An American Dream

American Existentialism

Authors

  • Randy Laist University of Connecticut Author

Keywords:

An American Dream, American existentialism, hipsterism and identity, metaphysics, postwar American fiction

Abstract

Norman Mailer himself was self-conscious of his personal evolution in his writerly identity. In the stylistic transition from the early novels to An American Dream, we observe Mailer in the act of creating himself. Mailer’s understanding of existentialism recognizes no debt to its European roots; it is wholly intuitional. Mailer is attracted to existentialism as an oppositional philosophy, one that challenges the Socratic roots of the entire tradition of Western philosophy with its abstract observers and transcendent truths.

Author Biography

  • Randy Laist, University of Connecticut

    Randy Laist is a PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut, where he is writing his dissertation on technology and subjectivity in the novels of Don DeLillo. His articles have appeared in Critique, Modern Language Studies, Academic Exchange Quarterly, Leviathan, and The Journal of the Kafka Society of America. His research interests include ecocriticism, phenomenology, and mammalogy.

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Published

2026-03-14

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2009): Beyond Fiction

Section

Articles