I, the Supreme
Augusto Roa Bastos
 As critic John King notes, "it is impossible to summarize this extraordinary novel in a few lines. It incorporates the latest developments in linguistic theory and practice, talks of the arbitrariness and unreliability of language that purports to describe reality, rereads and comments upon the various histories and travelers’ accounts of Paraguay, ranges across the breadth of Latin American history, implicitly condemning Stroessner and debating with Fidel Castro, and exploring once again the gap between writer and reader." The book does, however, start by promising a linear narrative. It opens with the title words, set in a font designed to look like handwriting, heralding what appears to be an official order: I the Supreme Dictator of the Republic Order that on the occasion of my death my corpse be beheaded; my head placed on a pike for three days in the Plaza de la República, to which the people are to be summoned by the sounding of a full peal of bells... This pronouncement, it turns out, is not an official declaration. It is an imitation or forgery, found &#34;nailed to the door of the cathedral&#34; in Paraguay&#39;s capital, Asunción. Immediately following, then, is a discussion of this pasquinade: Dr Francia, the Supreme, and his secretary, Policarpo Patiño, discuss its meaning and possible provenance. Patiño is set the task of uncovering the perpetrator: &#34;You are to start tracking down the handwriting of the pasquinade in all the files.&#34; But this linear detection narrative soon starts to unravel. The Supreme casts doubt even on the presumption that the declaration is indeed a forgery, or rather suggests that the forgery could itself be forged: &#34;Suppose that I myself am an author of pasquinades.&#34; Moreover, the literary genre is undone by the introduction of footnotes (which blur the line between fiction and fact), and the narrative transparency subverted by the fact that the novel asserts its own materiality with interpolations such as &#34;(the rest of the sentence burned, illegible)&#34; and &#34;(edge of the folio burned)&#34;. The effect of these notes is to remind readers that they are reading a book, and that this book is incomplete, damaged, and fallible. As the novel continues, it becomes more and more caught up in digressions, such that the original narrative line is apparently forgotten. The Supreme and his secretary discuss an often bizarre series of topics: a meteor that is apparently chained to Francia&#39;s desk; a prison camp in Tevego whose inhabitants have been turned to stone; and increasingly the dictator also ruminates on the past, particularly the events of Paraguay&#39;s foundation when he had to fend off the attention of Spaniards, Argentines, and Brazilians, all of whom threatened the nascent country&#39;s independence. Chronology and logic are seemingly abandoned: at one point the dictator discusses the date of his own death; elsewhere he mentions events that will only happen long afterwards, such as the Chaco War of the 1930s (in which Roa Bastos himself fought). Moreover, readers are increasingly made aware of the marginal but insistent voice of the mysterious compiler. At the center of the book, it is revealed that the compiler is, in fact, in possession of the same pen used by the Supreme, a &#34;memory-pen&#34; that reproduces images as well as words, but that is now &#34;partially broken, so that today it writes only with very thick strokes that tear the paper, effacing words as it writes them&#34;. The novel ends at the end of Francia&#39;s life, with him condemning Patiño to death for supposedly plotting against him, followed by Francia&#39;s death in a fire in 1840. As the characters and plot disintegrate, so apparently does the novel. The final line is another interpolation: &#34;(the remainder stuck together, illegible, the rest unable to be found, the worm-eaten letters of the Book hopelessly scattered).&#34; And yet, this is not quite the last word, as it is followed by a &#34;Final Compiler&#39;s Note&#34; that reflects on the compilation and the book as a whole. Here the novel seems to pass responsibility on to &#34;the no less fictitious and autonomous reader.&#34;