Reflections on the Art of Living - A Joseph Campbell Companion

This is a condensed Campbell reader with insight for everyone in a philosophical mood. I think he's a go to guy for connecting dots between cultures and with some insights on life, stay on the rails and seek one's bliss.

Joseph Campbell. My long lost companion. I find so much comfort and resonance in his words. Truly brilliant. As with all books, this one offers a deeper understanding of oneself through the words of another. I highly recommend if you are interested understaning your mind as well as the underlying thread that connects us all so intimately.

Joseph Campbell's Art of Living book is quite similar to his Myths to Live By. I liked Myths to Live By better, though. If Campbell's writings were jazz, Myths to Live By would be traditional but Art of Living would be acid. My feelings otherwise are the same for this book as Myths to Live By. Basically, Campbell advocates a kind of religious ideal that blends certain universal features from other world religions and belief systems, with the heaviest blends being from Buddhism and what looks like Jungian psychoanalytic theory about archetypes. If you are going to read any work by Campbell, I'd recommend Myths to Live By instead just because it makes a better case for Campbell's blends.

I wanted something to refer to without rereading his larger books, which I keep intending to do. I enjoyed some of it but it became dull and tedious and in the end the subject matter not to my liking.

Diane Osbun, who compiled this collection, has done a magnificent job of making Campbell come to life. Her compilation and great editing skills provides us with a spiritual and reflective autobiography of that master of myth, Joseph Campbell.

Campbell`s books were often required reading in courses I took in school, and I can see his influence on the thinking of other scholars that I like to read, such as James Carroll and Fritjof Capra.

In Osbun's hands, Campbell instructs, delights, and makes us think bigger thoughts on life, love, religion, symbolism, art, writing, and just plain living, than we may have ever thought before. I find this assortment of quotations, thoughts and essays by Joseph Campbell as comforting and refreshing as sitting on my much-loved Grandpa's lap was when I was a little girl.

"Our actual ultimate root is in our humanity, not in our personal genealogy." [pg 146]

"Let the world be as it is and learn to rock with the waves." [pg 189.]

"What is the meaning of life?" Joseph was often asked, and he would respond, "There is no meaning. We bring meaning to it." [pg 10]

Kim Burdick
Stanton, Delaware

Within the academic world where he spent the better part of his career, the late Joseph Campbell had a somewhat unique approach to the study, interpretation, and understanding of mythology. Whereas his fellow scholars most often approached the subject with an analytic eye, Campbell suggested an alternative way --using the artistic eye. In "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" Campbell suggested myths "were not manufactured" that they were "spontaneous productions of the psyche" and that each reflected the "germ power of the source."
In A JOSEPH CAMPBELL COMPANION, Diane Osborn has assembled excerpts from Campbell's many works, and distilled the central ideas Campbell wrote about over the years concerning the origin and purpose of myths. She has organized these excerpts into topical areas: "In the Field", "Living in the World", "Coming into Awareness", and "Living in the Sacred." Although the topics can be viewed as linear, reflecting the progress of the soul or psyche, I suspect Campbell would have suggested they are also cyclical and that one exists in all four simultaneously.
I feel the last section of the Campbell Companion, "Living in the Sacred", contains some particularly insightful notions regarding the nature of art and artistic endeavor, and the role of art in affecting human lives. In this section, Osborn has quoted heavily from Campbell's "Myths to Live By" and provided quotations from several of the artists who affected Campbell's own life and writing including James Joyce and Walt Whitman.
For example, Campbell describes how the words of the German writer Schiller, in answer to a friend's problem with 'writer's block' -- "Your problem is that you bring in the critical factor before the lyical factor has had a chance to express itself" -- affected his own thinking and writing. Campbell says he had allowed the criticism of other "scholars" to interfere with his artistic processes, and that Schiller's words freed him to get on with "seeing" and "hearing" what myths could teach him.
"Mythologies and religions are great poems and, when recoginzed as such, point infallibly through things and events to the ubiquity of a 'presence' or 'eternity'that is whole and entire in each....The first condition, therefore, that any mythology must fulfill if it is to render life to modern lives is that of cleansing the doors of perception to the wonder, at once terrible and fascinating, of ourselves and of the universe of which we are the ears and eyes and the mind."

Unlike most of Joseph Campbell's other works, A JOSEPH CAMPBELL COMPANION can be used as a daily reader with each brief topic consumed separately. The text of the book draws its material from an intensive seminar led by Campbell at Esalen in 1983.
The seminar lasted for one month and was attended by the editor, Diane K. Osbon, and nine other fortunate people.
In one memorable segment Campbell discusses the woman's life and her journey. The traditional role of the woman is in relationship in one way or another to a family. This role can continue into old age as in the example of the grandmother. Campbell contrasts the traditional female role to that of the female professors who are more on the male hero's journey deriving fulfillment from worldly achievements. Campbell sees these women as being less fulfilled than women who are also in nontraditional roles but are totally involved in the arts. The latter receive their fulfillment mostly from doing what the artist does and not so much from their accomplishments.
If you begin to read A JOSEPH CAMPBELL COMPANION, it will be a difficult volume to put back in the book case. It is more likely to remain close at hand to be read again and again.

After my mom died I needed something. I KNEW inately that this was the way of the world, the way of life but I needed someone to confirm that for me. I knew it was 'fair' and that life is what it is and that we have to be who we are as we move through it. (Maybe I got all that kind of thing from the many many times I watched the interview of JC with Bill Moyers many years ago.) Someone on a book group mentioned this book to me so I ordered it, and I read it. And it helped me to accept the world when it is painful. "... participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world."

Thanks for this book. It's a keeper.

I also want to say that while everyone here seems to mention how good the book is in distilling his work with myths and religion and whatnot, no one seems to mention that it's a darn good book to read when you needed something life affirming.

The world is perfect. It's a mess. It's always been a mess and that's perfect.

Love Joseph Campbell, hate this book. First of all, you can't tell who said what. Everything is just thrown together in a sort of hodgepodge. You have (presumably) JC's narrative interspersed with these really cringeworthy verses that appear to have been written by the person who edited the book and put it together. And I mean there are a lot of these little verses and I'm sorry but they're just annoying. They have no literary value that I can see (although it's in the eye of the beholder of course, I grant that) and there are just way too many of them. Even though I am way into JC and I was intrigued by the title of this book, I ended up giving up on it. Just too annoying.

When my father, a Humanities professor, first gave me this book to read, I thought that it would just be one more over-idealistic study in eccentricity. I was wrong! The book is very educational and even somewhat practical. Most importantly, it has given me a new philosophy about why some cultures have developed countries and why some don't. The traditional socio-economic division in the world is between the east and west, that is, the "liberal" western tradition and the more convervative and subservient cultures of eastern and southeastern asia (Campbell divides them at the country of Iran). But he also brilliantly realizes that there is another, possibly even more important socio-economic division in the world---north and south! The reason for this is that cultures who live north of the tropic of cancer usually have cold winters, where nothing grows, and they must diligently plan for the grain harvests each year. These northern cultures, which include Japan, Korea, and northern China as well as Europe, must be very organized to deal with the harsh climate, and with this organization eventually came developed nations. This is in contrast to the cultures of the world that live between the tropic of cancer and the tropic of capricorn (with the hot equator in the middle). These warm-climate cultures do not need to worry about seasonal changes nearly as much, and spent their free time pursuing other, less organized activities such as superstition and tribal warfare. Thus, in the race to develop their nations, they fell behind by several hundred or even thousands of years. I think that there is nothing politically incorrect about this statement; it is just simply ironic that a culture blessed with a good climate is cursed with a lack of motivation to organize and develop their country. Campbell's hypothesis explains a great deal about the state of world affairs today, and why the northern cultures have generally toned down or abandoned religion, while the warm-climate cultures have embraced superstition and religious fanaticism to the point of world crisis (ex. the middle east).

This is an extremely well edited version of Campbell's Esalen Institute lectures with some well selected supplimental material from other sources thrown in. It would be worth reading simply for the revelation that Campbell hung out with John Steinbeck and Doc Rickets during the Great Depression. In fact, that great, wild party described in _Cannery Row_ actually happened- it was being held in honor of Joe Campbell! Somehow I find it entirely appropriate that Steinbeck and Campbell should be connected.

I personally found another personal revelation interesting, namely, that Campbell never bothered to obtain a Ph.D. He felt that it would "interfere with his reading" and he simply didn't want to waste his time with it. Yet, he still serendipitously found a position as a college professor and became one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. And all because he followed his bliss- and the universe cooperated.

It is helpful if the reader already has an appreciation for the author's breadth and depth of understanding of mythology before beginning A JOSEPH CAMPBELL COMPANION. It is particularly useful if one is familiar with Campbell's belief that certain mythic motifs are found in virtually all of the world's traditions.
Much of A JOSEPH CAMPBELL COMPANION is written in the easy conversational style of the author . It is highly readable and relies very little on scholarly jargon.
The parts of the book I find most interesting are those pages devoted to a discussion of Buddhism and the relevance of some of its teachings for all of us.

Over the years I have purchased at least twenty copies of this book to give to friends and loved ones. Joseph Campbell discusses life's most meaningful and interesting subjects - theology, philosophy, psychology, and mythology. He shares a profound interpretation which includes his own personal path through life beginning as an ambitious student and ending as a well seasoned educator. Joseph Campbell's life is an excellent example of the true art of living. This book is thoroughly fascinating and full of inspiration.

Normally avoiding these types of "companion" works, I usually prefer the complete books and/or essay collections of such seminal thinkers as Campbell.
Not so in this case. This work proves to be an elegant, comprehensive tour of the mind of the really important J.C.
I was surprised to come across as many typos as I did, but this did not terribly distract from an otherwise awesome book, certainly not enough to avoid giving it a five-star rating.

This book is solid gold. I absolutely recommend it.

HOWEVER, the Kindle edition I bought is full of oddly-placed dashes and hyphens. Some of the drop-cap letters mysteriously do not appear where they should. I've noticed spelling errors.

Perhaps the printed edition does not have these errors?

The Kindle edition absolutely needs a copy editor to go through it.

This is a collection of both brief and longer bits of Campbell's writing, reflecting a "rebellious smart person's" lifetime of questioning, searching, and discovering key aspects of humanity and personal growth through clues in literature, philosophy, psychology, religion, mythology, and metaphysics. He is the master of synthesizing interdisciplinary knowledge with special attention to the common ground found in all cultures and across time periods as well. Sometimes I carry a copy with me while going about my daily adventures, and often the quick quote or page I open to creates the magic moment in your day that you long for when reality forgets to give it to you.

If you've never read anything by Joseph Campbell, this is a wonderful place begin. With the master's illuminating perceptions about the process of spiritual awakening, our struggle to come into awareness & the art of living in the sacred, the poet Diane K. Osborn has gathered a lovely assortment of beautiful & profound writings. Deeply rewarding & makes a great gift.

This is a treasure chest of wisdom and insight overflowing with gems. I have hilighted almost the entire book. It is a gift of sanity amidst a sea of madness, a navigation guide pointing the way to courageous bliss!

After reading "The Power of Myth"(and watching the DVD) I knew this book was my next step. It truly is an astonishing read because Campbell takes so many complex issues and breaks them down into ways that are easily understood and profoundly inspiring. It makes you want to go right out there and work on life all over again!

The one thing this book could use(which I can see is verified by the other reviewers), is a better Table of Contents or a more comprehensive Index.

This is such a wonderful book for inspiration; I have bought it over and over for gifts. Joseph Campbell ties the basic underlying truths found in mythology and religion to man's quest for the meaning of life.

If you're reading these reviews to help decide if you should purchase this book, let me encourage you to do just that. This book is an easy read and once you start you'll have it finished in very little time. What you will probably be taking away from this book is something that is all together timeless. Be good to yourself.

I was given this book after telling a friend about a PBS show I saw with Joseph Campbell. It introduced me to the thoughts of a man who would change my life. I have shared it with friends who all feel the same way. A go to book for me!!

Wow! This book is really amazing and life changing for me--and I think for anyone who would be willing to go through it. It's amazing...It's not preachy, it includes personal insights and experiences by Joseph Campbell. I think everyone should read this book!

Reads like random ideas and notes from a working file and not a book that you can't put down. It is more of a published work in process and not a finished cohesive work, the kind that we came to expect from Campbell.