An American Dream: Word-Count Comparison, Esquire and Dial Editions
A chapter-by-chapter word-count comparison of the Esquire serial version of An American Dream (1964) and the revised Dial Press book edition (1965), showing where Mailer cut and expanded during his four months of revision. Compiled by Mark James for J. M. Lennon's 2004 Letters edition and digitized in the An American Dream Expanded project.
A companion to the Work page for An American Dream (65.7). When Mailer revised the eight-installment Esquire serial (64.2–64.9) for the Dial Press book edition, he reworked the text over roughly four months in the second half of 1964, renaming several chapters and restructuring the close of the novel. The comparison below — compiled by Mark James for J. Michael Lennon‘s 2004 Letters edition and digitized in the An American Dream Expanded project — tracks the shift chapter by chapter.
Two structural changes are visible in the table. Chapter 2 was retitled from “A Messenger from the Casino” (Esquire) to “A Runner from the Gaming Room” (Dial); and the serial’s epilogue material was reworked into “The Harbors of the Moon Again,” echoing the title of Chapter 1 (“The Harbors of the Moon”) and closing the novel on the phrase that opened it.
| Chapter | Title(s) | Esquire | Dial |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Harbors of the Moon | 11,708 | 11,394 |
| 2 | A Messenger from the Casino (Esquire) / A Runner from the Gaming Room (Dial) | 7,805 | 7,066 |
| 3 | A Messenger from the Maniac | 14,406 | 14,540 |
| 4 | Green Circles of Exhaustion | 10,532 | 9,566 |
| 5 | A Catenary of Manners | 16,153 | 16,053 |
| 6 | A Vision in the Desert | 6,762 | 5,004 |
| 7 | A Votive is Prepared | 9,620 | 8,836 |
| 8 | At the Lion and the Serpent | 19,972 | 22,696 |
| Epilogue | The Harbors of the Moon Again (Dial) | 1,811 | 1,755 |
| Total | 98,796 | 96,910 |
The book is modestly shorter overall (about 1,900 words), but the change is uneven: Mailer trimmed the middle chapters (notably 4, 6, and 7) while substantially expanding the climactic Chapter 8 (“At the Lion and the Serpent”) by some 2,700 words. Hershel Parker analyzed the two versions in Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons (Northwestern University Press, 1983), arguing the Esquire version was the stronger; Mailer disagreed, holding that “the Dial version is the better.”
Related pages
- An American Dream | Esquire | Dial Press
- An American Dream: A New Novel Serialized Exclusively in Esquire by Norman Mailer; Installment One: The Harbors of the Moon | Installment VIII: At the Lion and the Serpent