Question 16.
Has your consciousness ever been affected during or following the activity of
reading, and if so, in what way?
[ Readers were asked the same question, writers were asked: Have you ever
experienced a particularly coherent altered state of consciousness during or
following the activity of writing or reading?]
Question 17.
I s place significant to you in terms of your identity and if so in what ways? (Place
can mean your home, a foreign country, an imaginary place, a place in literature or
a place in your daydreams.)
[ All respondents were asked this question.]
Question 18.
What effect, if any, do you think that places have on individuals or groups of
people?
[ All respondents were asked this question.]
Question 19.
I s there a writer or poet whose work clarifies the idea of spirit of place for you and
could you explain how that writer’s work brings this about for you?
[ All respondents were asked the same question.]
Question 20.
Has the activity of reading or writing ever induced in you a state or feeling of
ecstasy, meaning a heightened awareness almost like or including a trance state, a
feeling of detachment from your physical body or locale and into the imaginal scene
of the fiction you are reading or writing?
[ All respondents were asked the same question.]
The writers were asked two additional questions, Questions 22 and 23:
Question 21.
Do you ever consider that the reader of your work may read a subtext, which has
significant personal relevance to them, into your work?
Question 22.
Do you ever read a subtext into a work of fiction that you may be reading?
(End of questionnaire.)