Open Access“In Any Case They’re All Very BrightColoured”: Disturbing Readerly Identity in Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat
Author(s) -
Petronia Popa-Petrar
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
caietele echinox
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1582-960X
DOI - 10.24193/cechinox.2021.41.21
Subject(s) - spark (programming language) , appropriation , character (mathematics) , identity (music) , relation (database) , literature , aesthetics , function (biology) , art , sociology , linguistics , philosophy , computer science , geometry , mathematics , database , evolutionary biology , biology , programming language
"The present essay approaches Muriel Spark’s 1970 novel, The Driver’s Seat, as an attempt to examine the interpretive processes through which readers experience both text and reality, with a view to disturbing readerly habits and facing us with the limitations of our own hospitality in relation to (fictional) others. I argue that Spark’s sketching of sparse “identikits” for the author’s, character’s and reader’s positions alike function as cautionary tales of the dictatorial potential inherent in any act of comprehension, or interpretive appropriation."