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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Hard to know how to summarise my thoughts on this book.
At times very funny, at times incredibly frustrating. Worth reading for the pure felicity of language employed, but don't expect much drama to pull you through it. That said, for a narrative story that is never very explicit, I found the journey pretty easy to follow.
Where it works best is in the detail of description, the verbal dexterity and mischievous humour. At times I found characters quite touching as well, but those moments were pretty rare.
At times very funny, at times incredibly frustrating. Worth reading for the pure felicity of language employed, but don't expect much drama to pull you through it. That said, for a narrative story that is never very explicit, I found the journey pretty easy to follow.
Where it works best is in the detail of description, the verbal dexterity and mischievous humour. At times I found characters quite touching as well, but those moments were pretty rare.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
11 reviews
27 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Caustic Brilliance
9 April 2000
Format: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
Fun to read
19 Mar 2000
Format: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
His best novel
24 Feb 2001
Format: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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