There are quite a number of relevant literary precedents for How the Dead Live; these literary precursors can be divided into two groups: the first group are various literary treatments of the afterlife or the voyage to the underworld, the second group are formal precursors, that is, novels with stylistic similarities but not necessarily thematic similarities.

The key texts grouped under the first heading are Homer's epic, the Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Inferno, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the last of which Self actually quotes in his epigraph. Self is constantly referencing these "intertexts." Though he indeed echoes a number of these text's characters, his versions are most often playful parodies. Phar Lap Dixon plays the role of the underworld guide, but he is exactly the opposite of Virgil in Dante's Inferno.

Likewise, Self's parodic version of Charon— the ancient Greek's ferryman of...