Annoted Bibliography on “An American Dream”

Aldridge, John W. "Norman Mailer: The Energy of New Success." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Carolyn Riley. 92vols. Detroit:Gale, 1974.258-259.

Aldridge’s take on Mailer is one of admiration with subtle hints of detest. He clearly sees Mailer as using his writings to outrage readers and critics. Mailer’s ego is to set to destroy him instead of placing in the league of those he admires. He views Mailer, as taking a new direction is his work a more grown up approach to language uses. He points out that the book appalled critics at the time it was released. Some suggest that this book was not a breakthrough in the writer but a breakdown of the writer. Aldridge sees the book as Mailer’s attempt to use fantasy and witchcraft to poke fun at the psychotic American dream. He also compares the character Rojack to Mailer, as that he has gotten away with murder in writing this book. He has wrote against every known method. Aldridge gives Mailer great credit for slapping us into our own realities with such honesty of human nature.


Leeds, Barry H. “The Structured Vision of Norman.” Contemporary
Literary Criticism. Ed. Carolyn Riley. 92vols. Detroit: Gale, 1973. 191-192.

Mailer grows as a writer from one with despair of the human nature to one of hope. He makes an attempt to go beyond his own limitations. Mailer tackles the differences in the mystic and atheistic views and finds himself more as a mystic in the view of death. Mailer tackles the fear in death as throughout the story Rojack continually taunts death. Mailer draws the line between psychotic and the psychopath. Leeds implies that Mailer views himself as a renegade and demonstrates in the story that a psychotic moves back and forth from the insane and displays hallucinations where as a psychopath remains level with no ins and outs of insane thinking that he has choice to act in an insane manner. Leeds contends that Rojack is lead by his own selfish needs. Rojack in nature goes against every social grain and is aware of this fact throughout the story he is attempting to understand the evil within himself and those that surround him.



Weinberg, Helen. “The New Novel in America: The Kafkan Mode in Contemporary.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Carolyn Riley. 92vols. Detroit: Gale,1974. 261.

Weinberg points out that Mailer, as an author, tends to write about accepting the dangers of the unconscious mind and the darkness that lurks with in it. Another common theme is death and coming to terms with the knowledge that ultimately this happens to us all. She points out the difficulty in creating a work that defines the American existential experience, but suggest that Mailer has a gift in creating a character that portray this theory. Weinberg suggest that to embrace the ugliness of the darkness within, one would either grow or become one with the dark side. She implies that the character Mailer created in Rojack reveals this inner battle yet he remains the same. He is unchanged in nature by what transpires in the book. Throughout the story Rojack experience all levels of human emotion and experiences but remains his own man, not conforming to the ideas of his peers.