Why am I doing this to myself?

I have many reasons why I am attempting this project, but mostly I’m doing it because I’m pissed off. Like many great academics, Joseph Campbell has amazing ideas hidden behind a dense wall of pedantic language. As an academic editor, it occurred to me that it would just be faster and easier for me to edit his work rather than to decode it as I read; it simultaneously occurred to me that this could be a useful window for clients into, not only what an editor does, but how someone could improve their own written work.

In these articles, I’ll present a few of the original paragraphs at a time from Joseph Campbell’s book Hero with a Thousand Faces, followed by the paragraphs paired with my edits. Each paragraph will also have a breakdown of what I changed and why. By giving you a window into the editing process, I hope to give you a much more concrete understanding of how to manipulate your information and words for maximum clarity. 

The success of my editing should be based solely on how well you understand the new paragraphs vs. the edited ones. As we say in English, “the proof is in the pudding”: the value of the techniques explained here should either be obvious or discarded completely. It is up to you, the reader, to see for yourself how well these techniques work, and to see if applying them to your own work will be useful.

While my edited work will always reflect an appropriate academic tone – I will probably flip-flop between tones and registers in my created writing. After all, I am a real person, with a real voice, and this is not going to be in an academic journal – so I will swear, make jokes, use emojis, and an excessive amount of em dashes – I will not be showing off. I’m doing this for free, I’m doing it for me – so I’m going to describe this stuff like you and I are sitting in a cafe, drinking coffee and bitching about academics 😉

NOTE: I will be line-editing this work: which means that it is already well structured in terms of the ordering of sections, paragraphs and ideas. The editing techniques here are meant to be applied to a very well-organised draft. 

Why this book?

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell is an odd sort of book.

It has quietly influenced many great stories and movies, including the Star Wars franchise. George Lucas was so enamoured with the book, he and Campbell became good friends, and Campbell’s interview with Bill Moyers, and the resulting documentary “The Power of Myth”, was filmed at Skywalker ranch.

Personally, I find his thesis intriguing. I currently have 5 of his books sitting on my shelf, waiting to hand me their delicious wisdom. 

But my dear “Joey Cams” writes too much like a 1950s academic, and not enough like a person who expects anyone to understand what the hell he’s saying.

The thesis of all of his books is essentially this: if you strip down every story in the whole world – be it a myth from the rainforest or Antarctica, the bible, or star wars – there are significant common elements at the root of all these stories. He argues that the similarities are a reflection of the fundamental structure of the human psyche: that every person has these story elements in them at birth, and that even without cultures interacting, all groups will come up with essentially the same narratives independently.

This book, in particular, is the story of the hero: every culture in history has hero stories, and Campbell uses this book to demonstrate that there is only one hero story that is dressed up with “a thousand” different faces.

CONTENT WARNING:
This book was written in 1949; some of the language used in this book is definitely offensive. If Campbell had genuinely been my client, I would have advised him to alter certain words, but alas, he is not alive to make these changes. Personally, I have chosen not to soften the harshness of these words into a modern context: I do not believe it is up to me to decide that Campbell would have made those changes if he could – despite my firm belief, based on the overall content of his book, that he did not intend to reduce/dismiss ancient cultures like his contemporary colleagues. He seems to show deep respect for these cultures throughout all of his works, but unfortunately in the working language of post-WWII, ethnology/anthropological language – language we would definitely deem derogatory by today’s standards. I have noted problematic words with an asterisk (*) and a footnote of the changes I would make if the author were alive to approve the edits.

Let’s get going with PARAGRAPHS 1 & 2