nonfiction – Page 9

February 11, 2016

Book 11: Occidental Mythology

“Contrast to this emphatically social emphasis the Indian idea that the ultimate realization of truth is to be experienced alone, in yoga, in the forest; the Chinese, that a accord is to be experienced with the Tao, the Way of nature and the universe, which is the Way of one’s heart, as well. In the Book of Moses, on the contrary, the way of God, who is transcendent, is either within nor in nature, but in the group- this group alone, with its laws, which are the only facts of real moment to be known.”

Dates read: December 6-26, 2015

Rating: 5/10

Perhaps I’m just getting more used to Joseph Campbell’s writing style, perhaps it’s just that The Masks of God has shifted to a religious tradition with which I am very familiar (not only the Judeo-Christian belief system I was raised in, but the Greek and Roman mythology that I’ve loved since I was a child), but for me, Occidental Mythology was the most accessible volume of this set for me so far.

In this third volume, Campbell talks about the mythology of the so-called Western World: Greek myth, Roman myth, ancient Arab/Hebrew myth, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Like in the previous volume on Oriental mythology, I’m side-eyeing this category fraud a little: Middle Eastern myth of the ancient world is much more closely related to Egyptian mythology than the Jewish religion that eventually developed, but he clearly doesn’t want to break it up like that because it doesn’t fit his thesis. But even with nonfiction, you have to accept that you’re on the road the author is taking you on, even if you think you know a better route.

His Western bias isn’t as obvious as it has been previously until the conclusion chapter at the very end…maybe he feels less of a need to editorialize on home turf, but he doesn’t shy away from criticism of this tradition either. He points out factual and logical inconsistencies within texts like the Bible, and reminds the reader that their holy books were often written long after the facts alleged therein had taken place (or not actually taken place, as the case may be). He also touches on internal conflicts and differing interpretations, and the power struggles that went on behind what we today would consider long-settled matters. Even through his bias, he treats all world mythology (including the Judeo-Christian tradition) as, well, mythology, reminding us in the Western World that our dominant religious belief system is, at its heart, the myths of a nomadic tribe of desert sheepherders.

I won’t pretend that I’m not happy that I’m almost done with this set. While it’s been interesting and sometimes illuminating reading, it is, like I’ve said already with the other volumes, very dense and challenging to read as a pleasure exercise.

Tell me, blog friends: Have you ever thought of your own religious beliefs as mythology?

January 28, 2016

Book 9: Oriental Mythology

“Those who have identified themselves with the mortal body and its affections will necessarily find that all is painful, since everything- for them- must end. But for those who have found the still point of eternity, around which all- including themselves- revolves, everything is acceptable as it is; indeed, can even be experienced as glorious and wonderful”

Dates read: November 12-27, 2015

Rating: 5/10

After examining the mythology of “primitive” societies in his previous volume, here Joseph Campbell turns his examination of mythology to the East, the Orient. He begins with ancient Egypt, before devoting the bulk of his text to the development of various movements (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism) in India, concluding with relatively short chapters on China, Japan, and Tibet.

Egypt being included in this volume, while the Middle East is included in the succeeding volume on occidental mythology, shows that Campbell is not above glossing over the finer details in pursuit of making the case he wants to make. In this case, the second volume of Masks of God is where Campbell begins to make his argument that Eastern religion drives its adherents to turn away from the world, accepting one’s place in the social strata while seeking to end the cycle of death and rebirth by detachment. That Campbell thinks Western religion drives its adherents to focus on what they can achieve with their single life, and is therefore ultimately superior to Eastern religion, isn’t laid on super thick but is definitely obvious.

But what we get through that sometimes distasteful bent is a well-researched and interesting examination of the development of Eastern religion. The largest portion of the text is devoted to Buddhism and reading about how it developed, grew in India, and then was pushed out to China, Japan, and Tibet (with mutations in each culture that reflect its unique perspective) is genuinely compelling. The chapter regarding Tibet does not shy away from the atrocities committed against the monks there by the Chinese, but one of Campbell’s strengths is that he’s not afraid to be critical. He certainly has no problem puncturing the ideals that religions would like you to believe about them by discussing the historical realities of how they actually functioned.

There is a similar psychoanalytic frame of reference here as in the first volume, but it’s not as prominent (probably because there’s more substance here to work from than there was with the first) and so it’s not as problematic. Indeed, this volume is superior to the first all around. It’s still thick, and fact-dense, and reads like a textbook, but Oriental Mythology is a more rewarding read, both in information and readability (it’s still very slow, though) than its antecedent.

Tell me, blog friends…what Eastern country is on your must-visit list?

January 14, 2016

Book 7: Primitive Mythology

“Clearly, mythology is no toy for children. Nor is it a matter of archaic, merely scholarly concern, of no moment to modern men of action. For its symbols (whether in the tangible form of images or in the abstract form of ideas) touch and release the deepest centers of motivation, moving literate and illiterate alike, moving mobs, moving civilizations.”

Dates read: October 27-November 9, 2015

Rating: 4/10

I’m actually glad I have a little distance from this book when reviewing it. If I was reviewing it immediately after reading it, I would likely give it an even lower rating than I have here. But having read the succeeding three books in the series, I can understand why this book is written the way it is: it serves as a foundation.

All of the books in the Masks of God series are dense. They read like textbooks, rather than the kind of non-fiction novels in the In Cold Blood style that it seems like more “modern” nonfiction is written in. There is a ton of information here, and Campbell is presenting his research rather than telling us a story. This first volume focuses on what we know about the religious/mythological beliefs of (mostly) prehistorical cultures. Since many of them didn’t leave written text behind, it’s a lot of interpretation of artifacts and paintings, etc.

Which makes this volume a little problematic. While it does lay a lot of ground for the future volumes in terms of tracking social change from cultures that worship a female diety with primarily female priestesess, focused on honoring the Mother Earth and the cycle of life (often taken very literally with human sacrifice) to societies that worship a male diety with male priests, it also was written over 50 years ago based on the state of archaeology at the time. There has been a lot of progress made, not in the least not referring to tribal societies (whose belief systems form a part of this book) as “primitive”, but also in archaeology itself. Also, like Joseph Campbell’s most well-known work, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, there’s a heavy influence from what was de rigeur psychology at the time: Freudianism and psychoanalysis. While I personally believe that the pendulum has swung a little too far away from these kinds of theories (which is a whole different topic), there’s no denying that they’ve fallen far out of favor because of their lack of scientifically provable reliability. To read a book (and series) premised on psychoanalysis as the appropriate lens through which to view the world is a little jarring.

If you’re a big mythology nerd who thinks you might want to read this series, pick up The Hero With A Thousand Faces and read it first. Campbell’s writing style can be dry and pedantic, but if it holds your interest, then ask yourself if you really really want to read over 2000 pages of world mythology. While I found reading The Masks of God to be ultimately rewarding, it was also a slog at times (especially in this first volume) and you need to be prepared to watch your normal reading pace slow considerably.

Tell me, blog friends…do you think Freud has merit or is a cigar just a cigar?

January 7, 2016

Book 6: The Nazi Officer’s Wife

“You see, even the inhuman ones were not always inhuman. This was a lesson that I would learn again and again—how completely unpredictable individuals could be when it came to personal morality.”

Dates read: October 25-27, 2015

Rating: 10/10

An Austrian Jewish woman survives the Holocaust by marrying a member of the Nazi party. When she meets him, he is initially a high-ranking factory official, but by the end of the war, when everyone is pressed into active duty, he is an officer within the party. And the kicker? He knows she’s Jewish. Totally made up, right? Wrong. That is the actual story of Edith Hahn Beer.

The Shoah has, understandably, sparked a lot of significant literature. The Diary of Anne Frank. Night. Sophie’s Choice. Why this incredible memoir hasn’t been included in the canon is beyond me, honestly. It was (like almost all of my Kindle books) a sale selection, the title promising a fascinating tale although memoirs aren’t an especial favorite of mine. And it’s been one of the few books I’ve read recently that I literally couldn’t put down.

One of the upsides of the Kindle is its portability. And I have the Kindle app on my phone, although I hardly use it usually. Not here. I was reading on my eight-minute walk to work. I was reading in the bathroom. I was reading every spare second I could grab. Beer’s writing voice feels like a story your aunt or grandma is telling you…it’s immediate, it grabs you and doesn’t let you go. From the moment that she’s sent to her first work camp assignment, missing her mother’s departure for the ghetto, to her friend’s bravery in giving Edith her identification documents (which the friend then reported as “missing”) so that Edith, unable to draw rations on her false ID, will at least be able to try to find work, to her first meeting with her future husband Werner, to her refusal to have any pain medication during the birth of their child so that she won’t spill her desperate secret, all of it is incredibly compelling and although we know she survives her experience because she wrote a book about it, we can’t help but eagerly turn pages to see how it plays out. Basically I was completely swept away and never wanted it to end and recommend it to anyone who enjoys a well-told story.

Tell me, blog friends…do you like memoirs or am I the weirdo that finds them very skippable?

December 31, 2015

Book 5: Through The Language Glass

“The cultural significance of blue, on the other hand, is very limited. As noted earlier, blue is extremely rare as a color of materials in nature, and blue dyes are exceedingly difficult to produce. People in simple cultures might spend a lifetime without seeing objects that are truly blue. Of course, blue is the color of the sky (and, for some of us, the sea). But in the absence of blue materials with any practical significance, the need to find a special name for this great stretch of nothingness is particularly non-pressing.”

Dates read: October 20-25, 2015

Rating: 9/10

Of all the classes that I took while an undergrad at the University of Michigan, there are a handful that really stick out. LING 211, Introduction to Linguistics, was one of those classes. I actually dallied with the idea of making linguistics my minor because I enjoyed the class so much. Although upper-level linguistics pretty quickly disabused me of that notion, I still retain a real interest in linguistics, particularly sociolinguistics.

The Sapir-Whorf theory of sociolinguistics was trendy almost 100 years ago: it suggested that the language we use controls the way that we think. It’s an initially intriguing hypothesis with a lot of instinctual appeal. If a language doesn’t have a word for a particular phenomenon, or lacks a particular tense, why wouldn’t speakers of that language have a hard time conceiving of that phenomenon or that kind of world? Until you realize that some languages, like the Italian I studied as an undergrad, have an entire tense for the remote past, passato remoto, while the English language doesn’t. Does that mean English speakers can’t conceive of events very far in the past? Of course not. Does that mean that we don’t understand implicitly terms like saudade, a melancholy longing for things that are gone and will never come back? Again, of course not, but for a while educated people would have thought so.

Deutscher reinvigorates the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis among a very few limited lines: primarily, he focuses on the idea that our languages impact how we think about color, along with how we process geolocation, and objects in gendered languages. As speakers of a neuter language, we don’t think about objects as inherently gendered things. But if you speak a language that thinks of bridges as masculine, like Spanish, bridges are strong and sturdy. If you speak a language that thinks of bridges as feminine, like German, however, you’re much more likely to implicitly think of bridges as beautiful and delicate. And color! There’s an incredible explanation of the Homeric description of the sea as “wine-dark” that I can’t possibly condense, but if you’re into this kind of thing, you’ll be enraptured.

Fascinating stuff, for a person who has a real interest in psychology and language. If not, probably not a text for you. Since I’m the former rather than the latter, I loved this book and found it incredibly compelling.

Tell me, blog friends…what kind of oddball things do you get nerdy about?

December 10, 2015

Book 2: Unbelievable

“But physicists initially argued against evolution because it didn’t fit their view of the physical world at the time. In order to incorporate Darwin’s discovery, cherished views had to be sacrificed. The kind of damage a new discovery inflicts is not merely intellectual, but emotional.”

Dates read: October 11-15, 2015

Rating: 3/10

When I was in middle and high school, I went through a period where I was fascinated with the occult. Doesn’t every teenage girl go through that stage? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still have a lingering interest in some parts of it (like astrology and tarot cards), but for the most part, it’s not something I think about very much. But when this book was on Kindle sale, I read the title and that little teenage girl part of me wouldn’t let me pass it by.

Before beginning this book, I was vaguely aware of the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory…as in I was aware that it had been a thing, wasn’t sure if it still was a thing or anything that might have come out about it. As a reference text about Dr. J.B. Rhine, who founded the Laboratory, and the work of the Lab, this is a very solid work. But much like the Lab and its refusal to trade in sensationalism, the book’s steadfast sticking to a “just the facts, ma’am” approach means that it doesn’t really go anywhere.

Things like ghosts and poltergeists are the kind of juicy stuff that makes for page-turning reading. It’s also the kind of thing that donors gave money to the Lab to research. But Dr. Rhine’s primary interest wasn’t keeping dollars flowing, it was establishing parapsychology as a legitimate field of research and scientific thought. Seances, mediums, telekinesis…those kind of talents, even if there was some intriguing anecdotal evidence to support them, weren’t able to be performed on demand and couldn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny. So while they were dutifully investigated, the Lab focused mainly on ESP research and mind-reading with the famous Zener cards. They did have success at these experiments, enough so that that the Parapsychological Association was eventually able to join some scientific groups, but that was about the total of what they were able to achieve.

At the end of the day, I just didn’t really enjoy reading the book. It’s not really about parapsychology or mysterious happenings, it’s about Dr. Rhine and his struggle to gain scientific legitimacy for his work. That’s why the rating is so low: it’s not poorly written, it’s just that ultimately, it’s not very interesting.

Tell me, blog friends, what do you think about life after death? Do you believe in ghosts?

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