Mail·er  (mā'lər)  American writer. Acclaimed for his World War II novel The Naked and the Dead (1948), he established New Journalism with his accounts of political events in the 1960s. Mailer's other works include The Deer Park (1955) and The Executioner's Song (1979). |
A twentieth-century American writer whose first novel, The Naked and the Dead, based on his wartime experiences, established him as a major novelist. His works of New Journalism — personal, sometimes fictionalized accounts of current political events — include The Armies of the Night and The Executioner's Song, a so-called true life novel about the death of convicted killer, Gary Gilmore.