A Fear of Dying: Norman Mailer's An American Dream: Difference between revisions

{{DISPLAYTITLE:A Fear of Dying: Norman Mailer's ''An American Dream''}}

{{byline|last=Thompson|first=Lewis}}

{{notice|Reprinted here with the permission of the journal.}}

How paradoxical then, if seriously conceived, is Mailer's alleged intention, reportedly embodied in a recent London ''Observer'' interview, to abandon the United States because of the novel's harsh reception! A man delighting as much in physical and literary battling as Mailer ought to welcome sparring partners without worrying about such matters as envy, pique, brutality, and misunderstanding. He surely knows that a forceful essayist and fictionist will garner retaliation; instead of fleeing, he should welcome all occasions for additional tests of his courage. This idea, at least, is a major motif in ''An American Dream'', whose central character (Stephen Richards Rojack) transcends his disgust for American life, its persistent manhandling of him, by developing heightened sensuous and muscular powers. Yet, it is apparent in the novel's conclusion, which finds the transcendent Rojack heading for Guatemala and Yucatan as Sergius O'Shaugnessy in ''The Deer Park'' earlier sought sanctuary in Mexico, that Mailer does not foresee the possibility of reconciliation with American life as presently constituted.

Pushed the button, of she flew in full Disarray, to seek a greener peril. -JOHN ALEXANDER ALLEN gloom-what depression surrounded the rich-and some compass of direc tion went awry in my mind; I had the physical impression we were moving once again I felt something begin to go out of the very light of my mind, as if the colors which lit the stage of my dreams would be more modest now, something vital was ready to go away forever even as once, not thirty hours ago. I had lost some other part of myself, it had streamed away on a voyage on that instant when I had been too fearful to jump, something had quit me forever, that ability of my soul to die in its place, take failure, go down to the moon, launched out honorably. Now something else was preparing to leave, some certainty away, some knowledge it was the reward for which to live love was that voice which I could no longer deny spoke again through the medium of the umbrella. I have deliberately avoided referring to Mailer's public role, that which he has sought and that which has been thrust upon him by virtue of private behavior that has been brought to public attention, because it has no bearing on the quality of An American Dream. There is an advantage in being able to approach the work of a contemporary without being informed about his escapades, marriages, and political judgments, without having been at a party where he beat up another guest and was in turn tossed out into the gutter. An American Dream demands such innocence