- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: FSG Adult (Sep 2 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0374529256
- ISBN-13: 978-0374529253
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 14.2 x 1.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #190,553 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
The Dead Father is a gargantuan half-dead, half-alive, part mechanical, wise, vain, powerful being who still has hopes for himself--even while he is being dragged by means of a cable toward a mysterious goal. In this extraordinary novel, marked by the imaginative use of language that influenced a generation of fiction writers, Donald Barthelme offered a glimpse into his fictional universe. As Donald Antrim writes in his introduction, "Reading The Dead Father, one has the sense that its author enjoys an almost complete artistic freedom . . . a permission to reshape, misrepresent, or even ignore the world as we find it . . . Laughing along with its author, we escape anxiety and feel alive."
About the Author
Donald Barthelme was one of the most influential American novelists of the 1970s and 1980s, bringing a unique postmodern voice to his novels, short stories, and essays. He died in 1989.
Donald Antrim is the author of three novels, including The Verificationist.
Donald Antrim is the author of three novels, including The Verificationist.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Eleven o'clock in the morning. The sun doing its work in the sky. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Eleven o'clock in the morning. The sun doing its work in the sky. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.1 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)
27 of 31 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Caustic Brilliance, April 9 2000
By A bookish fellow - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Dead Father (Paperback)
I hate experimental fiction. Don DeLillo and his ilk, they bore me; it's just a lot of fake cleverness. But this book, while you can't deny the avantness of its garde, is...well...the first page brings up the question of just what exactly is lodged in the supine, mile-tall Dead Father's teeth. "Mackerel salad. At least we think it is mackerel salad. In the sagas, it is mackerel salad." Wildly fantastic, caustically funny ( the sex scenes will make you fall out of your chair), prosodically innovative ( I believe Barthelme has invented his own verb tense) and yet, easy to follow and, really, with an old-fashioned plot. It is a parable about the overthrow of old tyrannies -- and in spite of all the literary smartaleckitude it is tender and genuinely moving. You have never read anybody like Barthelme, and if you can find this book anywhere (out of PRINT! how DARE they? ) treasure it. Nothing like it has ever been written or will be again. Sixty-eight stars (if they would allow it.)
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun to read, Mar 19 2000
By A Ward - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Dead Father (Paperback)
Barthelme's best novel. As with all of his novel's there is not so much a plot as wonderful word play, black, absurdist humor, and a terrific sense of irony. This is the outrageous story of a small group of people toting their dead ruler--The Dead Father--to his burial ground. Both a pathetic and frightening character, The Dead Father only vaguely suspects what is happening to him, continuing to believe that he is being taken somewhere to be restored to life. This is the kind of novel you could get away with writing in the mid-20th century, a time of great experimentataion in literature. Unfortunately, those days appear to be over.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
His best novel, Feb 24 2001
By Mr. Egregious - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Dead Father (Paperback)
In relation to SNOW WHITE, this work contains more substance and is a greater literary effort than its predecessor. At the open we have 22 people, some Biblical while some are clearly not even representative, literally dragging God, not quite dead, through various roads, countryside, and towns in order to reach the plot in which He will be buried. Of course, it does not matter is He is dead when they reach their destination. The novel is one of Barthelme's more powerful tales and, as always, full of humor. One cannot read this without thinking that the Monty Python crew was somewhat influenced by this work, philosophically as well as from a creative standpoint. The one surprising footnote to this work is that it is a rather easy read, a linear narrative with definitive characters. Yet, as will all of Barthelme, is if never boring for even a page.
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