- Hardcover: 438 pages
- Publisher: Harper's Magazine Press; 1st ed edition (1975)
- ISBN-10: 0061250503
- ISBN-13: 978-0061250507
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.8 x 4.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,507,270 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is the middle book of the "Tinieblas" trilogy (the others being The Prince and Mandragon), but it can certainly stand on its own - particularly as the entire trilogy is rather hard to find.
Tinieblas is a fictitious South American banana republic, and we are in "magic realist" territory here. Despite the author coming from North America, this is among the very best of the genre that I have read. It is extremely well-written, and often very funny indeed. The main text is written from the point of view of the son of a former president of the country; the footnotes - which are just as long, and collected together to form the second half of the book - give his late father's view of the same events, from beyond the grave. You will need two bookmarks.
The cover of the edition on my bookshelf says it will appeal to those who enjoy Barth, Pynchon and Vonnegut, and that's about right.
Tinieblas is a fictitious South American banana republic, and we are in "magic realist" territory here. Despite the author coming from North America, this is among the very best of the genre that I have read. It is extremely well-written, and often very funny indeed. The main text is written from the point of view of the son of a former president of the country; the footnotes - which are just as long, and collected together to form the second half of the book - give his late father's view of the same events, from beyond the grave. You will need two bookmarks.
The cover of the edition on my bookshelf says it will appeal to those who enjoy Barth, Pynchon and Vonnegut, and that's about right.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
A masterful work of academic sabotage
14 Feb 2000
Format:Hardcover
It's a crime and a shame that the works of R.M. Koster are out of print, especially the masterful "The Dissertation." (I picked up a three-book set of Koster's works at a remainder sale in Washington D.C. for a dollar.)
Both a parody of and a tribute to the magical realism of Garcia Marquez, "The Dissertation" is the meat of Koster's Tinieblas trilogy. Although each of the three contains abundant wit and wisdom, "The Dissertation" is a supreme joy to read, mountainous footnotes and all.
But if you look beyond the parody, you'll see a classically structured tale of fall and redemption, a light treatise on the state of Latin American politics, and a commentary on the state of Academe.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Satiric history parodies Latin novels, academe, adventure.
20 July 1997
Format:Paperback
Koster conjures up a Latin American nation with larger than life heroes - and villains - whose lives (and the central character has many "lives") can and will transmogrify at the whims of nature and fate.
The story is told in the form of a PhD dissertation (addressed to Drs. Lillywhite and Grimes of Sunburst University in a mythical place called Florida) and parodies the academic form and format hilariously.
The "text" is a Grand Epic history of the Central American nation of Tinieblas and his family's place in it's story. The "footnotes" expose not only the fevered candidate's unconventional method of collecting original sources (he interviews many of the makers of his nation's history from their current homes in the afterlife) but reveals his slow emotional unraveling into a less-than-delicate madness driven by the stresses and excesses of the academic life.
"The Dissertation" is a Llossa, Marquez or Allende tale told in episodes recalled after (either)
- guzzling a pitcher of martinis,
- dropping acid, or
- gulping helium.
But in addition to a finely tuned sense of the absurd, Koster writes a dead-on-the-level adventure tale.
The episode in which he sends central character, Leon Fuertes, through the WWII battle of Monte Cassino is every bit as gripping a story as any James Jones might have written.
This cult classic deserves wider reading. It's as much fun to read as "My Search for Warren G. Harding," "A Confederacy of Dunces," or the "Flashman" adventures from the fertile mind of George MacDonald Fraser - and especially recommended for fans of Latin American fiction who feel that the conventions of the genre could use a satirical tweak or two, or anyone who has experienced the innate absurdities that too frequently accompany the pursuit of a graduate degree.
Buy it. Read it. Send a letter to Bob Koster about how much you enjoyed it.
Maybe he'll write us another one this good.
The story is told in the form of a PhD dissertation (addressed to Drs. Lillywhite and Grimes of Sunburst University in a mythical place called Florida) and parodies the academic form and format hilariously.
The "text" is a Grand Epic history of the Central American nation of Tinieblas and his family's place in it's story. The "footnotes" expose not only the fevered candidate's unconventional method of collecting original sources (he interviews many of the makers of his nation's history from their current homes in the afterlife) but reveals his slow emotional unraveling into a less-than-delicate madness driven by the stresses and excesses of the academic life.
"The Dissertation" is a Llossa, Marquez or Allende tale told in episodes recalled after (either)
- guzzling a pitcher of martinis,
- dropping acid, or
- gulping helium.
But in addition to a finely tuned sense of the absurd, Koster writes a dead-on-the-level adventure tale.
The episode in which he sends central character, Leon Fuertes, through the WWII battle of Monte Cassino is every bit as gripping a story as any James Jones might have written.
This cult classic deserves wider reading. It's as much fun to read as "My Search for Warren G. Harding," "A Confederacy of Dunces," or the "Flashman" adventures from the fertile mind of George MacDonald Fraser - and especially recommended for fans of Latin American fiction who feel that the conventions of the genre could use a satirical tweak or two, or anyone who has experienced the innate absurdities that too frequently accompany the pursuit of a graduate degree.
Buy it. Read it. Send a letter to Bob Koster about how much you enjoyed it.
Maybe he'll write us another one this good.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
In the Finest Tradition of the Surrealists
21 Mar 2000
Format:Paperback
If there's one thing I learned in graduate school, it's that the meat of a document can be found in the footnotes. Koster has brilliantly chosen to thread two stories--one contemporary, one historical--in entirely separate literary styles. Leon Fuertes' meteoric rise from abject humiliation to the pinnacle of power is followed in the main text, while the narrator's own tragic struggle with maritial infidelity and insanity(?) are detailed in the footnotes. By the end of the book, I had almost concluded that there was nothing left to experience that Leon Fuertes had not experienced. It's not often that you see such a sweeping expose on the human condition condensed into a single novel. As an aside, I found myself unable to resist the temptation of reading ahead to the next footnote. Perhaps the editor should have reconsidered lumping the narrative of the footnotes into a single appendix of endnotes. In any case, this novel was profoundly entertaining (I laughed out loud ever fourth page or so--did Walt Disney really design the lobby of the afterlife?). Of the Tinieblas Trilogy, this is his masterpiece. Clever narrative techniques like this can only be used once, and Koster has unwittingly monopolized it for all eternity. Find this book, buy it, read it and store it in a vault. It's priceless.
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