The Hero of a Thousand Faces
I liked this book a lot, I’ll be honest I did think he strayed a little much off on stories i didn’t really considered “hero” myths a little to often for my liking, and it wasn’t an all consuming pleasure to read. It has however add a new level to how look at myth and increased my ability to understand and appreciate the Hero’s stories more.
The greatest complement I can give this book is that it is a book that I think about often.
Get the book on tape. Unlik most books on tap, this isn’t a transcription – it’s excerpts from the book with bits of lectures by Joseph Campbell. I think it’s great, although the first time I heard it, it was a surprise. I didn’t expect Campbell to sound so much like Ed Wynn! All the time I was listening I kept picturing The Mad Hatter from Disney’s version of Alice in Wonderland.
I should hope not!
I agree with all your original comments and would add it is a book that I often make reference to when speaking to people (often to blank looks, however, once I have made the references - I then try to explain the references and the blank looks move to confused, and I usually leave it there, not actually trying for boredom - not that Campbell is boring, but my explanations, as you can see, can move in that direction).
A post script here. I once played your name sake in a terrible production of Lear, off Off Broadway. As a matter of fact, it was so far off Off Broadway I think it was in New Jersey.
Joseph Cambell changed my life. His POWER OF MYTH sessions with Bill Moyer drove me to go back to college (after a ten year lay-off) and get a degree in religious studies. I have a bunch of his lectures on tape. I found his insights into mythological “motifs” (including the “hero” motif) to be a revelation. He made me love a subject that I once hated.
I think he reveled a level of understanding the that creators of myth had that we in this industrial scientific society dose not
In my English class, the professor assigned part of The Power of Myth to write an essay on. I got the feeling that it was shoddy pop-anthropology in the same way that John Gray’s Venus and Mars stuff is shoddy pop-psychology. I asked a professor with an doctorate in anthropology about it, and he said that Campbell is looked down upon by the anthropology community because most of his writings are based on Fraserian ideas that have long since been discounted and, always the mark of a crackpot, he was obsessed with cramming his theory into every single story around. I think it was Salon.com that did an article on how risible his linking of Star Wars’ garbage-compactor scene to the hero concept was.
UnuMondo
George lucas deliberately designed his story to fit campbells’s 'hero" motifs. He actually consulted with Campbell while writing the story. You (and Salon) have got this backwards.
That’s highly debated. Lucas never mentioned Campbell until the early 80’s. Even if Lucas did consult with Campbell, it’s unlikely that Campbell told him how every single scene should play out. That’s why it’s so stupid that Campbell ex post facto explained the garbage compactor scene as a belly-of-the-whale motif.
Have you actually read the Salon Article?
UnuMondo
Fraserian ?
I tried looking this one up in some online dictionaries. No dice. What does it mean? Do you mean “ideas resembling those of the television character”?
Re the OP:
I enjoy reading Joseph Campbell. I think he’s got some pretty good insights, and I have learned to draw the same type of conclusions about what I read as he did. I’m not sure if that last sentence explains things quite right. In a word, I often look for symbolic meanings in myths and legends. (Well, duh!) 
Although I won’t vouch for every idea he had, he did provide a lot of thought stimulating interpretations. As has been said, I do believe he did so in a non-scholarly manner. As such, he is unlikely to receive praise from academia.
With regard to his Star Wars (interpretations?), I wish I could discount them as a sin of youth. Sadly, I think he just sort of found what amounted to a wealthy patron, and he said things that would “please his master”. At least that’s how it always seemed to me.
No Star wars Ripped of the Japanese by steeling Hidden Fortress, Macross, and Yomato
not wait He stole Tolkien man it’s such a Lord of the Rings rip off I mean look at Luke he’s such a Frodo rip off
No wait he stole from Asimov’s Foundation with that Galactic Empire thing no wait no wait he stole from DUNE it’s a desert planet and Luke is like the prophet savior guy
No he found time machine and watched the matrix yeah that it’s
Wow
Anyone eles not exactly agree with Salon.com articles
I invented that word. I meant “relating to Sir James Fraser”, a Victorian whose work The Golden Bough is seen as the start of anthropology. In this work, he tried to prove that all religions and myths are derived from fertility cults that supposedly existed among all cultures of primordial man. While popular in the first quarter of the century, afterwards anthropologists realised that absurdity of trying to claim that everything comes out of one specific something which turned out to not be universal among primitive cultures. Joseph Campbell continued this tradition by trying to link all religions, myths, literary plots, cool sci-fi movies with bad dialogue, etc. to the “hero motif”.
By the way Forbin, if people try to propose ideas outside of academic constraits which exist to ideally examine the validity of a theory, they’re probably wrong. Think Erich von Danikan, L. Ron Hubbard, perpetual motion machine salesmen, etc. Campbell isn’t looked down upon because he is trying to talk to the layman, most scientists would be pleased to see that, it’s because he’s peddling a shoddy theory to a public that won’t know any better.
UnuMondo
Maybe his ideas are more Cliffian.
(Kinda like the postman from cheers.)
lol
Well saying
I think is unreasonable.
But claiming myths often have similar themes and patterns despite being separated by language, culture and often times thousands of miles. Be that it’s unarguable that contrast are unavoidable and undeniable it dose not seem unreasonable to me (despite my limited intellectual credentials). Campbell dose admit that but as he says “this is a book about similarities” and he all so makes clear his ideas are far from and absolute system of understanding Myth and says there will never such system.
To me the his greatest flaw is that he bases a lot of what of his theory on the Freud (yeah I know) and Jung (who I thought was still the good graces of modern psychologist)
UnuMondo, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Have you ever actually READ Joseph Campbell. Find me ONE cite where Campbell claims that all religions are derived from fertility cults. What he did claim was that there were recurring patterns or “motifs” present in mythology which represented universal psychological truths. hero’s quest for, and sometimes murder of, his father is an example of this, and is an example used by Lucas in Star Wars.
All religion did, of course, originate as human attempts to explain the natural universe, and much of it originated as allegory for observable phenomena such as the cycles of the sun and the moon, birth, death, aging, etc. There is nothing “marginal” about these ideas.
I have read a ton of Campbell and never found one reference to Fraser. he DOES make references to Jung’s theory of archetypes, but only in an allegorical sense. Your description of Campbell’s theories is grossly oversimplified and erroneous. You should research a little more deeply than just asking a clearly uninformed anthroplogy teacher at whatever junior college you’re attending.