This 1973 book, written by a Brooklyn native (so says the bio note but you can't be sure), is heavily influenced by magic realism and Marquez, a long (fictional) biography and picturesque travelogue of one Leon Fuertes who had many adventures, a checkered past, and eventually became the 43rd president of the imaginary country of Tinieblas. The story starts way before with his randy, misfit descendants and through to his death. As you can tell by the title, it is structured as a dissertation, barely, a conceit which does not make it academic at all except for an excuse for an excess of footnotes.The book is 550 pages long and the footnotes, ultimately, are the raison d'etre for the book - at over 200 pages of the total, they start with a parallel narrative by the author, one Camilo Fuertes (Leon's son) and his troubles with research and personal problems, eventually revealing his ability psychically connect with his relatives in the spirit world. The troubles of Camilo start to echo, spiritually if not factually, Leon's existential issues, removed by decades, and begin to weave a larger transcendental adjunct to the core tale.While strongly reminscent of much Latin American fiction of the '60s and '70s it is ultimately more accessible, more "Western" and straight-forward if awfully episodic. The book ultimately achieves a kind of powerfu force by the footnotes, overly conversational, full of related dialogue and various pleas to his examiners to have patience.It would have worked in a very interesting fashion as some kind of interactive fiction, but being a product of the time it is ultimately best to read this with 2 bookmarks going. It's a little awkward and does not quite transcend the form. The cover mentions it being in the manner of Vonnegut, Barth and Pynchon, which is only a little true (mostly Barth). A little more conservative than that suggests, a little less high-minded, a little more sexy and less funny than you would except or desire.
