderers an acceptance of responsibility for the violation of life which their actions constituted, and both transcend their crimes through atonement. Rojack has some singularity in being one of the first literary characters to get away with murder; he is surely the first hero as homicide to rejoice in his crime and never really lose his creator's support.
Likewise, Judith Fetterley criticizes Mailer's treatment of women by his male characters in pointing out that each female character must meet a violent death in order for Mailer's hero to be "free". Although power might lay in the masculine hands of those in government and big business, women have a mystical power over men. This power enacts a control over Rojack and only when Rojack rids himself of Deborah does he feel in possession of himself.
American culture, Justin Shaw states, has a tradition in which society expects men to achieve the "self-made mode of masculinity".
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan ( February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an American feminist writer and activist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book ''The Feminine Mystique'' is often credited with sparking the se ...
writes in ''
The Feminine Mystique
''The Feminine Mystique'' is a book by Betty Friedan, widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United States. First published by W. W. Norton on February 19, 1963, ''The Feminine Mystique'' became a bestseller, initially selling ...
'' that men, in other words, were not enemies but "fellow victims" of society's expected and assigned gender roles. His wife's recognition of Rojack in the existing world is shown to have been the link to his masculinity which left him "a void where his sense of masculinity resided" when she tells him that she no longer loves him. Rojack then begins his search for an active subject role in a masculine role.
Maggie McKinley argues that Mailer uses "violence as a literary device that facilitates an analysis of his philosophies surrounding existential freedoms, social oppression, and gendered relationships". Rojack's violence is not just a result of his masculinity, but from chasing the "sexual freedom that is often denied by a repressive or 'cancerous' society". Violence provides a centre for Rojack's "construction of a liberated masculinity": "Rojack seems able to discuss manhood ''only'' through the language of violence", specifically addressing his view that masculinity revolves around either the repression or embrace of violence.
Robert Merrill posits that ''An American Dream'' seems to suggest violence "is not an intolerable aberration but an extreme example of life's essential irrationality".
Publication
''An American Dream'' was first published as an eight-part serial in ''Esquire'', January–August 1964. Mailer announced the serial in his final "Big Bite" column, making clear that his serial will distinguish itself from other authors. Mailer writes: "It's been a long time since anything of this sort has been tried by an author who takes himself seriously"; Mailer cited
Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...
and
Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...
as inspiration. While the serialization proved a challenge for Mailer he writes that the process "has me more or less pissing blood." ''Esquire''s circulation increased to 900,000 during the serial's first month.
Mailer rewrote 40% of the scenes for the novel's release in book form. Dial Press published the book in hardcover, and Dell published the paperback. The novel was edited for book publication by
E.L. Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (January 6, 1931 – July 21, 2015) was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known for his works of historical fiction.
He wrote twelve novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama. They included ...
.
Reception
''An American Dream'' sold well and spent six weeks on
The New York Times Best Seller list
''The New York Times'' Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. John Bear, ''The #1 New York Times Best Seller: intriguing facts about the 484 books that have been #1 New York Times ...
, reaching number eight in April 1965.
The reviews for ''An American Dream'' were polarized, with very few mixed. Conventional wisdom was that the novel was one of Mailer's lesser works of fiction. While critics like
Granville Hicks
Granville Hicks (September 9, 1901 – June 18, 1982) was an American Marxist and, later, anti-Marxist novelist, literary critic, educator, and editor.
Early life
Granville Hicks was born September 9, 1901, in Exeter, New Hampshire, to Frank Stev ...
,
Philip Rahv
Philip, also Phillip, is a male given name, derived from the Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominent Philips who popularize ...
,
Roger Shattuck
Roger Whitney Shattuck (August 20, 1923 in Manhattan, New York – December 8, 2005 in Lincoln, Vermont) was an American writer best known for his books on French literature, French art, art, and French classical music, music of the twentieth centu ...
,
Stanley Edgar Hyman
Stanley Edgar Hyman (June 11, 1919 – July 29, 1970) was an American literary critic who wrote primarily about critical methods: the distinct strategies critics use in approaching literary Writing, texts. He was the husband of writer Shirley Jac ...
,
Elizabeth Hardwick, and
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (March 2, 1930 – May 14, 2018)Some sources say 1931; ''The New York Times'' and Reuters both initially reported 1931 in their obituaries before changing to 1930. See and was an American author and journalist widely ...
called ''An American Dream'' a failure, the novel has strong defenders, notably critics
Leo Bersani,
Richard Rhodes
Richard Lee Rhodes (born July 4, 1937) is an American historian, journalist, and author of both fiction and non-fiction, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning ''The Making of the Atomic Bomb'' (1986), and most recently, ''Energy: A Human Histor ...
, Paul Pickrel,
Richard Poirier
Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'stron ...
, and Barry H. Leeds.
Writing one of the first and most positive reviews in ''
Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...
'',
John Aldridge
John William Aldridge (born 18 September 1958) is a former football player and manager. He was a prolific, record-breaking striker best known for his time with English club Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in M ...
states that ''An American Dream'' "transcends the conventional limits of blasphemy to expose the struggle toward psychic redemption which is the daily warfare of our hidden outlaw selves".
Joan Didion
Joan Didion (; December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021) was an American writer. Along with Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson and Gay Talese, she is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism. Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an ...
writing in ''Vogue'' called ''An American Dream'' "the only serious New York novel since ''
The Great Gatsby
''The Great Gatsby'' is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts First-person narrative, first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious mil ...
''". Conrad Knickerbocker writes in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' that Mailer "is one of the few really interesting writers anywhere", and that ''An American Dream'' "defines the American style by presenting the most extreme of our realities — murder, love and spirit strangulated, the corruption of power and the powerful, the sacrifice of self to image, all of it mix mastered in booze and heat-and-serve sex, giving off the smell of burning rubber to the sound of sirens". Since 1965, ''An American Dream'' has been defended by Mailer's critics, some of which call it one of his better novels.
Tony Tanner
Tony Tanner (27 July 1932 – 8 September 2020) was a British stage, film and television actor and a Tony-nominated theatre director and choreographer.
Career Training and early career
Tanner graduated from the Webber Douglas Academy of Drama ...
posits that a few critics likely found ''An American Dream'' to be "outrageous" due to their perception of it as a simple narrative and not as a surrealist work. Tanner hailed
Leo Bersani's review of ''An American Dream'' as a "brilliant comment on the novel as a whole" because Bersani recognized the purposeful "exuberance" that Mailer used.
Stanley Edgar Hyman
Stanley Edgar Hyman (June 11, 1919 – July 29, 1970) was an American literary critic who wrote primarily about critical methods: the distinct strategies critics use in approaching literary Writing, texts. He was the husband of writer Shirley Jac ...
describes ''An American Dream'' as a dreadful novel and says it's the worst that he has read in years. He calls the novel pretentious and focuses his critique on what he sees as the flaws in the plot, images, and the tropes.
Film adaptation
''An American Dream'' was
adapted for film in 1966 starring
Stuart Whitman
Stuart Maxwell Whitman (February 1, 1928 – March 16, 2020) was an American actor, known for his lengthy career in film and television. Whitman was born in San Francisco and raised in New York until the age of 12, when his family relocated to ...
as Stephen Rojack,
Eleanor Parker
Eleanor Jean Parker (June 26, 1922 – December 9, 2013) was an American actress. She was nominated for three Academy Awards for her roles in the films ''Caged'' (1950), ''Detective Story'' (1951), and ''Interrupted Melody'' (1955), the first ...
as his wife, and
Janet Leigh
Jeanette Helen Morrison (July 6, 1927 – October 3, 2004), known professionally as Janet Leigh, was an American actress, singer, dancer, and author. Her career spanned over five decades. Raised in Stockton, California, by working-class parents, ...
as Cherry McMahon.
Johnny Mandel
John Alfred Mandel (November 23, 1925June 29, 2020) was an American composer and arranger of popular songs, film music and jazz. The musicians he worked with include Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Anita O'Day, Barbra Streisand, Tony Benn ...
(music) and
Paul Francis Webster
Paul Francis Webster (December 20, 1907 – March 18, 1984) was an American lyricist who won three Academy Awards for Best Original Song, and was nominated sixteen times for the award.
Life and career
Webster was born in New York City, United St ...
(lyrics) were nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Original Song
The Academy Award for Best Original Song is one of the awards given annually to people working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is presented to the ''songwriters'' who have composed th ...
for "A Time for Love." The film also is known as ''See You in Hell, Darling''.
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* See als
64.2-64.9
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:American Dream, An
1965 American novels
Novels by Norman Mailer
Novels first published in serial form
American novels adapted into films
Works originally published in Esquire (magazine)
Novels set in New York City
Dial Press books
Books with cover art by Paul Bacon