“There are fewer more comfortable reads than meandering through the country with Joseph Campbell.”

In brief, this is a book for fans of Joseph Campbell. If you’re looking for interesting travelogue, thicker mythological theory, or simple memoir, this book does not fully satisfy in any of these ways. Instead, we have Campbell’s personal journal entries, and so we have a (fairly) honest daily portrayal of a few months of his Asian travels, from India through Japan.

I say “fairly” because these have been, of course, edited for print, primarily in the recreation of his drawings, some excising and clarification of extraneous detail, and the like. What remains is a 1950s Joe who–while somewhat stubborn in his first impressions and conclusions–nonetheless is working through his ideas on paper, and by the end has come around on several issues. Campbell is here post-Hero’s Journey and working towards the Masks of God. Reconciling the contrasting approaches to Buddhism from India to Japan is challenging; understanding the nuances and differing practices of sects within Japan even harder. Less exciting is his freer entertaining with a few of the various women he meets.

I found myself, of course, interested less in the names of temples and Noh plays he visits than in what surely is a different set of notebooks kept elsewhere: the scholarly work as he draws points of comparison and contrast in what he discovers. In these journals, we get only references to it with a few personal reflections on conversations.

Even so, there are fewer comfortable reads than meandering through the country with Joseph Campbell, irritated by delays in letters or flights, delighted by a “magic” ritual smoke, and his frequent summaries of sparring with academic colleagues. This one remains on my shelf.