An American Dream: A Novel - Softcover

Mailer, Norman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081298613X ISBN 13: 9780812986136

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2015

Synopsis

In this wild battering ram of a novel, which was originally published to vast controversy in 1965, Norman Mailer creates a character who might be a fictional precursor of the philosopher-killer he would later profile in The Executioner s Song. As Stephen Rojack, a decorated war hero and former congressman who murders his wife in a fashionable New York City high-rise, runs amok through the city in which he was once a privileged citizen, Mailer peels away the layers of our social norms to reveal a world of pure appetite and relentless cruelty. One part Nietzsche, one part de Sade, and one part Charlie Parker, An American Dream grabs the reader by the throat and refuses to let go.
 
Praise for An American Dream
 
Perhaps the only serious New York novel since The Great Gatsby. Joan Didion, National Review
 
A devil s encyclopedia of our secret visions and desires . . . the expression of a devastatingly alive and original creative mind. Life
 
A work of fierce concentration . . . perfectly, and often brilliantly, realistic [with] a pattern of remarkable imaginative coherence and intensity. Harper s
 
At once violent, educated, and cool . . . This is our history as Hawthorne might have written it. Commentary
 
Praise for Norman Mailer
 
[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation. The New York Times
 
A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent. The New Yorker
 
Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure. The Washington Post
 
A devastatingly alive and original creative mind. Life
 
Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance. The New York Review of Books
 
The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book. Chicago Tribune
 
Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream. The Cincinnati Post

About this title

Review:

Mailer writes like an angel a master of small surprises that are precursors of seismic shocks.
--London Review of Books

From the Back Cover:

War hero, ex-Congressman, a professor of 'popular but somewhat notorious reputation', television personality and husband of the rich and beautiful Deborah ('a girl who would have been bored by a diamond as big as the Ritz'), Stephen Rojack lived the American Dream. But his enviable life concealed a strange tension, the constant 'itch to jump', and when one day he finally cracks and strangles his luscious wife, he unleashes a personality of undreamt-of ferocity.

A wanted murderer, Rojack is suddenly catapulted into an alien world of gangsters, crumbling tenements and downtown bars. Here, he meets Cherry, a small-time singer who ekes out her living in sleazy nightclubs, waiting for a break. She's the woman Rojack falls for, dangerously, desperately, tragically...

A powerful exploration of one man's quest for depravity, 'An American Dream' shocked the USA on first publication in 1965 with its graphic depictions of sex and violence. One of the key works of twentieth-century American literature, the novel's white-hot prose makes it, for many, Mailer's finest achievement.

“Mailer writes like an angel – a master of small surprises that are precursors of seismic shocks.”
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

“A devil's encyclopaedia of our secret visions and desires”
LIFE

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 081298613X
• ISBN 13: 9780812986136
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288