American author, innovator of nonfiction novel. Mailer (1923) developed in the 1960s and 1970s a form of journalism, that combines actual events, autobiography, and political commentary with richness of novel. Mailer's works have arisen controversy - both with their stylish nonconformity and his controversial views of American life.

In the mid-1950s Mailer started to gain fame as an anti-establishment essayist. In 1949 he read Marx's Das Kapital and later told that it helped him to become a better writer. However, he did not believe that Communism will solve all problems. Mailer published in 1961 an open letter to Fidel Castro, saying "you are giving us hope". In his notorious essay The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster (1956), originally published in Dissent and reprinted in ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF (1959), Mailer examined violence, hysteria, crimes, and confusion in the American society through the fashionable existentialist framework.

mailer is mentioned in this context, as the person from whose perspective faster is written (richey edwards) states that he is stronger than all these controversial or depressive persons (plath, pinter, mailer etcetera) and thereby proclaims that he will overcome his problems and stay pure, dealing with everything himself.