Seeing Joseph Campbell's name mentioned, I picked up this book. Since reading the "Masks of God" thirty years ago, I've admired Joseph Campbell. Reading this book has reawakened my interest in him as well as created new interests in John Steinbeck and Robinson Jeffers as well as that of the subject of this biography Ed Ricketts. I've got copies of Ed Ricketts' "Between Pacific Tides", His and Steinbeck's "Sea of Cortez", Steinbeck's " Log from the Sea of Cortez" and "Cannery Row", and a paperback collection of Jeffers' poems which includes the "Roan Stallion" which features prominently in this book stacked up by my bedside.
I copied out three excepts from the book dealing with Joseph Campbell's relationship with Ed Ricketts which I'll share here.
From page 13:
Campbell was also at a personal impasse, in his "own deep swamps" as he recalled. Out of work for five years, he was depressed and confused.From page 180:
"I've been saying no to life," Campbell told Ricketts one day.
"Well," Ed replied typically, "the best way to start saying yes to life is to get drunk. I'll take some of my laboratory alcohol, [and] we'll make a drink out of it."
It had been an "epochal voyage," according to Joseph Campbell. The 1932 trip brought about "one of the primary personal transformations of a life dedicated to self-discovery." Many of the philosophic conclusions reached during the voyage would resonate in the future work of both the marine ecologist and mythologist.
From page 214:
In his research at the time Joseph Campbell was coming to the conclusion that the same fate that befell the Haida was now befalling modern society. "We have seen what has happened, for example to primitive communities unsettled by the white man's civilization," Campbell later said, "with their old taboos discredited they immediately go to pieces, disintegrate, and become resorts of vice and disease. Today the same thing is happening to us."
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