SOURCE: "Exhumation: The Dead Father," in Narrative Turns and Minor Genres in Postmodernism, edited by Theo D'haen and Hans Bertens, Rodopi, 1995, pp. 25-40.

In the following essay, Malmgren presents a detailed, thorough examination of The Dead Father.

PRETEXT: Our presentation consists of two kinds of commentaries:

LECT: Readings—descriptive, analytic, interpretive—of the Barthelmean corpus and the Barthelmean text.

IDIOLECT: Countertexts, in which Barthelme is unfair to Malmgren.

The autopsy itself unfolds in three stages, each with several reading operations, as follows:

I. The Barthelmean Corpus

1. Impure Text

2. Collage

3. Fragments

II. The Corpse of The Dead Father: Partial Anatomy

4. The Body

5. Blazon

6. The Mute Text

III. The Dead Father: Identifying the Corpse

7. Examining the Corpse

8. Mythification

9. Overdetermination

10. Totalization

11. Totalization Revisited

12. Resurrection: The Live Father

I myself have these problems. Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to...