“Towards the end of 2019 I received an email from a Mr. Martin Grey of Clacton-on-Sea. He had in his possession a series of notebooks written by his cousin that he thought might form the basis of an interesting book. I replied, thanking him, but suggested that the person best placed to make something of the material in question was Mr. Grey himself. He protested that he was no writer, and that he had not approached me randomly. He had, he explained, come across a blog post I had written about the forgotten 1960s psychotherapist Collins Braithwaite.”
The premise of this high metafictional novel is that a writer known only by his initials—which just happen to coincide with the initials of the author of this novel—has received notebooks from an infamous member of the anti-psychiatrist movement of the 1960s occupied by those trained in the field but who preferred to be known as psychotherapists. The notebooks referenced in this quote actually become the bulk of the novel. And the portrait of Collins Braithwaite mingled in with actual real-life historical characters is done to such serious effect that one can actually find the occasional review insisting that he actually existed. He did not, but that is beside the point. That he seems as though he could have it what the writer is really interested in his audience believing. The line between fact and fiction is blurred more heavily than usual in this novel, but the key takeaway is that it is found in the fiction section of bookstores and not the non-fiction section. The quote above is included in the introduction preface with is part of a book usually, though exclusively, found in works of non-fiction. At least, that was the tradition for most of the 20th century. That one finds more and more works of fiction—novels—that include prefaces in the 21st century seem to confirm that society has accepted the reality of living in a post-truth world.
“I shall begin by stating the facts. The danger to which I have alluded comes in the person of Collins Braithwaite. You will have heard him described in the press as ‘Britain’s most dangerous man’, this on account of his ideas about psychiatry. It is my belief, however, that it is not merely his ideas that are dangerous. I am convinced, you see, that Dr Braithwaite killed my sister, Veronica.”
The quotation marks around the name to which this quote is attributed indicate that Rebecca Smyth is a fake identity assumed by the unnamed writer of the notebooks which have been sent to GMB. The notebooks make up the bulk of the narrative and detail the plan by which the writer invents her persona of Rebecca as part of a plan to discover the truth about Braithwaite’s involvement in the death of her sister. In the world of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, Veronica’s death is what would be called the story’s “MacGuffin.” It is the incident that is necessary to get the plot going, but just as the money stolen by Marion Crane in Psycho suddenly loses almost all significance halfway through, so does Veronica’s death begin to fade into the background of her own sister’s written account as her Rebecca persona begins to establish itself as her dominant personality. Although this accusation of murder against Braithwaite pops up just three paragraphs into the very first of these mysterious notebooks, the novel is by no means a crime thriller or mystery. The most significant element in this quote, oddly enough, turns out not to be the accusation of murder against Braithwaite, but that the press has termed him the most dangerous man in the country.
“Braithwaite’s ideas filtered into popular culture too. Towards the end of 1966, prior to the recording of the album that would become Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Paul McCartney wrote:
`I thought, Let’s not be ourselves. Let’s develop alter egos so we’re not having to project an image which we know. It would be much more free. What would be really interesting would be to actually take on the personas of this different band … it won’t be us making all that sound, it won’t be the Beatles, it’ll be this other band, so we’ll be able to lose our identities in this.’
Whether the reluctant Beatle had read Kill Your Self is not known…"
This passage symbolizes the novel in a nutshell. Paul McCartney is actually quoted as saying everything is included here verbatim. Neither the author nor his writer character, GMB, added any details or removed any information of substance. The reference to whether McCartney had read Kill Your Self, however, is entirely fictional since that is the title of one of Braithwaite’s books. Needless to say, or perhaps not, none of Braithwaite’s ideas filtered down into either the recording of the famous Beatles album or anything else in pop culture since, as previously indicated, he is a work of fiction. But it certainly sounds like it could have happened. The famous cover of the album in question, after all, features photos of pop culture icons from Edgar Allan Poe to Marilyn Monroe and from occult weirdo Aleister Crowley to Karl Marx. So, the idea that somewhere along the way their paths might have crossed with someone like Braithwaite is definitely not beyond belief. Dirk Bogarde, an actor who was a very big deal in England during the 1960s, also shows up in an even more extended cameo in which he is actually a patient of sorts of Braithwaite. Like the use of the Beatles here, within context, it seems quite possible that both men were actual figures, especially given that Bogarde’s star has dimmed considerably. In fact, Bogarde’s fame has reached the point that a great many readers may not immediately recognize the name when it shows up in the book and could conceivably assume that Braithwaite was real and Bogarde is the fictional creation.
