The Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator

A friend directed me to this, and I had to share.

(Maybe the shortness of this post makes up for the length and convolutedness of my last one.)


Also, I'm having a meditation published in The Upper Room in the 2010 Sept./Oct. issue. So, um, you can congratulate me... in a year.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

Generally, I avoid blogging about nonfiction reads on topics I have no real knowledge of. So I'm really not sure what to do with The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Mythology is not my forte. But story is, and I was interested in reading Joseph Campbell was because I'm attracted to the concept of archetypes.

I know Campbell is supposed to be the father of modern mythological studies, but I found myself questioning his research and compilation techniques. He seems to have started with his theory and then eschewed everything that didn't fit, claiming that stories that didn't match his "cosmic cycle" were either folktales (and therefore not "true" myths) or myths that were "contaminated." For example, in a footnote, Campbell declares,

A broad distinction can be made between the mythologies of the truly primitive (fishing, hunting, root-digging, and berry-picking) peoples and those of the civilizations that came into being following the development of the arts of agriculture, dairying, and herding, ca. 6000 B.C. Most of what we call primitive, however, is actually colonial, i.e., diffused from some high culture center and adapted to the needs of a simpler society. It is in order to avoid the misleading term, "primitive," that I am calling the undeveloped or degenerate traditions "folk mythologies." The term is adequate for the purposes of the present elementary comparative study of the universal forms, though it would certainly not serve for a strict historical analysis (289).

I'm not sure what makes these folk mythologies "undeveloped." At other points in the book, Campbell insists that the earlier forms of myths that are the uncorrupted ones, but the quote above suggests that many early "myths" may be too undeveloped to deserve the title. I think that if I had a better understanding of the academic borders between myth and folktale, I might understand this. As it is, it seems like a "true" myth is whatever form fits Campbell's cycle the best, so Campbell is attempting to prove his theory with his theory.

I knew and liked the hero cycle (click here to see a simplified version) before I read Campbell. I could easily attach most stories to some form of this cycle, so I thought I wouldn't have any trouble agreeing with Campbell ideas. But Campbell begins as if he's already proved his theory. He expects the reader to simply accept that every story he compares is the same story and things that seem like opposites are, in fact, the same, if you'll only squint a little. He glosses over differences in religion, tone, purpose, etc. as though everything that appears to contradict him is merely extraneous.

Kudos, however, to Campbell for employing a broad range of sources: Arabian Nights, Christianity, Buddhism, Native American tales, etc. But I started to wonder about his piecemeal style of quoting sources when I noticed that his examples for Jesus' story are pulled from sometimes contradictory sources: the four gospels accepted by most Christian denominations, a gnostic gospel, church liturgies, etc. Each example is carefully selected to give an impression of a seamless whole, and the pieces that don't fit are not mentioned. Campbell never explains how he decided which pieces were the "right" pieces, and which were the ones he could ignore. (I started to wonder what he did to the written works of religions that I'm less familiar with.)

The book is probably meant for those who have a greater understanding of mythology than I do (some sections seemed written in response to Sir James G. Frazer's The Golden Bough, which I've never read), but I found it frustrating that Campbell mentioned several stories and did not (or could not?) carry a single one through all the stages of his monomyth.

Beyond that, I have a few personal bones to pick with Hero with a Thousand Faces:

Hero with a Thousand Faces is not simply a comparative study of mythology, but a philosophy. All well and good if you happen to agree with the author's philosophy, but I have issues with statements like

Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved. Such a blight has certainly descended on the Bible and on a great part of the Christian cult (249).

I'm not sure what he expects readers to do with myths that have some basis in history, or why something can't be both factual and "living." Campbell's abstract theories are not necessarily less "remote" than "biography, history, or science."

On another note, nearly all of Campbell's "heroes" were male. The male/female protagonist ratio in myths is, of course, beyond Campbell's control. But I do wonder how it colors his interpretation of the monomyth. I know that the hero cycle is supposed to spin the same whether the protagonist is male or female, but what do I with the "Atonement with the Father" requirement? Campbell's interpretation is so very Freudian/Oedipal I'm not sure it can fit female protagonists. Also, he claims that "Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to know[...]. Woman is the guide to the sublime acme of sensuous adventure" (116). All well and good, but what happens when the woman is the hero(ine) who wants to know? (There's a Campbell quote about women in myths that I might address in another post. ...Or I might not.)

I'm deeply intrigued by the possibility of a different view of the monomyth, covering the journey of the heroine. Anyone know of any books on this?

Also, anyone who knows about mythology or Campbell and wants to comment, please, please do.



(Note: Image from Amazon. Quotes are from The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Bollingen Series. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.)

Alphabets Don't Kill People, the Letter K Kills People

I couldn't resist putting up a few more photos from my trip. While in Grand Rapids, I visited the Public Museum, which had made an alphabet scavenger hunt for children out of some of their exhibits.


So, for example, H was a collection of hats from different countries and eras. And K was...



Apparently, they couldn't find any kites, kangaroos, or kumquats.

And here's the sign in front of the exhibit, in case you didn't think they were serious.



I guess I would have been less surprised by "W is for Weapons." After all, when I was young, I was fascinated by our DK book on weapons and armor.

But "K is for Knives and Guns"... that really sounds like something out of a cruder version of an Edward Gorey alphabet, doesn't it? Or a deranged sort of Sesame Street: "Today's murder was brought to you by the number 13 and the letter K!"

Two Things that Made Me Happy

I guess even lazy bloggers get a summer vacation. But I didn't take a vacation from reading (heaven forbid!), so I've got a lot of blog-post material just waiting to be written up.

Meanwhile, I'll share two semi-literary things that made my summer sunny.

One
I spent some of my non-blogging time up in Grand Rapids (thus the big red Calder sculpture) and while I was there, of course, I had to visit one of my favorite independent booksellers: Schuler Books (this is the store on 28th St.).

*begin rant*
There are some big chain bookstores that I like (there are very few bookstores that I dislike), but often when I walk into a chain bookstore, I feel that they are selling products, not books. (Yes, cue the "cans of olive oil" scene from You've Got Mail now.)

I become irritated when the front of a bookstore is crowded with only best-selling popular fiction and celebrity biographies. Then I usually end up wandering through a nonsensical shelving system, trying to find the poetry section, which turns out to be smaller than Charlie Chaplin's mustache. Maybe this is due to my living in a smaller, more rural area. A larger population, particularly in a city with several universities, seems more likely to buy a broader variety of books. But I still can't help feeling that some books would do better, if only they were put where buyers could see them.
*end rant*

Back to Schuler Books. When I walk into Schuler, I get that people-here-know-books sense. I immediately see two dozen titles that I've been wanting to read and/or I've heard praised through sites like The Book Studio. Also, the organization of the store is wonderful, with helpful wooden signs hanging from the ceiling (though you can't really see this in my photo).

And the poetry section is actually a section, not a pitiful two and a half shelves.

My favorite part, the part that warms my frugal, little heart: in the center of the store is a used book section, also beautifully organized.

Two
In other news, I placed third in one of this year's Kentucky State Poetry Society contests (see "Street Cred" sidebar). Not really the road to writerly fame and favor, but one of those events that makes you think, Maybe I'm not so very terrible at this writing stuff.

Sometimes having a small victory is enough to give you the courage to spend the evening writing and revising new poems to send out. Or at least enough to convince you to write another blog post.