Self-Epitaph of the Writer-Celebrity — “Vladimír Páral about Himself and Other More Interesting Things”

Abstract

Vladimír Páral is an important and expressive figure in Czech literature of the second half of the 20th century, firmly standing out from other prose writers of that period. The poetics of his prose stem from the tradition of naturalism, neorealism, and critical realism in Czech literature. However, it is in no way possible to encapsulate this work within the framework of any of these trends. The writer Vladimír Páral himself exists in the consciousness of his readers as a famous exposer of his time, as an inciter breaking taboos and accepted social conventions, as a post-modernist, as a favourite of the socialist system or as a mysterious living legend causing numerous moral scandals. All these aspects make the book entitled Professional man not a one-dimensional autobiography of the author. Instead, it is rather another item in the output of the celebrity writer, precisely a kind of self-epitaph, in which he tries to impose a specific direction of reading on his overall work as well as confirming his myth as a hedonist writer.