The Disappearing Female Body and the New Worker: John Barth, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Nicholson Baker, and Thomas Pynchon

Where, indeed, was the father? The question that closes The White Hotel is the same one that haunts postmodern fiction generally. Confronted by the empty dreams of engineering power, betrayed by technology, revealed in his own fantasies as the violent yet derivative consumer, the father is truly a deeply troubled ghost who stalks living white masculinity with tenacious staying power. Donald Barthelme aptly portrays “the Dead Father” as the massive rock-like form in the desert who is dragged amongst the living. The “Dead Father” is a burden, violently inept and embarrassing, but his presence is inescapable: “Overall length, 3,200 cubits.