Read Online Wild Ducks Flying Backward by Tom Robbins - Free Book Online Page B

to comprehend the essentially symbolic nature of apocalypse (as in Judea at the waning of the last millennium BC), genocide has resulted. Prophecy self-fulfilled. Munro asks the chilling question, “How far does this myth still affect political destiny, by implanting structures in the minds of millions that must be fulfilled in historic time?”
    In other words, if we expect and/or secretly covet Doomsday, we can make it happen. Those strange bedfellows, the rigid ignoramuses of the religious right and the comet-chasing, earthquake-fancying, harmonic-convergence-befuddled innocents of the New Age, share a misinterpretation of eschatological legend that is downright scary in intensity and scope. In its passionate if misguided longing to transcend the disorderliness, friction, and unpredictability that characterize life, it strikes me as a death wish on a global scale—but one that could be reversed with a basic understanding of mythology.
    The Moyers–Campbell series does not deal with the millennialism issue in any direct way, don’t let me mislead you, but by simply reintroducing us to the mythic underpinnings of our culture and consciousness, it can help yank us from the jaws of the dragon and set us down once more in the magnificent labyrinth whose twists and turns it is our sacred privilege to go on negotiating for millennia still to come.
    In
Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth,
you will hear extraordinary stories told by a master storyteller, and you will see temples, art objects, and ceremonies you may have never seen before, as well as the antics of familiar heroes and heroines: astronauts, artists, actors, and athletes. Which is to say, the programs are entertaining as well as edifying.
    They do tend to be visually static at times. It’s the nature of the medium. And while Moyers and Campbell play off one another fairly well, they’re not Wally Shawn and André Gregory. Nevertheless, there’re moments when Moyers, resembling a puckish George Bush, does seem to be having his mind blown during a scene from
My Dinner With Joe
. As interviews go, these are more conversational, less confrontational than many, but a subtly crisp dynamic does emerge.
    What does not quite emerge is Campbell’s true personality. Oh, we get his twinkle, his halting eloquence, his robust but ever courtly assertiveness (a former world-class runner, he provides all aspiring octogenarians with an image to shoot for), but his private dimensions are left draped in opaque silks.
    Well, so what? Perhaps we don’t need to know that Campbell was a dignified neo-Victorian gentleman, minus any trace of the sexual hang-ups associated with the type. Or that for the last forty years of his life he refused to read a newspaper and did not attend a motion picture until the day before his eightieth birthday when he sat through the entire
Star Wars
trilogy, one picture after the other. Or that socially he was barely to the left of William F. Buckley, harboring a withering contempt for the clamorings and phobias of the mindless masses. (Upon our return from Mexico, he vowed he’d never again set foot South of the Border: it was just too funky for him, too awash in lurid emotions.) He could appear haughty at times, but at his age and with his knowledge and accomplishments, he may be excused for not suffering fools gladly.
    (And speaking of fools, you may have heard that there are thought police from our academic left who would tar the myth master with the anti-Semitic brush. This is hogwash. Far from attacking Jews, Campbell, an honest, uncompromising scholar, simply made the observation—non-arbitrarily and in proper context—that the ancient Hebrews failed to establish a high culture as did, for example, the Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese, Romans, Aztec, Inca, et al.; a nomadic people, they produced no great art, architecture, science, or centers of learning. What the Hebrews did do was engender, embellish, codify, and amplify Levantine legend, legend