I n the analysis of the questionnaires in Chapter 4, I have detailed, first in
4.1, the responses of the shamans since it is from these that my central hypotheses
may be established, namely, that a manifestation of SC still exists. Thus, it
establishes a template from which the remaining groups might be assessed. This is
followed by the readers’ responses in 4.2, and the writers’ responses in 4.3.
Chapter 4 constitutes the empirical research showing the direct responses or
quotations of the participants in italics.
3.6 Serendipity and Textual Research
I suspected that it might not only be useful but imperative to examine the
works of the three authors. I am quite familiar with the works of the three writers
and had previously met Thomas Keneally on a number of occasions and David
Malouf once, and consequently, construed that their writings often metamorphosed
beyond the intention of the author. I suspected that the reason for this, and
perhaps something that could be discerned through an examination of their texts
when aligned with their responses, was that the writer frequently contrives to set-
up something between themselves and what they write in order to cancel out their
authorial intrusion. My suspicion was that this something might well be constituted
in the imaginal and literary construction of place; that like the shaman, the writer of
mythopoeic literature is a causal agent in activating the continuum between the
actual reality or locale and the imaginal manifestation of that locale; a dialectic of
consciousness and imagination. Thus, the deepest satisfaction of reading
mythopoeic writers may come from the discovery of a new set of tensions in one’s
own mind or psyche. These tensions may widen consciousness and intensify it,
removing the preoccupation with self, somewhat in the sense of participation
mystique, yet at the same time reflecting a process of interiorization of the imaginal
place in which the self finds itself located.
This raised the issue of what constituted the author’s work, and how to
identify the important themes in their work, a dilemma that became palpably clear
to me when I first examined the responses of the three authors. I wondered what
could be found in the succinct but brief response of David Malouf, and what is it
that separates a writer’s imaginal work from other things that she writes such as
notes, lists, scribblings and marginalia? I saw, in spite of some extraordinarily
detailed answers, sometimes narrow if not guarded responses that might only be of