An American Dream Expanded/Advertising Copy

From: Sussman & Sugar Inc., March 15, 1965. Advertising copy for the New York Times.

This page is part of
An American Dream Expanded.

Mailer's triumph!

THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL

AN AMERICAN DREAM is a new experience.

“ It may well represent the first significant step the current American novel has taken into fresh territories of the imagination… ”

“ It can be recognized as a novel of the most advanced kind, a devil’s encyclopedia of our secret visions and desires, an American dream or nightmare in a very exact sense… ”

“ It dramatizes the various ways in which a man may sin in order to be saved, become holy as well as whole by restoring the primitive psychic circuits that enable him to live in harmony with himself… ”

“ But even more importantly, AN AMERICAN DREAM is the expression of a devastatingly alive and original creative mind…There seems to be no limit to what Mailer is now suddenly able to do with words. ”

“ And he has managed through that idiom to create an image of our time which will undoubtedly stand as authoritative for this generation. ”

--JOHN W. ALDRIDGE, LIFE