The Hero With A Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was a great book. Campbell gives an in-depth study of mythology and its overlying theme of the infamous "hero's journey." I really enjoyed reading this text and learning more about world mythology and how it all ties together.

Here are some excerpts from the text of things I liked:

-"...every failure to cope with a life situation must be laid, in the end, to a restriction of consciousness. Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late" (p. 101)

-"The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man" (p. 21)

-"It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into the human cultural manifestation" (p. 1)

-"What pleases the deity is virtue and sincerity, not any number of material offerings" (p. 181, quote from Tomobe-no-Yasutaka, Shinto-Gobusho)

-"Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed...When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved" (p. 213).

-"It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse" (p. 337)

-"And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal...not in the bright moments of his tribe's victories, but in the silences of his personal despair" (p. 337)


View all my reviews.

Star Trek

The new Star Trek movie rocked!! Amanda and I really enjoyed it and, even though some the promos made it seem like it was kind of straying from the original, I thought it stayed pretty true to form and had excellent casting...

DEADPOOL

It's official: there will be a Deadpool movie!! Woohoo!

Article

WOLVERINE!!! And there after...

So last Friday Amanda and I saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine and it was stellar!! What a great movie! Anyways, I can't really say enough other than that I loved it. There were some changes to the basic story line from the comics, but I guess you can expect that from a movie. So if you haven't seen it yet, than go see it now!!






Now what's next for Hugh Jackman?? Well, if you have seen the movie I really hope that you stayed until after all the credits to see the extra clip at the end, and if you did than you'll know what's coming: There will obviously be a sequel to Wolverine and (SPOILER ALERT) ...











...it is to be set in Japan, and will focus on the samurai/Yakuza storyline of the comics, wherein Wolverine trains in the way of the samurai in order to control his feral nature, and falls in love with Mariko Yashida, heir to the Yakuza family.

(UNSPOILER ALERT)

But that's not all! To read more about Hugh Jackman's plans for other movie projects and a Broadway musical called Houdini that was based on music by Danny Elfman, read this.

Early Glimpe at Marvel's Upcoming Series

Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men
"The Dark Avengers take on the Uncanny X-Men! Kicking off the 6-part crossover event, rising star Matt Fraction (UNCANNY X-MEN, INVINCIBLE IRON MAN) is joined by X-artist supreme Marc Silvestri (X-MEN: MESSIAH COMPLEX, CIVIL WAR: THE INITIATIVE ONE-SHOT) to bring you a story that shakes the foundations of the Marvel Universe. When mutant riots break out in San Francisco, Norman Osborn declares martial law and sends the Dark Avengers in to quell the riots and take down the X-Men. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Don't miss the first Avengers/X-Men crossover in over 15 years!"

http://www.marvel.com/news/comicstories.7908

In Stores: June 24, 2009

Ray Bradbury

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture.
Just get people to stop reading them."
- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Pride and Prejudice...and Zombies!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies:
The Classic Regency Romance - Now With Ulraviolent Zombie Mayham!
by Jane Austen and Seth Grahme-Smith















Seth Grahme-Smith takes Jane Austen's text and *modifies* it to be a zombie plot, compare the opening sentences of the two novels:

...Zombies: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."

Original: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Amanda and I read through the first page of both texts, and while I don't think I would read this Zombie book, the idea of modifying a Jane Austen book to be a Zombie book I found extremely entertaining and had to share this find with others.