The Dead Father

Author: Donald Barthelme
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466857307
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book 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."

The Dead Father

Author: Donald Barthelme
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780374529253
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
The dead father, who is some 3,200 cubits long, is being hauled across the landscape by means of a cable pulled by nineteen or so of his fathers. Excedpt the dead father is not really dead. He is past his prime, sexually and authoritatively. He is vain and foolish, but he looms large. He has been a confessor (his huge hollow leg is large enough to contain confessionals) and an autocrat. A manual for sons, offering sample fatherly monologues and tips on identifying fathers by color and general habit, is included for the confused.

The Dead Father

Author: Donald Barthelme
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780710086396
Category : Fiction in English
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book 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."

Murdered Father, Dead Father

Author: Rosine Jozef Perelberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131752750X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
Murdered Father, Dead Father: Revisiting the Oedipus Complex examines the progressive construction of the notion of paternal function and its central relevance in psychoanalysis. The distinction between the murdered (narcissistic) father and the dead father is seen as providing a paradigm for the understanding of different types of psychopathologies, as well as works of literature, anthropology and historical events. New concepts are introduced, such as "a father is being beaten", and a distinction between the descriptive après coup and the dynamic après coup that provides a model for a psychoanalytic understanding of temporality. The book includes a reflection on how the concepts of the death instinct and the negative, in their connection with that which is at the limits of representability, are an aid to an understanding of Auschwitz, a moment of rupture in European culture that the author characterizes as " the murder of the dead father". Perelberg’s book is an important clinical and intellectual marker, and will be required reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, anthropologists, and historians, as well as students in all these disciplines.

The Dead Fathers Club

Author: Matt Haig
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101201991
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Book Description
A ghost story with a twist, from Matt Haig, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library. "Matt Haig has an empathy for the human condition, the light and the dark of it, and he uses the full palette to build his excellent stories." —Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods Philip Noble is an eleven-year-old in crisis. His pub landlord father has died in a road accident, and his mother is succumbing to the greasy charms of her dead husband's brother, Uncle Alan. The remaining certainties of Philip's life crumble away when his father's ghost appears in the pub and declares Uncle Alan murdered him. Arming himself with weapons from the school chemistry cupboard, Philip vows to carry out the ghost's relentless demands for revenge. But can the words of a ghost be trusted any more than the lies of the living?

My Father's Wake

Author: Kevin Toolis
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306921456
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
An intimate, lyrical look at the ancient rite of the Irish wake--and the Irish way of overcoming our fear of death Death is a whisper for most of us. Instinctively we feel we should dim the lights, pull the curtains, and speak softly. But on a remote island off the coast of Ireland's County Mayo, death has a louder voice. Each day, along with reports of incoming Atlantic storms, the local radio runs a daily roll call of the recently departed. The islanders go in great numbers, young and old alike, to be with their dead. They keep vigil with the corpse and the bereaved company through the long hours of the night. They dig the grave with their own hands and carry the coffin on their own shoulders. The islanders cherish the dead--and amid the sorrow, they celebrate life, too. In My Father's Wake, acclaimed author and award-winning filmmaker Kevin Toolis unforgettably describes his own father's wake and explores the wider history and significance of this ancient and eternal Irish ritual. Perhaps we, too, can all find a better way to deal with our mortality -- by living and loving as the Irish do.

The Death of My Father the Pope

Author: Obed Silva
Publisher: MCD
ISBN: 0374722706
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 205

Book Description
A man mourning his alcoholic father faces a paradox: to pay tribute, lay scorn upon, or pour a drink. A wrenching, dazzling, revelatory debut Weaving between the preparations for his father's funeral and memories of life on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border, Obed Silva chronicles his father's lifelong battle with alcoholism and the havoc it wreaked on his family. Silva and his mother had come north across the border to escape his father’s violent, drunken rages. His father had followed and danced dangerously in and out of the family’s life until he was arrested and deported back to Mexico, where he drank himself to death, one Carta Blanca at a time, at the age of forty-eight. Told with a wry cynicism, a profane, profound anger, an antic, brutally honest voice, and a hard-won classical frame of reference, Silva channels the heartbreak of mourning while wrestling with the resentment and frustration caused by addiction. The Death of My Father the Pope is a fluid and dynamic combination of memoir and an examination of the power of language—and the introduction of a unique and powerful literary voice.

Dead White Guys

Author: Matt Burriesci
Publisher: Cleis Press
ISBN: 1632280175
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
After his daughter was born prematurely in 2010, Burriesci set out to write a book for her 18th birthday. In short, honest, and simple letters, Burriesci teaches his daughter about 32 great books, from Plato to Karl Marx, and how their lessons have applied to his life. As someone who has spent a long and successful career advocating for great literature, Burriesci defends the titles in this series of tender and candid letters, rich in personal experience and full of humor. Dead White Guys is also a timely defense of the great books, arriving in the middle of a national debate about the fate of these books in high schools and universities around the country. Burriesci shows how the great books can enrich our lives as individuals, as citizens, and in our careers.

Father Knows Death

Author: Jeffrey Allen
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
ISBN: 0758289030
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Book Description
It isn't that stay-at-home dad Deuce Winters wants to be his small town's unofficial sleuth. Between caring for his peppy five year-old-daughter Carly and helping to keep his ten-months-pregnant wife Julianne sane, he's certainly got his hands full. But, well, trouble does seem to find him. . . That's why Duece is only mildly surprised to find a body among the frozen burgers and bratwurst at the Rose Petal fair's concession stand. And it seems the defrosting deceased was last seen arguing passionately with one of the fair's board members. But there may be more--a lot more--to the mystery, and tracking down the dangerous truth may be too much for even the most determined dad! "Laugh-out-loud funny. A terrific read!" --Laura Levine on Stay at Home Dead

Snow White

Author: Donald Barthelme
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439144400
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
“Eccentric, dazzling…the literary conversation piece of the year.” –San Francisco Chronicle An American short story writer and novelist acclaimed for his playful, postmodern style of short fiction, Barthelme’s first novel, Snow White, is a countercultural, experimental reconstruction of the Disney version of the traditional fairytale. In Barthelme’s modern day world, Snow White is a seductive woman waiting for her prince to return to New York. Pushing the bounds of fiction and form, Barthelme subverts the classic tale, prompting The New York Times to call him “a splendid practitioner at the peak of his power” and inspiring a new generation of authors including Charles Baxter, Dave Eggers, and David Gates.