Dissertations as Fictions And yet dissertations are being completed and accepted as part of the requirements for graduate degrees which are, in violation of policy, clearly fictions. I know of one recent work (the author and the university shall remain nameless in order to protect the innocent), a study of the late British playwright Joe Orton, whose closing lines are as follows:

Orton entertained me; now, in exchange, I have entertained him; our mutual debt is paid, except that I'm in better shape than he is; while he is resting above with the immortals, I'll be frolicking below with lesser mortals, yet, henceforth, one hopes, as an ennobled Doctor of Philosophy; life and art are both strange and wonderful. Now it is time to pull up my trousers, so to speak, and to call my late Aunt Gertrude, and to move on towards serendipity.