The Dissertation

  This edition first published in the United States in 2013 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10012

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  Copyright © 2013 by R. M. Koster

  Copyright © 1975 by Sueños, S. A.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now know or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Koster, R. M., 1934-

  The dissertation : Tinieblas book two / R.M. Koster.

  pages cm. — (Tinieblas ; book two)

  Summary: “The second book in R.M. Koster’s highly acclaimed Tinieblas trilogy (following The Prince), The Dissertation is the story of—and a story by—Camilo Fuertes. To fulfill his Ph.D. requirement, Fuertes decides to write about his father, the martyred president of Tinieblas, a country in Latin America. We follow Leon as he winds his twisted path through delinquency, learning, bravery, and incest to the presidency. At once a powerful vision of Latin American history and a brilliant parody of the academic form—complete with endnotes!—The Dissertation is an essential postmodern novel in the tradition of Vonnegut, Barth and Nabokov, ready to be embraced by a new generation of readers”— Provided by publisher.

  1. Politics and government—Fiction. 2. Latin America—Fiction. 3. Political fiction. I. Title.

  PS3561.O84D5 2013 813’.54—dc23 2013029478

  Book design and typeformatting by Bernard Schleifer

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-4683-0909-6

  For H. K. and L. S. K.

  PREFACE

  This is the second of three books in which I invent the Republic of Tinieblas—its history, geography, politics, and “atmosphere,” as well as a number of its inhabitants. The books are related in theme as well as in setting. Certain actors appear in all three, now as principals, now as supporting players, now as extras. And there are interlacings done for my private amusement. Each book, though, can stand on its own and bear separate viewing, so that while The Dissertation (1975) was done after The Prince (1972) and before Mandragon (1979), I think of it less as tome two of a trilogy than as the central panel of a triptych.

  Its structure is, for better or worse, unique. No one else has ever written a novel in the form of a Ph.D. thesis, and no one else is likely to write one now. Pale Fire (in the form of a poem and commentary) provided a measure of precedent I gratefully acknowledge this and other debts to the master. The chief inspiration or irritant (See Note 12) was furnished, however, by an academic colleague. We both were in our mid-thirties. Neither of us had the Ph.D. He, though, was working en his and urged me to do likewise. I told him I couldn’t be bothered: if I was going to spend two or so years writing something no one would ever read, I preferred to go first class and write a novel. (I was then the author of six unpublished ones.)

  “Why not admit it?” he sneered. “You couldn’t do a dissertation, you haven’t the grit.”

  The remark rankled. It lodged, in fact, like a splinter in my mind’s paw. A few years later, when I was finishing The Prince, I resolved to teach the fellow a lesson: I’d do a dissertation and a novel at once, and (in passing) a send-up of Ph.D.s and their foolishness. Many hundreds of times during the next four years I regretted that resolution, but true grit (or blind pigheadedness) saw me through.

  What I had, then, when I started this book was the form. I decided to locate the action in Tinieblas, but not because I intended to do a triptych. That came later. I’d invented large tracts of Tinieblas writing The Prince and was in the position of a film producer with a spacious, costly set all carpentered together standing idle. The thrifty thing to do was use it again, expanding and refurbishing as necessary. But I hadn’t any story, any “content”; I had the form first.

  I consider this a very good procedure, though I confess I haven’t followed it since. The form gave me the makings of one chief character, Camilo Fuertes: dissertations, after all, are written by scholars. It suggested a style—long, balanced, periodic sentences, and a possible leitmotif of historical allusion. It was time I got some practical benefit out of all the dabbling I’d done in history books. It allowed me to use the method of counterpoint: one story in the Text, one in the Notes. (I have favored contrapuntal storytelling, both as addict and pusher, since the summer of 1943, when a lucky sniffle plucked me from the beach at Neponsit, Long Island, and deposited me in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Africa.) Finally, the dissertation form compelled me to an invention that brought me infinite delight and agony, and besides, pleased some readers: the afterlife according to Camilo. Dissertations must be documented. Camilo’s researches groped back more than a century into Tinieblan history. I found it tiresome to invent imaginary texts and hit on the idea of making him a spirit medium so that he could cull his data from imaginary “dead” people. All sorts of wonderful things ensued.

  There is something more. Anthony Burgess has written somewhere—and unlike Camilo (see pages XVIII-XIX) I have searched and searched for the reference—that the adoption of odd forms is useful both in revivifying the genre of the novel and in stimulating the novelist. I don’t know anything about revivification, but as to stimulation I can say this: the form’s outlandishness and intricacy, the number of balls (plates, indian clubs) it obliged me to keep in air at once, the difficulty of packing story into a box designed to carry scholarship imposed mind-breaking tensions that goosed me to the very top of my game.

  The Dissertation is my favorite book, the unrivaled love of my literary life. Like all great loves it caused me torment, but it always made everything up to me sooner or later. As for its reception, the reviewers applauded and fans wrote from distant lands. Bantam, Morrow, and Norton did paperback editions. Now Overlook has brought it back for another encore.

  Many good things happen if you live long enough.

  —R. M. K.

  Panama, August 2013

  NOTE

  I hold with León Fuertes (see Chapter 17): “A careful fake is better than the truth.” Hence, I write fiction.

  This book is fiction. I made it up.

  I began inventing the Republic of Tinieblas a few years ago in another work of fiction. I have invented more of it here. I have also invented a “next world,” an “afterlife.” It and Tinieblas have the same kind of reality.

  If the reader of this note is interested exclusively in the so-called “real world”, I advise him not to spend time or money on The Dissertation but to invest instead in a ride on the New York Rapid Transit System or some similar experience. The “real world” is a sloppy actuality. The Dissertation is a careful fake.

  —R. M. K.

  SUNBURST UNIVERSITY

  THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LEÓN FUERTES

  FORTY-THIRD PRESIDENT

  OF THE REPUBLIC OF TINIEBLAS

  BY

  CAMILO FUERTES, M.A.

  A Dissertation submitted to the

  Department of History

  in partial fulfillment of the requirements

  for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

  Approved:

  Constance S. Lilywhite, Ph.D.

  Professor and Chairman of History

  Dustin Grimes, Ph.D.

  Professor of
History and Dean of Graduate Studies

  THE FUERTES GENEALOGY

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PREFACE

  Note

  The Fuertes Genealogy

  Foreword

  PART ONE

  His Origins (1840-1917)

  1.Three Señoritas Fuertes

  2. Rebeca

  3. Rebeca’s Odyssey

  4. The Conception, Gestation, and Birth of León Fuertes

  PART TWO

  His Early Life (1917-1936)

  5. The Flight from Mituco

  6. The Reservation

  7. The Urchinhood of León Fuertes

  8. Learning

  9. Music

  10. Sport

  11. Love

  PART THREE

  His Years In The Wilderness (1936-1945)

  12. Some Modes of Autodegradation

  13. Journey

  14. Soldier

  15. Warrior

  16. Illumination

  PART FOUR

  His Maturity, His Ministry, His Martyrdom

  (1946-1964)

  17. Money

  18. Marriage

  19. Lechery

  20. Politics

  21. Ministry

  22. Some Views of León, President

  23. Discord and Disfavor

  24. The Death of León Fuertes

  NOTES

  Also by R.M. Koster

  Praise for The Prince

  FOREWORD

  Little is known in the United States about the Republic of Tinieblas. One sympathizes with the confusions of the unlettered, the inquisitive cabby, say, who upon extracting a disclosure of his passenger’s nationality can squint into his mirror and remark: “Tinieblan, huh? Ya don’t look like a African.” Tinieblas is neither large nor much endowed with resources. It has refrained entirely from international barbarism. Why should the “man in the street” know anything about it?

  The strident ignorance one finds in academe is another story. The inevitable mention of bananas, as though their cultivation were our only national pursuit; the ubiquitous delusion that the Reservation-a tract adjacent to Ciudad Tinieblas which the U.S. leases as a military base-is a U.S. territorial possession; the crass quip by one tenured ichthyosaur that “Tinieblans clock their history in revolutions per minute”; the conviction of a former classmate (who proved his solidarity with the masses by defecating in the dean’s filing cabinet) that since my father and uncle were both Presidents of Tinieblas, I belong to an exploiting class—all this has been a bottomless font of pain.

  Nor are Tinieblans themselves very much better informed. Political rapists have made our history their slavey, have bent her to grotesque, degrading postures to serve their powerlust. Those of our intellectuals who have not pimped in these abuses have committed others on their own, distorting our heritage in undocumented screeds. The world perceives Tinieblas through the glazed eyes of wire service stringers and nomadic hacks from Time. Tinieblans know their country through the lies of demagogues, or through the half truths of lazy poseurs. There is, then, a clear need for authoritative investigations by qualified scholars into aspects of Tinieblan history and culture. This dissertation is such a work.

  The Text presents the life and times of my father, León Fuertes—street-urchin, vagabond, self-made degenerate, lecher, and main-chance legal trickster; also athlete, artist, scholar, soldier, preserver of the nation, and forty-third President of the Republic. The span is from the discernible origins of our family in 1840 to León Fuertes’ assassination in 1964. The setting is mainly Tinieblas, but extends to North America, Europe, and Africa. The scope is epic, the events enthralling, the prose at all times vivid and delightful.

  The Notes document the Text, but because of the original research technique I have developed and perfected (see note 4), also provide extensive information about the next world, our life after so-called “death.” No writer since Dante Alighieri has addressed this subject in comparable depth. My treatment is less panoramic than Dante’s, but a good deal more accurate.

  Either Text or Notes alone would amply satisfy that doctoral requirement which the Regents of Sunburst University term “an achievement in research constituting a significant contribution to knowledge.” But I am no skinflint, dear Drs. Grimes and Lilywhite. I give you both.

  I trust, besides, that this dissertation will do more than merely meet requirements. It is not often that an act of historical inquiry is also one of filial piety and civic duty; or that the grist of scholarship is also that of national epic and universal cosmology; or that the material of a Ph.D. thesis is the stuff of pity and terror. But here’s a hero blown to tartar steak at the height of his powers; and here’s a once fortunate land cruelly oppressed; and here’s a scholar mining the next world for veins of truth. I shall fulfill the requirements. Fear not, Professor Lilywhite; doubt not, Professor Grimes. But at that stroke I’ll ease an honored ghost, unmask a tyrant, and describe the universe—, and all the while amuse my gentle gringo readers.

  My subject is my father, my country, and (to a certain, unavoidable extent) my special gift. I care about my subject passionately. Much is made, nowadays, of the value of scholarly objectivity, as though the less one cared about his subject the better he would treat it. This attitude, which is characteristic of graduate schools and the dissertations they produce, corresponds to the alienation of assembly-line workers, business executives, and other slaves. But Ortega y Gasset has commented wisely (somewhere in Estudios sobre el amor, and don’t expect me, pig-headed examiners, to interrupt the crafting of this Foreword to track down and snare page references for you) on obsession as the mark of both love and genius. The lover is obsessed with his beloved; the artist is obsessed with his art. So it is with the true scholar and his subject. An idea disturbs him. He cannot dismiss it. It lies reeking on the pavement of his mind like a blasted chunk of human flesh. It magnetizes his attention day and night, waking and sleeping. It gives him no peace. It haunts him and hunts him until he makes it mean something. Meanwhile his associates snicker and tap their foreheads; his wife whines that she’s neglected; quacks and deans combine against him to condemn and punish his deviation from respectable mediocrity. He accepts it all, the inner torment, the outer hostility. For he serves truth and knows that anything less than an obsession engenders only doodling, or the pack-ratting of random scraps.

  I had once thought to preface this dissertation with a few pages of backhanded tribute to the numerous morons, academic, psychosnoopic, and otherwise, who in attempting to thwart me, unwittingly spurred me on. Naming them, however, would be an act of resentment and revenge, very stupid pursuits (it strikes me now) for a man of talent. I do wish, though, while leaving them anonymous, to thank those who furnished me suffering. Without them I should never have achieved mastery. I owe as well a great debt to my wife, Elizabeth Cleaver Fuertes, who besides sometimes wandering into the group mentioned above, preserved the manuscript of this dissertation during some very dark hours; to the spirits of several close relations, who sustained, encouraged, and aided me; and to all those in this world and the next who helped me in my research. Should this work contain any inaccuracies—something which, by the way, I very strongly doubt—, the blame is, of course, my own.

  It is an abomination on one’s reader to make him yo-yo down and up the page between text and notes. I have marshaled my Text in the van, my Notes in the rear. This dissertation may be approached in that order. Yet should you prefer, revered examiners, accomplished Professor Lilywhite and gifted Professor Crimes, to swing your attention leisurely back and forth, like fortunate spectators of an entrancing Tilden-Budge rally, that is perfectly Jake with me. By all means please yourselves! Your lives are, I know, in the main dull and tedious, but you are now about to be enlightened, uplifted, and entertained. Sit back. Be at your case. Enjoy the slices I shall serve you “Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”

  CAMILO FUERT
ES

  May, 1975

  PART ONE

  HIS ORIGINS (1840-1917)

  1.Three Señoritas Fuertes

  GENERAL ISIDRO BODEGA (1780-1848, President and Dictator of Tinieblas 1830-1848) was the first and longest-lived of our uniformed gorillocrats. Like many despots, he despised his fellow countrymen and surrounded himself with foreigners. Among the several Europeans whom he advanced out of all proportion to their merit was a French adventurer, Jean-Luc Bout de Souffle, who stole enough during three years as Minister of Culture to finance his repatriation, his retirement, and his reminiscences. These contain the earliest Fuertes reference, enveloped in some Gallic commentary en Tinieblan women.

  To illustrate his thesis that “Tinieblan women display a uterine arrogance Mme. Merteuil might envy,” Bout de Souffle tells of one Rosalba Fuertes, “vierge rustique et belle” who presented herself at the Presidential Palace in the spring of 1840, “her ample charms imperfectly concealed by the thin native costume,” and requested an audience with General Bodega. Those charms must have worked some magic on the guards (who could not have been much more courteous than the orangutans commanded by our current simianisimo),1 for she was admitted; whereupon she astounded all present by informing General Bodega that she had come to the capital for the purpose of conceiving a son by him. General Bodega examined her gravely for some moments; then, announcing that he had never received a challenge he could so willingly accept or a petition he would so earnestly strive to fulfill, he ordered the salon cleared.

  Bout de Souffle goes on to say that while Señorita Fuertes left the capital the next day and never again sought contact with General Bodega, the General was unable to forget her. He inquired after her and learned that she was, in fact, enceinte. The following year he sent a courier to her with his offer to recognize her son. She replied that her son was a daughter, could never hope to be President of the Republic, and might just as well keep the name Fuertes. General Bodega then sent his personal aide-de-camp to bring her to Ciudad Tinieblas, where she would have every luxury and he the leisure to give her not only a president but an archbishop and a banker as well, but she answered that, while she appreciated General Bodega’s hard work and good intentions, she would never live with a military man who couldn’t hit the target with his first shot. Bravisima! Bravisima, Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Rosalba!