An American Dream A Novel [Paperback]

In this wild battering ram of a novel, which was originally published to vast controversy in 1965, Norman Mailer creates a character who might be a fictional precursor of the philosopher-killer he would later profile inThe Executioner’s Song. As Stephen Rojack, a decorated war hero and former congressman who murders his wife in a fashionable New York City high-rise, runs amok through the city in which he was once a privileged citizen, Mailer peels away the layers of our social norms to reveal a world of pure appetite and relentless cruelty. One part Nietzsche, one part de Sade, and one part Charlie Parker,An American Dreamgrabs the reader by the throat and refuses to let go.
 
Praise forAn American Dream
 
“Perhaps the only serious New York novel sinceThe Great Gatsby.”—Joan Didion,National Review
 
“A devil’s encyclopedia of our secret visions and desires . . . the expression of a devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
 
“A work of fierce concentration . . . perfectly, and often brilliantly, realistic [with] a pattern of remarkable imaginative coherence and intensity.”—Harper’s
 
“At once violent, educated, and cool . . . This is our history as Hawthorne might have written it.”—Commentary
 
Praise for Norman Mailer
 
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
 
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
 
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
 
“A devastatingly alive and original creativelC'