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{{DISPLAYTITLE:''An American Dream'': The Singular Nightmare}} | {{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>''An American Dream'': The Singular Nightmare}} | ||
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{{abstract | {{Byline|last=Kaufmann|first=Donald L.|abstract=Mailer’s fourth novel can be read as sardonic social criticism and a dramatic critique on those nuances underlining the ambiguous values in contemporary America, on those individual roots of American aspirations and ideals. For Mailer, the collective ideal is a civilized composite of everyone’s primitive desires.{{efn|Reprinted by permission of the author. From {{cite book |last=Kaufmann |first=Donald L. |date=1969 |title=Norman Mailer: The Countdown |url= |location=Carbondale, IL |publisher=Southern Illinois UP |pages=35–50 |isbn= |author-link= }} }}|url=https://prmlr.us/mr07kauf}} | ||
New directions, even in Mailer’s fiction — “''An American Dream'' is a departure from practically anything I have done before.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|}} — contain vestiges of the old, and Mailer’s fourth novel can be read (as most critics and reviewers have done) as sardonic social criticism. National ideals seem under attack, as New York, Jack Kennedy, Las Vegas, Marilyn Monroe impart a satiric tone to Rojack’s dream. Just before his encounter with Barney Oswald Kelly, the current tycoon, Rojack enters the Waldorf and sees “a nineteenth-century clock, eight feet high with a bas relief of faces: Franklin, Jackson, Lincoln, Cleveland, Washington, Grant, Harrison, and Victoria; 1888 the year.”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=207}} At such times, the theme of national dream turned nightmare seems as obvious as the title suggests. It instead is an outgrowth of Mailer’s great admiration of Dreiser’s ''An American Tragedy'' which represents (in Mailer’s words) an “end of a period” or “a way of looking at things.” If rewritten for the contemporary milieu, Dreiser’s book would “no longer be a tragedy; it would be a dream,” because in the last forty years, there has been a “transition in consciousness in the character of our times” which has “moved us from the state of the tragedy to the state of the dream.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|}} Here Mailer is paraphrasing an earlier idea: “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.”{{sfn|Mailer|1963|p=38}} | New directions, even in Mailer’s fiction — “''An American Dream'' is a departure from practically anything I have done before.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|}} — contain vestiges of the old, and Mailer’s fourth novel can be read (as most critics and reviewers have done) as sardonic social criticism. National ideals seem under attack, as New York, Jack Kennedy, Las Vegas, Marilyn Monroe impart a satiric tone to Rojack’s dream. Just before his encounter with Barney Oswald Kelly, the current tycoon, Rojack enters the Waldorf and sees “a nineteenth-century clock, eight feet high with a bas relief of faces: Franklin, Jackson, Lincoln, Cleveland, Washington, Grant, Harrison, and Victoria; 1888 the year.”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=207}} At such times, the theme of national dream turned nightmare seems as obvious as the title suggests. It instead is an outgrowth of Mailer’s great admiration of Dreiser’s ''An American Tragedy'' which represents (in Mailer’s words) an “end of a period” or “a way of looking at things.” If rewritten for the contemporary milieu, Dreiser’s book would “no longer be a tragedy; it would be a dream,” because in the last forty years, there has been a “transition in consciousness in the character of our times” which has “moved us from the state of the tragedy to the state of the dream.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|}} Here Mailer is paraphrasing an earlier idea: “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.”{{sfn|Mailer|1963|p=38}} | ||
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A more intricate and significant “catenary of manners” exists in Rojack’s consciousness, a network of inner responses much more complex than his reactions to external stimuli. The quantity of outside manifestations of magic and dread interfere with Rojack’s attempts to preserve the quality of his own obsession with murder and suicide. Self-deception (to place greater value outside the individual) must never take the place of self-knowledge. Salvation (or grace) remains an inner condition, as long as the nature of guilt is identified as a cultural concept harmful to the individual. In Rojack’s case, possible damnation is two-fold: social or to give in to guilt; personal or to give in to insanity. Since the latter is more crucial to Rojack, the polarity of sanity and insanity is what supports the “catenary” in his mind. Private manners become the means of keeping self-control and thereby remaining sane. Kelly’s invitation to an orgy (to make public the extreme private) tempts Rojack to sample another equally “artful” set of manners. But Rojack senses that Kelly’s manners, which fit a tycoon in search of power, place equal value on “public show” and private actions. Murder, not incest, remains Rojack’s index to extreme manners that stress the private at the expense of the public. To remain lucid on his own terms, Rojack can only counteract Kelly’s temptation (acting out another taboo in order to combat the fear of public exposure) by exposing himself to his “elaborate” fear of death; and, he tempts suicide and “strolls” around the parapet, and invites Kelly (in order not to “break” the mood) to be a one-man public, to bear witness (“like a chaplain accompanying a prisoner”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=256}}) to a private execution or salvation. | A more intricate and significant “catenary of manners” exists in Rojack’s consciousness, a network of inner responses much more complex than his reactions to external stimuli. The quantity of outside manifestations of magic and dread interfere with Rojack’s attempts to preserve the quality of his own obsession with murder and suicide. Self-deception (to place greater value outside the individual) must never take the place of self-knowledge. Salvation (or grace) remains an inner condition, as long as the nature of guilt is identified as a cultural concept harmful to the individual. In Rojack’s case, possible damnation is two-fold: social or to give in to guilt; personal or to give in to insanity. Since the latter is more crucial to Rojack, the polarity of sanity and insanity is what supports the “catenary” in his mind. Private manners become the means of keeping self-control and thereby remaining sane. Kelly’s invitation to an orgy (to make public the extreme private) tempts Rojack to sample another equally “artful” set of manners. But Rojack senses that Kelly’s manners, which fit a tycoon in search of power, place equal value on “public show” and private actions. Murder, not incest, remains Rojack’s index to extreme manners that stress the private at the expense of the public. To remain lucid on his own terms, Rojack can only counteract Kelly’s temptation (acting out another taboo in order to combat the fear of public exposure) by exposing himself to his “elaborate” fear of death; and, he tempts suicide and “strolls” around the parapet, and invites Kelly (in order not to “break” the mood) to be a one-man public, to bear witness (“like a chaplain accompanying a prisoner”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=256}}) to a private execution or salvation. | ||
It is a qualified salvation according to the novel’s denouement which Mailer contends “if manners would have been somewhat different, the denouement would not have occurred.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|}} It does, outside of Las Vegas in the desert, “by the side of the empty road, a telephone booth with a rusty dial. Went in and rang up and asked to speak to Cherry. And in the moonlight, a voice came back, a lovely voice, and said, ‘Why, hello, hon, I thought you’d never call. It’s kind of cool right now, and the girls are swell. Marilyn says to say hello.’”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|pp= | It is a qualified salvation according to the novel’s denouement which Mailer contends “if manners would have been somewhat different, the denouement would not have occurred.”{{sfn|Mailer|n.d.|}} It does, outside of Las Vegas in the desert, “by the side of the empty road, a telephone booth with a rusty dial. Went in and rang up and asked to speak to Cherry. And in the moonlight, a voice came back, a lovely voice, and said, ‘Why, hello, hon, I thought you’d never call. It’s kind of cool right now, and the girls are swell. Marilyn says to say hello.’”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|pp=269–270}} As the novel ends, Rojack is an expert in private manners, which has also caused Cherry’s death, if the magic “voice” he hears on the parapet is to be believed — “The first trip was done for you, but the second was for Cherry.”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=261}} Moments earlier, when Rojack admits that one trip around the parapet is his limit (“I’ve lain with madness long enough”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=260}}), he acknowledges how his over-dependence on internal manners has alienated him from concerns and values outside the self. He has achieved self-control and self-realization but his price is singularity in America. Murder is too intimate an act. Survival, through manners, is just as intimate. Only Rojack knows its basic strategy — adherence to a code of relative manners. He is an “artful” Machiavellian except in one respect. No matter how much the outside world pressures with pain and fear, he must always be harder on himself. Rojack’s dream is a psychic-drama of a murderer undergoing more pain and fear than his society can devise. As symbols of his own judge and jury, Rojack’s manners become so “elaborate” that he can only relate to the supernatural. At the end, he still has enough rapport with magic to make a person-to-person call to an imaginary heaven on the moon. | ||
Symbolic telephone calls extend throughout Rojack’s dream. The “catenary” appears early: “So I went into an outdoor booth, and shivering in the trapped cold air, I phoned her apartment. She was home,”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=19}} At the beginning, Rojack’s phone call to Deborah results in murder, an extreme physical act to show the possibilities of damnation or exposure inherent in external manners. At the end, Rojack’s phone call to Cherry (not “in the trapped cold air” but in desert heat) results in freedom, an extreme spiritual act to show the possibilities of salvation or survival inherent in internal manners. “In a funny way,” ''An American Dream'' is a novel of manners in which a morality of murder is internalized. Rojack can not be confused with the American Adam in a drawingroom; but, at least, he can be confused with the American Cain escaping detection all the way from New York to Las Vegas. In either case, Rojack’s higher quest (his “secret frightened romance with the phases of the moon”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=7}}) between nightmare and dream will continue. ''An American Dream''’s real denouement will occur far out of America, somewhere between the moon and Yucatan. | Symbolic telephone calls extend throughout Rojack’s dream. The “catenary” appears early: “So I went into an outdoor booth, and shivering in the trapped cold air, I phoned her apartment. She was home,”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=19}} At the beginning, Rojack’s phone call to Deborah results in murder, an extreme physical act to show the possibilities of damnation or exposure inherent in external manners. At the end, Rojack’s phone call to Cherry (not “in the trapped cold air” but in desert heat) results in freedom, an extreme spiritual act to show the possibilities of salvation or survival inherent in internal manners. “In a funny way,” ''An American Dream'' is a novel of manners in which a morality of murder is internalized. Rojack can not be confused with the American Adam in a drawingroom; but, at least, he can be confused with the American Cain escaping detection all the way from New York to Las Vegas. In either case, Rojack’s higher quest (his “secret frightened romance with the phases of the moon”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=7}}) between nightmare and dream will continue. ''An American Dream''’s real denouement will occur far out of America, somewhere between the moon and Yucatan. | ||
== | ==Note== | ||
{{Notelist}} | {{Notelist}} | ||
==Citations== | ==Citations== | ||
{{Reflist}} | {{Reflist|20em}} | ||
==References== | ==References== | ||
{{refbegin|30em|indent=yes}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial Press |page= |isbn= |author-link=Norman Mailer |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial Press |page= |isbn= |author-link=Norman Mailer |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1966 |title=Cannibals and Christians |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial Press |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1966 |title=Cannibals and Christians |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial Press |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1963 |title=The Presidential Papers |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial Press |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1963 |title=The Presidential Papers |url= |location=New York |publisher=Dial Press |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite interview |last=Mailer |authormask=1 |first=Norman |subject-link=Norman Mailer |interviewer=Edmund Skelling |title=Mailer in Provincetown / Mailer in Alaska |url= |publisher=Unpublished Audio |location= |date=n.d. |ref=harv }} | * {{cite interview |last=Mailer |authormask=1 |first=Norman |subject-link=Norman Mailer |interviewer=Edmund Skelling |title=Mailer in Provincetown / Mailer in Alaska |url= |publisher=Unpublished Audio |location= |date=n.d. |ref=harv }} | ||
{{refend}} | |||
{{Review|state=expanded}} | {{Review|state=expanded}} | ||
{{DEFAULTSORT:American Dream: The Singular Nightmare, An}} | |||
[[Category:Classic Interpretations (MR)]] | [[Category:Classic Interpretations (MR)]] | ||