Mythologist who, in this series, stands for the scholar who dared to make Finnegans Wake legible. His 1944 A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake is cited in Dialogue 1 as a "leap" beyond the routine scholarly hunt for a plot, and returns in Dialogue 37 as the type-case of a tempting error: reducing the Wake to a narrative — as John Gordon's plot summary also does — misses "the message of Joyce," the endless process Bob and Cameron take the book to be.
Across the dialogues
Introduced as the bold Joyce scholar — his 1944 book "a leap" past the routine hunt for a narrative
Campbell's 1944 Skeleton Key enters as the ambitious exception among Joyce scholars — a "leap" beyond the "routine attempts to find a story," even as Bob's Joyce (via the Evergreens channel) preferred McLuhan for reading the book "in its own terms."
"Joseph Campbell's book came out in 1944. What a leap he did."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 1 (20 Oct 2020), 17:33
Turned into a warning — the same reduction of the Wake to a story that, like Gordon's, misses "the message of Joyce"
Campbell reappears as a cautionary parallel — like Gordon's plot summary, his Skeleton Key "reduces" the Wake to a narrative, and making a story of it misses "the message of Joyce," the process he was trapped in.
"That's what Campbell tried to do with the skeleton, too."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 37 (23 Sep 2021), 28:35