The Invention of the World is about the process of uninventing narrative worlds. I want to show how that process of uninvention undermines the assumption that the recovery of myth engenders the discovery of identity. Jack Hodgins establishes blatant connections between mythical structure and self awareness in order to purposefully break them down…. [Through parody and burlesque, Hodgins undercuts] a view shared by several Canadian novelists today: that the meaning of the moment is part and parcel of a myth-ridden past, and that, in order to understand personal experience, one must become conversant with, and indeed participant in, the historical traditions, documents, and artifacts which combine to form contemporary consciousness.

Am I alone in suggesting that Hodgins attacks this view through serious narrative play? The novel has been seen as firmly grounded in mythopoeia…. Along different lines, George Woodcock and David L. Jeffrey [see excerpts above] have argued that Hodgins' destruction and distortion of myth make possible the creation of an entirely new mythology in the present. Hence the book's title is seen to support the idea that, in the absence of a true genealogy of myth, people will invent mythologies as a means of structuring their lives. (pp. 86-7)

As I see it, those motives and patterns are too visible to be believed. The novel is constructed of two plots, one centring on the experience of a modern day group of friends who have organized themselves around Maggie Kyle in a loosely-knit community on Vancouver Island, the other concentrating on the events connected with the mythical and mystical Donal Keneally, an Irish immigrant who in 1900 established the "spiritually" oriented Revelations Colony of Truth at the place where Maggie now lives. These two plots are interwoven through the superimposition of narrative voices, through character parallels, and through the geographic coincidence which allows Maggie's trailer camp to exist on the exact spot of Keneally's former colony. The conjunction of past and present emerges again and again as story piles on story. Just as there was a murder in Keneally's time, so is there one in Maggie's; and like Keneally's own colony, Maggie's place is a failed utopia. The link between past and present is made even stronger because Lily—one of Maggie's boarders—was Keneally's wife. The residents of Maggie's "Revelations Colony of Kooks" have convinced themselves that their commune is "crawling with ghosts" from the Keneally period. These legendary ghosts are repeatedly called forth (without answer) by flashback, document, and transcript. The time/space juxtapositions are encouraged by Strabo Becker, the central narrator. Becker is recording the life of Keneally, and he busily devotes himself to collecting letters and artifacts identifying the Irish "hero," and to interviewing several of the older locals who have vague memories concerning the now defunct Colony of Truth.

Hodgins has set the stage for an extended parallel between the cults of Keneally and Kyle. The inhabitants of past and present do share many of the same concerns: they are all searching for a utopian society, one in which each individual would ostensibly find his "real self" by uncovering mythical significance…. Becker not only searches for the documents and memories which provide information about Keneally's time, he convinces Maggie and Wade Powers to join him on an Odyssean voyage back to Keneally's birthplace in Carrigdhoun, Ireland.

In Hodgins' hands, the description of the trio's pilgrimage becomes a record of their involvement in a host of conventions and metaphors connected with mythical pursuits…. Becker's desire to participate in the Keneally legend by revisiting the Irishman's birthplace is part of his need to view his present in a positive mythological light. By returning to Keneally's origins, Becker hopes to retrace Keneally's own search for a promised land in Canada. It is not only the intersecting plots which provide Hodgins with a fertile means of investigating the link between myth and contemporary society—the stories from the past and present are organized around common literary myths and figures as well. Becker, the local ferryman, is clearly a rendition of Charon. But his name also places him in the context of Celtic myth. As a self-styled chronicler and historian of the Keneally legend, he is the modern-day counterpart of the Celtic historian and geographer who was also named Strabo…. [The] historical Strabo was drawn to Druidic culture. Much the same can be said of Hodgins' Strabo; he is attracted to the Keneally legend and to the seemingly Druidic stones which mark Keneally's putative birthplace. Keneally's origins … are associated with the Taurus-Europa myth, with the bull figure called Donnataurus in Celtic mythology …, with the Táin Bó Cuailnge story which relates Donnotaurus' various feats …, and with the history of Brother Eleven…. Hodgins also makes use of the Narcissus myth in order to provide the Doppelgänger figures in the novel with a basis in legend. The title of the book recalls the myth of Genesis, and the belief, held by many of the novel's characters, that by returning to the beginning one can facilitate a metaphoric return to creation and individual rebirth.

Hodgins is obviously concerned with producing a narrative that is replete with mythological structures and allusions. But the important point is this: Hodgins distorts, corrupts, and truncates precisely the structures and patterns around which his double narratives are built. Becker does not manage, as the original Strabo did, to create an epic about the life and times of his people, and unlike the original Charon, he ferries tourists rather than heroes, and accepts payment in dollars rather than golden boughs. In The Invention of the World, the Taurus-Europa myth is deformed, and the Narcissus tale is ultimately referred to as a joke. Moreover, although Hodgins presents us with a series of voyages imaged as archetypal quests, he does not allow these quests to be resolved in the conventional manner. The characters involved in a pilgrimage to the promised land of legend discover only that they have been pursuing the story of a sham perpetrated by Keneally for personal financial gain. In short, the mythological models on which the story is founded are themselves revealed to be corrupt.

Because Hodgins often employs distorted mythical and literary allusions to draw our attention to the past, he seems to imply that the allusions are an illusory means to knowledge. That the novel implicates history as a duplicitous masquerade is also indicated by the many references to theatre. And just as Keneally is revealed as a scheming magician artist who tricks his followers into accompanying him on an inauthentic quest, so too is Becker unmasked as a failed artist who discovers nothing about history other than that it cannot be reconstructed. Becker's failure to reorder the Keneally legend into any coherent pattern is obvious in the fact that the details about Keneally, contained in the documents which Becker presents, tend to contradict each other; also, the people Becker interviews cannot clearly recollect the events of the past because of the reality of their present lives—a reality which continually disrupts Becker's myth-making pursuits. In the final analysis, it is the present moment which seems to constitute reality in The Invention of the World. This explains why Hodgins' characters seem to be most alive when they are hedonistically involved in the sensuousness of the world around them, rather than when they are searching for the past. It is the celebration of the moment which Hodgins recommends as the alternative to an existence bogged down in historical enquiry. (pp. 87-90)