Stephen Rojack is a former congressman, a contemporary of John F. Kennedy, a popular TV talk show host- and he has just strangled his estranged wife to death. To cover his crime, he tosses her out a tenth story window, then meets up with a gangster's moll/lounge singer named Cherry. If ever a character was written to be played by Charlize Theron, this is it. The police suddenly drop their suspicions of murder against Rojack because they have bigger fish to fry- namely some of Cherry's mobster friends. The novel takes a look at a day and a half in the life of Rojack, following his rendezvous with Cherry, Ruta (his wife's maid), and his eventual meeting with his wife's father, culminating with his own high rise theatrics.

This book moves very fast. The reader loves to hate Rojack. The novel is from his point of view, so we see the inner workings of his alcohol-soaked mind. Mailer's descriptions are lucid, dense, and brilliant. You feel like you are in 1963 New York City, running from the police, smelling the smells of the squad room, and making love to exotic women. What does not work here are the kind of mobsters that were threatening in 1963, but come off like characters in a bad mafia comedy today. There is a subplot involving some of the characters' involvement in the CIA that is also dated, and Mailer's attempts at magical fantasies that Rojack takes us on in his mind are over-the-top and dull. Other reviews I have read have mentioned this is a good starter to a Mailerphyte, and I would agree. "An American Dream" is entertaining, but not a perfect tome. Also adapted into a film. ( )

If this is the dream, PLEASE don't let me see the nightmare!

This is superbly written, with one of the best representations of sex that I have ever read. There is nothing that could offend the most prudish of readers and yet...

The story is one of spiralling destruction. There is never a moment when one expects a happy ending but still, it is not a morbid book.

Well worth a read but, I don't think it goes on my re-read list. ( )

This is a Mailer that I read, but did not keep. The story is an extended fantasy on the lines of, "if I really let it all hang out, this is the kind of violence that I would wreak on my world." Kill the wife, and then lunge across the American Media for a summer, and then, why I'd just have the job of being famous for being famous. I don't like the hero, I don't think many of the people he disrespects deserve it, and, while I do dislike the wife, I'm thinkin' all he needed was a divorce and a bender.
Norman Mailer after "The Naked and the Dead" had to keep on being an important writer, and this was his attempt to keep going. But what this book does do, and perhaps that is what it meant to do, was forecast the entire spectacle of the decline and fall of O.J. Simpson? ( )

After doing a little research on Norman Mailer, I decided to read something of his. I happened to get this book for free from a friend, so it made sense to start with this one.

Three things come to my mind after reading this book: violence, metaphorical language, and great writing. This book is entirely about violence, but Mailer uses beautiful language techniques (similes and metaphors) that help romanticize violence in a way that I've never experienced before. Also, Norman Mailer knew how to write! His prose is very deep, philosophical, and beautiful...even though he was a horror of a human being while living.

I must say, this book did not let me down. I know I will read others by Mailer now...but I have to take a break after reading this bleak view of humanity. ( )

Putting American in the title of a book doesn't make it great. This book seemed much longer than its length; I found the writing turgid. The contents of Stephen Rojack's psyche is everything in this novel: what he smells; the plight of the intellectual beating, fucking and drinking all comers under the table. Rojack has a world view I could not identify with, but I did not find him an interesting enough creation to want to look at the world through him eyes, or smell it with his twitching canine nose.

The plot seemed flimsy and contrived, characters would expose to Rojack a story about their past and it often led to a bunch of dead ends - or a pat coincidence - are there only 10 people in all of the United States? At some points I thought, maybe this is a satire, is there something darkly comic at the heart of this? Maybe, it didn't make me laugh. If you want to read a book about transgression and haven't yet read American psycho - read that instead of this - it's much funnier. ( )