I think the title of this book is a little misleading. A reader's "companion" typically consists of annotations, information tangential to and explanatory of the work in question. The subtitle, "Reflections on the Art of Living" is more accurate: this book is a distillation of the essense of Campbell's life work. You don't really even have to have read Campbell to find value in this book.

More spiritual, less academic, than the body of his work itself, "Reflections" is something of a capstone course if you will...but as I said it stands alone as well. This is more of a book of inspirations based on Campbell's scholarly work, and if you're not into that kind of thing you might want to give this one a try anyway. A taste:

"The warrior's approach
is to say "yes" to life:
"yea" to it all.

Participate joyfully
in the sorrows of the world.

We cannot cure the world of sorrows,
but we can choose to live in joy....

The world is perfect. It's a mess.
It has always been a mess.

We are not going to change it.

Our job is to straighten out
our own lives."

If that rings true at all for you, I think you'd enjoy having this book on your shelves. ( )

In A JOSEPH CAMPBELL COMPANION, Diane Osborn has assembled excerpts from Campbell's many works, and distilled the central ideas Campbell wrote about over the years concerning the origin and purpose of myths. She has organized these excerpts into topical areas: "In the Field", "Living in the World", "Coming into Awareness", and "Living in the Sacred." Although the topics can be viewed as linear, reflecting the progress of the soul or psyche, I suspect Campbell would have suggested they are also cyclical and that one exists in all four simultaneously. ( )