Where Books and Readers Come Together
In The Art of Fiction’s preface, Gardner writes: “About all that is required is that the would-be writer understand clearly what it is that he wants to become and what he must do to become it.”
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) by Joseph Campbell is the book that awakened in writers and storytellers in publishing and in screenwriting to the larger scope of mythology as metaphor and to the underlining structure of stories.
A guide for writers based on the work of Joseph Campbell and the years of research and contribution to storytelling Vogler spent in Hollywood.
One of the last sections is “The Functioning of Myth” and Campbell goes into great deal to extrapolate the introductory section. “The ends for which men strive in the world,” writes Campbell, “are three — no more, no less; namely: love and pleasure (kāma), power and success (artha: pronounced ‘art-ha’), and lawful order and moral virtue (dharma).”
Much of the book is loosely based on experiences of racism in Monroeville, Alabama.
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Dr. Azar Nafisi is a memoir of a woman teaching literature in Islamic Iran.
Quite often it is upon the reader to make the emotional connections of what is beneath the surface.
