First Section: The Monomyth

That stuff you said: I agree with it!

Campbell's writing, first of all: it is kind of loosey-goosey, kind of slippery, highly emotional, hypberbolic and enthusiastic, which fits his subject matter perfectly.

Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, the myths of man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind.

Speaking of that, I agree with your qualms about the reach of Campbell's theory of "myth". For one thing, we aren't really sure what he means by it yet, but even supposing that he meant something absurdly generic and huge, like "metaphor" or or "story", I have a hard time believing that it makes sense to attribute everything that people do and have done to this one piece of being human.

(Defining "myth" as "metaphor" makes me think of the book I just read by Douglas Hofstadter, _I am a Strange Loop_, which asserts, among other things, that the richness of human consciousness is primarily attributable to the human ability to see the similarities between things as in analogy or metaphor; to talk about one thing using the symbols of another thing.)

And like you, I don't much go for the psychoanalysis and dream sequences. I find it reasonable to suppose that the stories that are fashioned by our sleeping minds borrow symbols and structures from our cultural myths, and that, on an even deeper level, the patterns of being human manifest themselves in similar forms in both our unconscious and conscious storytelling, but the connection between a particular tribe's great snake rite of passage and a particular person's dream about a snake biting his pecker is tenuous at best.

But I think there's definitely something to the idea of there being standard human patterns that manifest themselves in remarkably similar human stories. In fact, if I were going to create some sort of working definition of a "myth", only having read this far, I think that would be it: a story made entirely of these widely-shared, deep-rooted patterns and experiences. My favorite part of the book is turning out to be reading these stories.

Let's see. What other things did I find interesting about the first section?

Oh, yeah. This:

It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back.

Which, given Campbell's subsequent discussion of coming-of-age rituals, leads me to believe that what he means is, "fairy tales and rituals help us grow up." To be healthy and happy adults, we must break with our parents, and these stories and rituals help us to do so. And speaking of parents, traditions and rituals are things that my dad has always been interested in and stressed the value of. Bar mitzvahs, quincenieras, graduations and baptisms, are the things that help us to know ourselves, to place ourselves in society, and help us feel like we understand who we are.

Also, his discussion of tragedy and comedy, which opens with the Karenina Principle, via Tolstoy:

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

And then, as he discusses tragedy:

Modern literature is devoted, in great measure, to a courageous, open-eyed observation of the sickeningly broken figurations that abound before us, around us, and within ... where the god is beheld curcified in the catastrophes not of the great houses only but of every common home, every scourged and lacerated face. And there is no make-believe about heaven, future bliss, and compensation, to alleviate the bitter magesty, but only utter darkness, the void of unfulfillment, to receive and eat back the lives that have been tossed back from the womb only to fail. In comparison with this, our little stories of achievemnt seem pitiful.

I don't know what to say about that, really. Maybe, "ouch."

But he wraps with this:

The passage of the mythological hero ... fundamentally it is inward -- into depths where obscure resistances are overcome, and long lost, forgotten powers are revivified, to be made available for the transfiguration of the world. This deed accomplished, life no longer suffers hopelessly under the terrible mutilations of ubiquitous disaster, battered by time, hideous throughout space; but with its horror visible still, its cries of anguish still tumultuous, it becomes penetrated by an all-suffusing, all-sustaining love, and a knowledge of its own unconquered power ... The dreadful mutilations are then seen as shadows, only, of an immanent, imperishable eternity; time yields to glory; and the world sings with the prodigious, angelic, but perhaps finally monotonous, siren music of the spheres.

Like happy families, the myths and the worlds redeemed are all alike.

Also, crap. I need to renew this book so I can keep reading it.

BTW, didn't you say something about including images and audio and stuff? I'm continuing to read the book, but I feel like there are lots more things to say about the first section. Maybe we can find some pictures or something.