“In Any Case They’re All Very Bright- Coloured”: Disturbing Readerly Identity in Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat
“In Any Case They’re All Very Bright- Coloured”: Disturbing Readerly Identity in Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat

Summary/Abstract: 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.

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