critical commentary II Antonio Shinebourne
I wrote ‘The Reader Wants Drama, Please’ in an attempt to encourage the reader to acknowledge their own “dark passenger”, the self devoid of altruism, an aspect of what Freud termed the Id, the unconscious site of primal desires. Freud was writing in the early twentieth century, and his writings on psychoanalysis had a profound effect on the writers whose works have inspired my fiction. Throughout the story, I use metafiction extensively. I use direct address in which the reader becomes one of the students in the lecture; all reading is, arguably, a kind of education. The explicit references to literature in the lecture, and the blurring between fiction and reality in the lecturer’s story, expose how all narratives of power and authority in society (including the authority invested in a teacher) are a kind of fiction, a social myth created by those in power tomaintain their own authority. This is a heavily satirical comment on education; within an educational establishment, the “truths” of “superiors” are rarely challenged and are accepted as fact by students. Metafiction, tied to Brecht’s notion of the Verfremdungseffekt, was used by Modernist writers to expose the unnatural and challengeable nature of social authority, in order to encourage dissent. As an extension of this metafiction, I introduce an unreliable narrator. The seemingly objective academic discourse used in the opening of the story persuades the reader that there exists an emotional detachment between the narrator and his subject matter. However, I ultimately reveal that it is in fact his own life story; even at our most objective, the narratives of our lives revolve around subjective perceptions.This challenges the reader’s trust of authoritative voices. Katherine Mansfield, in
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