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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]

Sandbox Space for Letters Template

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This page is part of
An American Dream Expanded.

Mailer’s letter to Gutierres-Olivos, the Chilean ambassador to the United States, is the first to acknowledge his plan to write An American Dream. He began the novel shortly after writing the letter.

NORMAN MAILER’s Letters

142 Columbia Heights

Brooklyn 1, New York

September 18, 1963

Dear Señor Gutierres-Olivos,

I want to thank you for your invitation to take part in the round table on October 10, but I fear I must say no because I expect to be away in New England at that time, working on a novel.

Yours sincerely,

Norman Mailer

Example Format Ends here.