Stephen Larsen - Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind

JOSEPH CAMPBELL

A FIRE IN THE MIND

THE AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY

STEPHEN AND
ROBIN LARSEN

Inner Traditions
Rochester, Vermont

By Stephen Larsen

The Shamans Doorway

The Mythic Imagination

Essays on Spiritual Psychology (Editor)

By Robin Larsen

Emanuel Swedenborg: A Continuing Vision (Editor)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Throughout the entirety of this project, Jean Erdman has assisted us patiently and with creative insight. By her courageous willingness to reminisce with us for the hundreds of hours our interviews required, we came, through tears and laughter, to remember the value of a story well told: In addition to disciplining the memory, biographical storytelling heals the soul. Jean has earned our enduring affection as well as immense gratitude.

In a memorable encounter lasting several days, Angela Gregory, still bright-eyed and filled with stories in her eighty-fifth year, sat with Jean and us in her historic New Orleans sculpture studio, graciously sharing over sixty years of correspondence with Campbell, filling in great lacunae in our knowledge of his life with personal warmth and color. With her blessing we have used as our frontispiece a charcoal drawing she made preparatory to sculpting his bust in Paris when they both were twenty-four. Angela passed away five months after our meeting, in December of 1989.

Alice Campbell Lenning, in her eighty-first year, made a memorable trip with us to Ireland and Scotland in search of family origins. The quest yielded little in the way of origins, but as we roamed over desolate moors or sat in drafty castles, she reminisced with us about childhood in the Campbell home, and that time in the late nineteen twenties when her brother was a struggling writer of fiction and she a blossoming sculptor in Bohemian Woodstock, New York. Her daughter Anne-Marie Morrisette was helpful with family details.

Another remarkable interview was given to us in Ojai, California, that same year, by Rosalind Rajagopal, ne Williams, who was on the transatlantic voyage in 1924 when Campbell first met Krishnamurti. Campbell and young Miss Williams had strolled the ships deck togetheras they reminisced almost sixty years later when Campbell visited her in Ojaiand she had given him Edwin Arnolds Light of Asia, initiating his romance with Eastern wisdom.

Thanks are due to the following institutions and people for their assistance with our research:

From Sarah Lawrence College, Professors Irma Brandeis, Adda Bozeman and her husband Dr. Arne Barkuus, Roy Finch, Otto Klineberg, Bessie Schoenberg, Charles Trinkhaus; former president Harold Taylor, who was unstinting with his time, and current president Alice Ilchman, as well as librarian Susan Gleason.

In connection with Columbia University, distinguished professor Jacques Barzun, Dean Jack Greenburg, Holly Haswell of the Columbiana archive, and Bernie Crystal of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

The Steinbeck Library in Salinas, California, gave us access to the tape of an important interview done in 1983 between Pauline Pearson and Joseph Campbell, and librarian Mary Gamble was most helpful (and calm, sitting out an earthquake with us in an underground vault in October of 1989). Special thanks go to Dr. Joel Hedgpeth, who helped us with research on the Monterey years and the Steinbeck-Ricketts connection, and to Xenia Kashevaroff Cage for her reminiscences; also to Nancy Ricketts, and Ed Ricketts, Jr.

Our Woodstock researches were assisted by local historians Alf Evers and Tram Coombs, as well as Gertrude, Tony, and Hannale Robinson, Jane Jones, John Penning, Amy Small.

The Library of Congress Department of Special Collections gave us access to files of the Bollingen Foundation; and William McGuire of Princeton University Press was helpful with Bollingen details throughout.

Esalen Institute details were filled in by Michael Murphy; and reminiscences of California lecturing programs and visits by Ron, Mary, and Simone Garrigues, Dr. Stanislav and Christina Grof, Jan Lovett-Keen, Lynne Kaufman, Professors Peter and Roberta Markman, Barbara McClintock, writer Richard Roberts, New Dimensions Radio interviewers Michael and Justine Toms.

Campbells publishing history with McGraw-Hill and later Alfred van der Marck editions was filled in by Alfred van der Marck and Robert Walter.

For details on Campbells approach to writing, and his programs for The Open Eye in New York, we are indebted to M. J. Abadie, Joan Halifax, Sue Davidson Lowe, and Irina Pabst.

Reminiscences of Campbell as a co-teacher were shared by poet Robert Bly, teacher Chungliang Al Huang, Dr. Jean Houston, Dr. Sam Keen, Dr. Stanley Keleman.

Thanks are also due for special interviews and permission to print letters to George, Gerry, Rebecca, and Jenny Armstrong, Richard Adams, John Cage, Phil Cousineau, Eugene Kennedy, Joan Konner, Mark Hasselriis, Dr. Joseph Henderson, Jamake Highwater, Kathy Komaroff-Goodman, Professors John and Mimi Lobell, Professor Huston Smith, George Lucas, Bill Moyers, Katerina Neiman and the Maya Deren Foundation, Dr. Madeline Nold, Professor Einar Palsson, Dr. June Singer, Timothy Seldes, Gary Snyder.

Thanks are also due to the following for their help in ways too diverse to enumerate, with apologies in advance for any omissions: Doyle and Grace Alexander, Wendy Alexander, Nancy Allison, Betty Andersen, Dominic Arcuri, Shaye Areheart, Dr. Rudolf Arnheim, Richard Arnold, Angeles Arrien, Richard Astro, Dr. Pat Berne, Charles Brainard, Peter Brown, President Robert Brown and the trustees of Ulster Community College, Singleton Cagle, Patricia Carroll, Jean and Zomah Charlot, Robert Cockrell, Roger and Nancy Dell, Moise Dennery, Sue and Chris De Stefano, Lee Dieper, Leslie Dillingham, Terry Dimont, Doug Dreispoon, Andrew Duong, Leon Edel, Tat and Larry Eustis, Sarah Evans, Marjory Fairbanks, Michael Flanagin, Jim Flan-nery, Betty Sue Flowers, Ken Golden, Professor Marija Gimbutas, Joan Halifax, Dr. Joseph Henderson, Paul Herbert, Carrie Chapman-Hirsch and Glen Hirsch, Alexandra Isles, Becky Bear Jackson, Paul Jenkins, Professor and Mrs. Joseph Kitagawa, Naava Koenigsberg, Dr. Stanley Krippner, Merlin and Gwyneth Larsen, Mabel Larsen, Jack and Chonita Larsen, Mickey Lemle, John Lenz, David and Norma Levitt, Marion Lillard and the Lillard family, Steve Link, Dick Lumaghi, Joan Marler, Claudio and Jean Marzollo, Robert Masters,. Marjory Mortenson, Dan oel, Dr. Francis OConnor, Jacqueline Onassis, Diane Osbon, Khyongla Rato, Maya Rauch, Edward Rivinus, Mark Ross, Louis Savary, Lee Schillereff, Virginia Searson, lone Shriver, Dr. June Singer, Karan Singh, Dr. Walter Spink, Professor Ted Spivey, James Lee Thorpe, Professor Richard Underwood, Livia and Bill Vanaver, James and Allison Van Dyk, Jennifer and Roger Woolger, Thomas Verner, Olivia Vlajos, Pio von Holt Humphries, Pono and Angie von Holt, Victoria Williams, Michael and Andrew Zimmer, Jack Zimmerman.

And after all else is said, a most special thanks is due Barbara Zucker Johnson for her conscientious and loving assistance at every stage of this process.

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

It has been a little more than a decade since this book was first published. We began the project about two years after Campbells death in 1987 and were finishedmirable dictuwithin two years. Not much time to do a comprehensive biography, according to the usual standards of the profession, but there was electricity in the air about Campbell following the popular PBS series