Mythic Imagination

- Blurb -

Enjoy seven never-before-collected stories from the master of myth and story himself Before he was the engaging professor who brought mythology into people' s living rooms through his conversations with Bill Moyers, before he became known as the thinker whose ideas influenced Star Wars, and before his now-beloved phrase "follow your bliss" entered the popular lexicon, Joseph Campbell was a young man who tried his hand at writing fiction. At the age of twenty-nine, after years of Depression-era unemployment, when he lived off money he had earned playing saxophone in a jazz combo and read the world' s great literature in a syllabus of his own design, Campbell published his first short story. That tale, included in this collection, remained the famed mythologist' s only published piece of fiction, until now. In these stories, readers will find rich mythological symbolism, down-to-earth concerns with the ravages of the Second World War, and singular iterations of Campbell' s famous Hero' s Journey schema -- all interwoven into a literary style that anticipates the genre that would years later come to be known as "magical realism. " Compelling in their own right, these seven stories are essential reading for longtime Campbell fans and the many who continue to discover him afresh.