Preview of The Dead Father Summary:

The Dead Father fully supports Barthelme's claim that in the contemporary age, physicist Werner Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle is our song of songs." Although his treatment of the necessity of living in a permanent state of uncertainty is comic, Barthelme's undermining of all forms of authority and authoritative discourse is just as serious as it is playful. His novel grotesquely exaggerates the father's size only to better emphasize his ridiculousness...