Q7. The respondent said that ... Reading ... is very personal ... the story, plot and
characters unfold in one’s own mind. I n reading one must recreate a text in a very
intimate, personal way, and one tends to dialogue with the author on a sub-level.
Q8. The respondent opined that in reading, ... the outside environment is
partially distant ... One identifies with a point-of-view, a character or a place, that
nothing matters for the time being in the real world ... poetry read for the first time
can have the same effect. The respondent had sometimes experienced a quasi-
mystical state of mind when he felt a profound resonance with a situation or
character.
Q15 and 16. The respondent suggested that ... some writers adroitly and craftily
speak to the readers in asides and that he sometimes felt as if I could be the
suffering person, and am put in their shoes.
Q18. I n responding to this question he revealed that he had never ... developed
the same powerful and particular sense of spirit of place that one finds in the work
of Stow, Thea Astley, David Malouf and Ruth Park.
Q20. Here, the respondent said, ... that spirit of place and its effect on the human
psyche is finely evoked in various Patrick White novels citing the eerie power of the
inland deserts in Voss or the wildness of north Queensland’s coast in A Fringe of
Leaves. The respondent continued, ... the novels and poems of Stow are filled with
a rich symbolism of wind, heat, light, fire, sand, rock and that there is a strand of
Christian literature, where the desert is the primal source of pain and salvation,
destruction and transformation, temptation and prophecy and that Stow draws
subtly on that cultural vein.
(f) Reader 5. N. van der W. (Retired airline steward, member of a reading group
and book club.)
Q1. The respondent said that he read widely but really ... liked to read science
fiction and detective novels and that favourite authors in these genres have the
knack of making you care for their characters and are able to make you think about
uncommon situations. The respondent elaborated on this point in response to
Question 16 and said that he cares for the characters as if they were personal
friends or family and that he was often unaware of the printed page.
Q6 and 7. I t was not until this point that the respondent said that in reading ...
sometimes the situations seem so familiar that I feel I have taken part in a similar