A quintessentially post-modern novel, DF follows a group of travellers as they drag their "dead father" (a curiously dead god... curious because he is only sort of dead). A metaphor for the burden left behind by the cultural revolutions of the 1960s, it has inspired numerous immitators. Embedded within the novel is Barthelme's famous short story "A Manual for Sons."

Summary (From the publisher):

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.