Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2012, English/Literature

The novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson is often celebrated by popular culture and either ignored or derided by literary critics, while this thesis reads it in relation to the picaresque literary tradition with a consideration for both the mass appeal and the disturbing qualities that make it a messy and difficult text. At times it comes across as transgressive in the way it creates sovereign space for alternative lifestyles, sometimes referred to as freaks by the narrator, Raoul Duke, but those moments are fleeting. More often, the narrator and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, are reinscribing a dominant structure that abuses the less privileged and less mobile members of society, such as a hitchhiker, a maid, and a waitress. Moreover, the narrator even ends up working against himself and counteracting what he apparently values: mobility, individual sovereignty and liberty, and his version American Dream. Through a rapidly moving and episodic narrative structure reminiscent of the picaresque tradition but with a postmodern twist that amplifies and accelerates the format to such an extreme that it paradoxically paralyzes meaningful movement in a focused direction, the novel proves both appealing and unsettling. At such extremes, the potentially positive and negative aspects blur and flatten into a messy text whose meaning resembles the polar extremes and sharp contrasts Jean Baudrillard found so sublime about America itself.

Committee: Bill Albertini PhD (Advisor); Phil Dickinson PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Journalism; Literature

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, English/Literature

This project explores the ideological implications of Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by exploring the physical journey described within the text, the contrast between the novel's two central characters Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo. Building off of existing scholarship on the journalistic nature of the novel, I explore how the novel suggests a libertarian conception of the “American Dream” by constructing Duke, a stand-in for Thompson himself, as a libertarian. In doing this, I explore how the novel can be understood as a journalistic chronicle of the historical moment where libertarianism, in the United States, emerged as third-way ideology amidst the failures of the left-counterculture in the 1960s and the resurgence of traditional conservatism under President Richard Nixon. I explore how physical journey detailed in the novel reveals this emergence of libertarianism through contrasting depictions of San Francisco, home to the left- counterculture, and Las Vegas, a city that the novel frames representative of cultural conservatism in the United States. Further, I explore how Dr. Gonzo and Duke demonstrate contrasting responses to the collapse of the left-counterculture, with Dr. Gonzo falling into hedonism and Duke adopting a libertarian stance.

Committee: Philip Dickinson Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Jolie Sheffer Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Journalism; Literature

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2005, Journalism (Communication)

If a magazine's achievements can be measured in part by whom and how many it infuriated in the shortest amount of time, then surely Scanlan's Monthly deserves to be honored. The brainchild of former Ramparts editor Warren Hinckle and former New York Times law reporter Sidney Zion, Scanlan's printed only eight issues in 1970 and 1971. But during its short lifetime the magazine drew the attention and often the ire of business, labor, law enforcement, and government leaders including Vice President Spiro Agnew and President Richard Nixon. In the midst of such special attention, Scanlan's managed to print some of the most provocative muckraking journalism of its time. Scanlan's published the first examples of Hunter S. Thompson's now-celebrated Gonzo journalism; and two years before anyone outside of Washington, D.C., had heard of Watergate, Scanlan's called for President Nixon's impeachment. Scanlan's' 2019; eighth issue, dedicated to the subject of guerilla violence in the U.S., was subjected to a nationwide boycott by printing unions, and was then seized by Montreal police after it was printed in Quebec. The issue, which turned out to be Scanlan's' last, finally appeared in January 1971 after a three-month delay. Scanlan's' insistence on taking on and not backing down from power doomed it to an early death, and its brushes with the U.S. government demonstrate the extent of the Nixon administration's war on the dissident press. Scanlan's is a sobering lesson on how government power can be wielded to harass, and in some cases silence, the press.

Committee: Patrick Washburn (Committee Chair) Subjects: History; Journalism; Mass Communications; Mass Media

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2008, Journalism (Communication)

This thesis argued that Hunter S. Thompson's writing style, commonly known as Gonzo journalism, was a style that formed slowly and remained dynamic after its inception. The changes in his writing style were linked with major events in his life, his experiments with drugs and alcohol, and his public persona. This was done through books of his letters, interviews, oral histories, and other published works about his life and writing. The thesis included an in-depth analysis of all of his published articles between 1962 and 1976 and studied how he experimented with his style based on the presence or absence of eight of the main elements of Gonzo journalism.

Committee: Patrick S. Washburn PhD (Committee Chair); Joseph Bernt PhD (Committee Member); Ellen Gerl MS (Committee Member) Subjects: Journalism