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An Outlaw Journalist's Journey through an Era Decadent and Depraved: Hunter S. Thompson in the context of America of the 1960s and early 1970s.
Stárek, Jiří ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
The thesis aims to explore the artistic personality of Hunter S. Thompson, one of the most distinctive cultural figures of post-war America, and his genesis as an author, journalist, and a counterculture idol of the 1960s. The era is now widely regarded as a turning point in contemporary American history as its deep-rooted values and norms were, over the course of a decade, gradually transformed by the young generation of social and political activists toward allegedly a more tolerant and liberal kind of community. Crucial in such an endeavor was the role of the countercultural movement that produced some of the most capable intellectual minds of the time, including Thompson. The paper thus analyzes the role and nature of the alternative culture in America as perceived by one of its most observant participants. Also, the thesis focuses on the author's role in establishing a new genre called New Journalism which can be linked with the era's countercultural efforts as well. In general, Thompson, in his texts, examines various phenomena surrounding the counterculture and provides us with a distinctive portrayal of the era's zeitgeist. However, unlike some of his contemporaries, he also remembers to examine numerous flaws and fallacies existing within contemporary American society, the American Dream...
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An Outlaw Journalist's Journey through an Era Decadent and Depraved: Hunter S. Thompson in the context of America of the 1960s and early 1970s.
Stárek, Jiří ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
The thesis aims to explore the artistic personality of Hunter S. Thompson, one of the most distinctive cultural figures of post-war America, and his genesis as an author, journalist, and a counterculture idol of the 1960s. The era is now widely regarded as a turning point in contemporary American history as its deep-rooted values and norms were, over the course of a decade, gradually transformed by the young generation of social and political activists toward allegedly a more tolerant and liberal kind of community. Crucial in such an endeavor was the role of the countercultural movement that produced some of the most capable intellectual minds of the time, including Thompson. The paper thus analyzes the role and nature of the alternative culture in America as perceived by one of its most observant participants. Also, the thesis focuses on the author's role in establishing a new genre called New Journalism which can be linked with the era's countercultural efforts as well. In general, Thompson, in his texts, examines various phenomena surrounding the counterculture and provides us with a distinctive portrayal of the era's zeitgeist. However, unlike some of his contemporaries, he also remembers to examine numerous flaws and fallacies existing within contemporary American society, the American Dream...
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Entropy and Consumerism in Pynchon's Works
Litochleb, Daniel ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Robbins, David Lee (referee)
In his works, Pynchon engages the difficult concept of entropy and exposes how certain trends in contemporary culture and society, such as consumerism, exhibit tendencies similar to those of entropy. This observation has disturbing implications for contemporary culture and society, such as eventual cultural heat-death, where new ideas cease to develop, because all the useful intellectual energy has been exhausted. Therefore, I have decided to examine this concept of entropy and how Pynchon engages it in his works "Entropy," The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow, which expose the main contributors to greater entropy and the disturbing implications of this concept for contemporary culture and society, some of which we are witnessing even today. The two main scientific types of entropy, thermodynamic and that of information theory, are explored by Pynchon in his early short story "Entropy," which I have analyzed in the second chapter of this thesis. As such, this short story provides an unobstructed view of Pynchon's early engagement with the concept of entropy, which increases in complexity in his later works The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow. The Crying of Lot 49, explored in the third chapter of this thesis, indicates a considerable development of and change in Pynchon's perspective...
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Apocalypse as revelation of truth in modern American fiction: Thomas Pynchon and post-9/11 novel
Olehla, Richard ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Procházka, Martin (referee) ; Kolinská, Klára (referee)
English summary This dissertation focuses on the apocalyptic fiction of Thomas Pynchon and analyses various representations of the apocalypse as "revelation" or "unveiling of truth" in its various aspects and manifestations (i.e. paranoia, angels, etc.) in the novels V., The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow. The theme of apocalypse as a revelation concerning the true nature of the world has a key role to play in the above mentioned novels as well as significance for Pynchon's protagonists. This is so despite the fact that such revelation is depicted as illusory and mostly unattainable, since these novels are all based on the premise that there is no ultimate truth, and therefore, there is nothing that can be revealed. Pynchon's characters get only a revelation of individual truth, and thus theirs is a private apocalypse. When analysing the role of the apocalypse in Western culture, it is also important to analyse the role of millenarian expectations as well as the supposed communication process between God and people, a process depicted as being mediated by angels. The interpretation of God's message can never be precise and perfect, since its meaning is distorted during the communication process. On the rhetorical level, this distortion is equal to metaphor, which in turn causes feelings of paranoia...
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