I WANT TO TALK about something embarrassing: direct address to readers or audiences. In narrative contexts it always poses problems, unless the speaker is making a joke. Groucho Marx or Woody Allen or a character in a Godard film can turn to the camera to" break the frame" with an ironic remark and get a laugh, as can the narrators in novels by WM Thackeray, John Fowles, or John Barth. Direct address in narrative begins to embar rass, however, when it is no longer offered in jest—when the speaker who assails" you" is in earnest.

If I may judge by my experience of academic readers—colleagues and students—I can safely guess that you dislike serious direct address in texts. You find it preachy, or cute, or coy. You think of it as a technical error, a lapse of artistry, a cheap effect. It irritates you when you run across it in Victorian novels, and it is irritating you at this very moment, as you read. Why is that?