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Sandbox Space for John William Corrington's "An American Dreamer" Essay

AN AMERICAN DREAMER

There is a subterranean river of untapped, ferocious, lonely and romantic desires, that concentration of ecstasy and violence which is the dream-life of the nation.
"The Existential Hero" in The Presidential Papers

The lines above provide both the myth and the text for understanding Norman Mailer's recent work. If one cannot grasp the text, will not perceive the mythos, one is lost at the beginning. Such is precisely the condition of Mailer's critics: lost. Smashed in the face by Mailer's unbelievable vitality and matchless prose-wit, they move away from An American Dream as if Dial Press had booby-trapped that caricature flag on the dust jacket. At least so with the younger and cagier critics. One moves carefully in this territory. Mailer is certainly a pestilence and probably mad, the critic avers, but like any unbroken beast, he may yet be deadly to a tender reputation. He might, for all his words and merdes, become . . . "lastingly significant." And so, palpably unable to understand him, one fires explosive bullets from a long distance. Of small calibre. With a silencer. The critic's game, except when dealing with a surely worthless thing, is Safety First.

References/Sources

[Corrington's An American Dreamer Essay]

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 =Sandbox Space for John William Corrington's "An American Dreamer" Essay=
+===AN AMERICAN DREAMER===
+''There is a subterranean river of untapped, ferocious, lonely and romantic desires, that concentration of ecstasy and violence which is the dream-life of the nation.'' <br>
+"The Existential Hero" in ''The Presidential Papers''
+The lines above provide both the myth and the text for understanding Norman Mailer's recent work. If one cannot grasp the text, will not perceive the ''mythos'', one is lost at the beginning. Such is precisely the condition of Mailer's critics: lost. Smashed in the face by Mailer's unbelievable vitality and matchless prose-wit, they move away from ''An American Dream'' as if Dial Press had booby-trapped that caricature flag on the dust jacket. At least so with the younger and cagier critics. One moves carefully in this territory. Mailer is certainly a pestilence and probably mad, the critic avers, but like any unbroken beast, he may yet be deadly to a tender reputation. He might, for all his words and ''merdes'', become . . . "lastingly significant." And so, palpably unable to understand him, one fires explosive bullets from a long distance. Of small calibre. With a silencer. The critic's game, except when dealing with a surely worthless thing, is Safety First.
 ==References/Sources==
 [[https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1asxDzRLKZYEn0uyZUHs0TnxIdBATVrjL Corrington's An American Dreamer Essay]]