Introduction An American Dream a book Report Author: Norman Mailer Name: Group About The Author

Introduction

• An American Dream
• A Book Report
• Author: Norman Mailer
• Name: Group

About The Author

• Norman Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, film-maker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least one in each of the seven decades after World War II—more than any other post-war American writer

Subject

• Mailer is considered an innovator of "creative non-fiction" or "New Journalism", along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe, a genre which uses the style and devices of literary fiction in fact-based journalism.

Setting

• (NEW YORK) Although Rojack traipses all over Manhattan during An American Dream, there are two spots in particular that stand out: Cherry's downtown apartment and Kelly's midtown penthouse. These two wildly different locales embody Rojack's internal struggle.

Main Characters

• Stephen Rojack
• Cherry
• Deborah Kelly
• Robert

Plot

• In an alcoholic rage, Rojack murders his estranged wife, a high society woman, and descends into a lurid underworld of Manhattan jazz clubs, bars, and Mafia intrigue after meeting Cherry Melanie, a night-club singer and the girlfriend of a highly placed mobster.

Turning Point

•  Rojack feels liberated by the violence and imagines himself receiving messages from the moon, perceiving voices that command him to deny his guilt. In the course of the next twenty four hours, Rojack sets his focus against the New York City Police Department

Your Thoughts

• An utterly ridiculous, oftentimes despicable novel. Its greatest merit is that it is short. Offensive attitudes toward women (as is true of pretty much all of Mailer), toward the underclass, toward sex and violence, toward everything.