The American Dream Machine: Anti-Systemic Fictions of Coover, Thompson, Burroughs, and Acker

• Název práce v češtině: Stroj na americký sen: Protisystémová fikce Coovera, Thompsona, Burroughse, a Acker
• Název v anglickém jazyce: The American Dream Machine: Anti-Systemic Fictions of Coover, Thompson, Burroughs, and Acker
• Klíčová slova: americký sen|transgrese|limit|moc|exces|spektákl|karneval|kapitalismus|konzumní|establishment
• Klíčová slova anglicky: American Dream|transgression|limit|power|excess|spectacle|carnival|capitalism|consumerism|establishment
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2015/2016
• Typ práce: diplomová práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur (21-UALK)
• Vedoucí / školitel: Louis Armand, Ph.D.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno a potvrzeno stud. odd.
• Datum přihlášení: 05.10.2015
• Datum zadání: 05.10.2015
• Schválení administrátorem: zatím neschvalováno
• Datum potvrzení stud. oddělením: 07.10.2015
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 05.09.2017 00:00
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 07.08.2017
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 05.09.2017
• Odevzdaná/finalizovaná: odevzdaná studentem a finalizovaná
• Oponenti: Mgr. David Vichnar, Ph.D.

Zásady pro vypracování

The thesis will engage in the diagnostics of the ever-changing trope of the “American Dream” and its literary manifestations through the lens of selected American authors of transgressive fiction published in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, including Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Robert Coover, Hubert Selby Jr., Bret Easton Ellis, and Damien Ober. Analysis of the chosen texts will confirm transgressive literature as a means of exposing the dark side of the Dream—that it is a pre-permitted ideal imposed by a capitalist, spectacular society, an unfeasible fiction promoted as reality that remains deeply ingrained in the stereotypical American mindset of primary ambition.

The cultural, historical and political context and evolution of the American Dream will be examined—its origin, changing meaning and its depiction in American literature, both negative and positive. Thanks to the popularization of the American Dream ideal by James Truslow Adams in 1931, the expression came to symbolize an essential, unalienable part of American society even in times of political and economic upheaval throughout the 20^th century. Just like the New Deal in the 1930s divided the political stance on the American Dream, so did Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” vision introduced in the 1960s. It is no coincidence that the Vietnam War brought the Dream into perspective a decade overdue. During the turn of the 1960s, the American Dream acquired an air of insignificance due to the political, cultural and economic decline of the nation, resulting in disillusionment and the degeneration of the ideal, a perception that would resurface during the 1980s’ AIDS epidemic. This new economical variation gradually resulted in the metamorphosis of the individual freedom ideal into a corporate ideal that shadowed the 1980s, bringing the American Dream back to the materialistic dominance of the 1950s’ consumerist tinged vision.

Transgressive fiction theory will be discussed along with the theory of limit-experience in connection to selected texts with literary genealogy taken into account. Through the exploration of the common extremism found in the discussed transgressive texts, the thesis will expose the American Dream as an ideal prostituted by its propagators—the media and capitalist institutions, both flourishing in postwar America, asserting the literary heritage of the negative trope of the American Dream. Instead of euphemizing reality, transgressive writing provides an acute social critique of the machinery powering this Dream.

Michael Silverblatt, who defines the transgressive fiction genre, argues that “[t]he underlying idea of transgressive thinking […] is that knowledge is no longer to be found through the oppositions of dialectical reasoning. Instead, knowledge is found at the limits of experience.”[1]In reaction to the disillusion with the fabricated dream, the texts portray a psychological panorama of the American nightmare. This cultural malaise is depicted through extremity, the motif of self-destructiveness going hand-in-hand with the idea of the limit-experience. The objective is to test the boundaries of organized reality, and through the blurring of reality and realism facilitate an exploration of consciousness and unconsciousness.

Analyses of the texts will trace the commonality and differences found in the selected group’s writing in regards to their response to the American Dream, American exceptionalism and the American way of life, paying specific detail to issues of obscenity, literary merit, extreme individualism, hypocrisy, and the extent of the freedom of choice. The analysis will describe how these works defy the ideal of the American Dream and the American way of life in terms of social critique with particular focus on motifs of the maverick, conformism, the pursuit of happiness, control and addiction, and self-validation. The authors supply their own interpretation and realization of the American Dream, be it through exploitation, distortion or perversion of the myth. The texts violate the already perverted idea of the American Dream, supplanting it with their own subverted manifestations.

The problematic of defining these labels—transgressive, American Dream, American sensibility—will be debated as well. The thesis will explore whether literature can be effectively transgressive and whether there exists such a thing as distinctly American transgressive fiction. The already traditional convention of the marginal being assimilated into the mainstream discourse applies to this subject as well, further complicating the issue of normalization. Can transgressive texts effectively work in opposition to social normativity if they themselves become normalized by the very institutions they attack? This question relates to another point to be discussed in the thesis, the issue of cultural authority. Who is the arbiter of reality? American cultural and political propaganda, extending well past the Cold War era, testifies in favor of the official establishment and military industrial complex aided by media. Through media and official structures, reality becomes a fiction, while transgressive fiction delves into hyperreality, drawing the curtain and exposing the Wizards of Oz, the masterminds behind the American Dream.


[1]Michael Silverblatt, “SHOCK APPEAL / Who Are These Writers, and Why Do They Want to Hurt Us? : The New Fiction of Transgression,” Los Angeles Times 1 Aug 1993: 2. 20 Feb 2014

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