Correspondence: 1927–1987

by Joseph Campbell, Dennis Patrick Slattery (Editor), Evans Lansing Smith (Editor)

Selected letters capturing ongoing conversations between famed mythologist Joseph Campbell and a remarkable group of artists, seekers, filmmakers, novelists, and scholars

This brand-new collection of letters features illuminating conversations between Joseph Campbell and a fascinating cast of correspondents, ranging from friends and cowriters to renegade scholars and fellow visionaries. Including letters from both Campbell and his correspondents, and spanning the course of his entire adult life (1927–1987), the collection demonstrates the lasting influence of Campbell’s work, which inspired creative endeavors and radical shifts in so many people’s lives. Included are exchanges with artists such as Angela Gregory and Gary Snyder; colleagues including Alan Watts, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, and Maud Oakes; editors of his books, from The Hero with a Thousand Faces to The Mythic Image ; and many others who engaged with Campbell in his exploration of humanity’s “one great story.”

In selecting the letters, editors Evans Lansing Smith and Dennis Patrick Slattery discovered that the dynamic exchanges formed themselves into what Smith describes as a “narrative, with multiple voices and points of view, dramatic conflict and resolution, character development, and even mystery.” In the end, they found “a portrait not just of Campbell but of a remarkable generation of artists, dancers, filmmakers, musicians, spiritual seekers, poets, and novelists, all engaged in the creative powers unleashed by mythology.” With crucial historical context provided by the editors, this compelling volume provides vital new insight into Campbell’s personal life and mythological vision.

464 pages, Hardcover

First published January 8, 2019

About the author

Joseph Campbell was an American author and teacher best known for his work in the field of comparative mythology. He was born in New York City in 1904, and from early childhood he became interested in mythology. He loved to read books about American Indian cultures, and frequently visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he was fascinated by the museum's collection of totem poles.

Campbell was educated at Columbia University, where he specialized in medieval literature, and continued his studies at universities in Paris and Munich. While abroad he was influenced by the art of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, the novels of James Joyce and Thomas Mann, and the psychological studies of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. These encounters led to Campbell's theory that all myths and epics are linked in the human psyche, and that they are cultural manifestations of the universal need to explain social, cosmological, and spiritual realities. 


After a period in California, where he encountered John Steinbeck and the biologist Ed Ricketts, he taught at the Canterbury School, and then, in 1934, joined the literature department at Sarah Lawrence College, a post he retained for many years. During the 40s and '50s, he helped Swami Nikhilananda to translate the Upanishads and The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. He also edited works by the German scholar Heinrich Zimmer on Indian art, myths, and philosophy. In 1944, with Henry Morton Robinson, Campbell published A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. His first original work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, came out in 1949 and was immediately well received; in time, it became acclaimed as a classic. In this study of the "myth of the hero," Campbell asserted that there is a single pattern of heroic journey and that all cultures share this essential pattern in their various heroic myths. In his book he also outlined the basic conditions, stages, and results of the archetypal hero's journey.


Throughout his life, he traveled extensively and wrote prolifically, authoring many books, including the four-volume series The Masks of God, Myths to Live By, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space and The Historical Atlas of World Mythology. Joseph Campbell died in 1987. In 1988, a series of television interviews with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, introduced Campbell's views to millions of people.


Reviews

[Jerry James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably only interesting to serious JC fans, this is a hit and miss. Some of the letters are interesting if you are invested in the goings-on they cover. For myself, the Where The Two Came To Their Father and the Ed Ricketts correspondence were fascinating, but the rest was tedious. Most of the letters were from others to JC, and that's only interesting if you know what JC wrote to them initially or in reply, otherwise it's frustrating. Also there are a large number of 'Can't wait to meet you' and 'So glad we met' notes that mean nothing to the reader, along with many many many publishing notes. The most interesting letters, like JC's WASPy and naive political pre-WWII views (with Thomas Mann mainly) are given very little attention. I found myself wanting much more exploration.
JC's brilliance overwhelms his flaws, and this collection services little of either.

[Kheir · Rating 4 out of 5]

His letter to President Nixon reads as though it was written by Lazlo Toth.

[Tristy at New World Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

Praise for Joseph Campbell

“No one in our century — not Freud, not Thomas Mann, not Lévi-Strauss — has so brought the mythical sense of the world and its eternal figures back into our everyday consciousness.”
— James Hillman

“Campbell has become the rarest of intellectuals in American life: a serious thinker who has been embraced by the popular culture.”
— Newsweek