Stephen Larsen

I got quite interested in Campbell in the late 80’s or early nineties, even bought several of his books, but I never got around to reading them. Recently I listened to his interviews with Bill Moyer and my interest in Campbell was reawakened. I bought several of his books as ebooks including this biography about him.
I find Campbell fascinating for a lot of reasons: he certainly was involved with many of the luminaries of the twentieth century and apparently held his own intellectually with them.
This book has encouraged me to reconsider trying to tackle Finnegan’s Wake with the help of his skeleton key. Also I need to turn more directly to his works. At this point the two that seem to draw me the most are The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Inner Reaches of Outer Space. The later because it apparently sums up a lot of the conclusions he came to and because he equates Science Fiction with myth. I had come to a similar conclusion years ago that Science fiction was becoming modern mythology. My grasp of the relationship between Myth, society and self awareness was not developed the way Campbell developed his ideas.
It does seem many people from across the social and political spectrum gained a lot from reading what he had to say.
For me the question is will good intentions keep me on track to studying more of what he had to say.… (more)

I came across this remarkable book in an unusual way. Several years ago I had been pat of a dream exploration weekend, where there was a session about converting one's dream into a pantoum. This is a cyclic effort where lines of your dreams are repeated further down in the rewriting of the poem. It shows how the beginning and/or the end can be flipped round with surprising new understanding of the dream's message or power. So, I googled pantoums and came up with a bunch of pages revealed from Larsen and Verner's book. Wow, I said when I read about their use of pantoums, and so ordered the book through Amazon.

The authors alternate in writing the chapters. Both are older men with plenty of experience. They are personable and I've enjoyed my slow read of their discovery nd knowledge. Myth, history, science, and experience are woven quite nicely.

Verner grew up in Castle Shannon, a smallish town south of Pittsburgh. Tom tosses it off as just a mining town, but I know it differently when I visited there in 1963. It is actually a significant juncture of Pittsburgh's suburban light rail network. When visiting there, I remember riding the branches going out to Library and Drake. The branches are heavily forested and I so felt that I was in Karelia, that Sibelius' tone poem floated into my head, and it has never left.… (more)

Fundamentalist thinking happens in all of us, including cultural creative, left-wingers, scientists and secularists. It can originate in the part of the brain that triggers our fear response, as well as the tendency to separate thinking and feeling. This book shows us how to identify polarized thinking in ourselves as well as others. He suggests a "natural spirituality": the awareness of spirit in all aspects of life, the humility to admit mistakes, flexibility instead of rigidity, and a willingness to tolerate differences.… (more)