The Harbors of the Moon
Robert Dana's deliberately late review of An American Dream (North American Review, July 1965): it calls the book Mailer's best and most powerful novel since The Naked and the Dead and its style perhaps the best in America, but faults the ending, which sends Rojack off with no suggestion of what his flight means.
Dana, Robert. “The Harbors of the Moon.” Review of An American Dream. The North American Review 250 (July 1965): 56–57.
Dana held his review back on purpose — “This review is late. And with cause” — letting the novel “ferment slowly” while he “studiously” avoided the other notices, which he saw as animals “prowling for a kill.” He praises a style “powerful, contemporary in the best sense, and never dull; perhaps the best in America at the moment,” and rests his one “legitimate” quarrel on the ending: sending Rojack off “to Guatemala and Yucatan” gives “only the slightest suggestion of the meaning” of his flight. His verdict: Mailer’s “best and most powerful novel since The Naked and the Dead,” but one with “neither a conclusion nor an ending.”